LET A HUNDRED FLOWERS BLOOM—TOWARDS THE FURTHER EVOLUTION OF THE FOREIGN EXPERT SYSTEM IN CHINA

Posted on January 25, 2014 by robertalexandersheppard

LET A HUNDRED FLOWERS BLOOM—TOWARDS THE FURTHER EVOLUTION OF THE FOREIGN EXPERT SYSTEM IN CHINA

David & Isabel Crook 1947—Amoung the First Foreign Experts in China

Robert Sheppard

Blog: https://robertalexandersheppard.wordpress.com

LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/pub/robert-sheppard/1b/555/485/

This week the approach of the Chinese New Year marks a major celebration of the role of Foreign Experts in making a major contribution to the building of modern China, highlighted in the speech of Premier Li Keqiang before an assembly of many noted expatriate scholars, experts and educators. The Premier, together with State Foreign Expert Bureau Deputy Director Liu Yangguo, also announced a major initiative inviting all Foreign Experts to share their experience working in China and to make suggestions, both towards the development of China nationally, and also towards the strengthening and reform of Foreign Expert system itself.

Dr. Robert Sheppard—20-Year Veteran Foreign Expert in China at a State Banquet at the Great Hall of the People (Chamber of the Chinese National People’s Congress) on the 60th Anniversary of the Founding of the People’s Republic of China

I had the pleasure of meeting with the Premier at the Great Hall of the People on a similar occasion sponsored by the State Foreign Expert Bureau in 2009 on the 60^th Anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China. This year marks the 20^th Anniversary of my work in China, beginning in 1993, most of which was in the status of a “Foreign Expert,” or foreign Professor teaching at most of the most celebrated universities in the nation: Peking University, Tsinghua University, People’s Renmin University, Bei Wai, or the Beijing Foreign Studies University, the China University of Political Science and Law, the Guanghua School of Management MBA Program, and the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) Law Institute and Graduate School, among others, in the three primary areas of International Law, Literature—Western, American, British and World Literature, and Business and MBA Studies.

In these fields I have been honored and happy to make a small contribution to China’s development. At the Law Institute of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences I participated in the drafting and revision process of the National People’s Congress in formulating the Chinese “Basic Legislation Law (Li Fa Ji Ben Fa)” together with other legal experts from the US, Germany and Canada under the auspices of the Ford Foundation and International Republican Institute. At Peking University I taught a course in Public International Law and in the International Relations Department helped to institute a program where the BeiDa students of International Relations for the first time visited the American, Canadian, Indonesian and European Union Embassies on bussed field trips and spoke face-to-face with the Ambassadors and frankly questioned their staffs on their bi-lateral and multi-lateral relationships with China, including meetings with American Ambassador James Sasser, EU Ambassador Endymion Wilkinson, and Canadian Ambassador Howard Balloch and others. I also taught a course training the Intellectual Property Judges of the Appeals Court of the State Intellectual Property Organization (SIPO) in copyright, trademark, patent and other forms of Intellectual Property worldwide, a key to China’s economic development. As a literary author, poet and novelist I also have been happy to introduce the great Classics and Masterpieces of Western Literature, American, British and World Literature to China’s best university students and future writers and scholars, and hope that their experience will help to shape China’s culture and literature into the future.

Robert Sheppard—20 Year Veteran Foreign Expert in China—-Giving a Public Lecture at China People’s University on the Concept of a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly

Professor Robert Sheppard giving a Public Lecture and Seminar at Renmin People’s University on the Concept of a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly, a globalized version of the EU Parliament Model as a new organ of the UN.

Dr. Robert Sheppard Giving a Seminar at the Law School of China People’s Renmin University, Beijing on the Concept of a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly

In the second decade of my work in China much of my public work focused on various aspects of the United Nations in China. I worked as a Senior Consultant to UNIDO, the United Nations Industrial Development Organization during the time of China’s accession to the WTO and transition to the age of E-Commerce, giving lectures, training seminars and investment recruitment conferences for state-owned company managers and foreign investment officials at MOFTEC in second-tier industrially-challenged cities such as Harbin, Changchun, Xining, and Changsha on how to adapt to the WTO and E-Commerce. Additionally, as a Senior Associate of the Committee for a Democratic United Nations I gave public lectures at Tsinghua University and at People’s Renmin University, introducing the concept of a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly, a globalized version of the EU Parliament as a new organ of the United Nations system for a more democratic system of global governance.

In 2008 I worked at the Beijing Sports University (Ti Yu Da Xue) making preparations for China’s first successful hosting of the Olympic Games. In recent years a greater part of my activity in addition to teaching has focused on being a professional writer, publishing in 2013 my two-part best-selling novel Spiritus Mundi, in which about a third of the action takes place in China. In short, my experience as a “Foreign Expert” has been swept along in the tide of amazing historical development which is the saga of the rise of modern China in our times.

Spiritus Mundi Novel by Robert Sheppard–Bookcover

Book Cover of Spiritus Mundi, Novel by Robert Sheppard 2013

http://www.amazon.com/Spiritus-Mundi-Book-The-Novel-ebook/dp/B00CIGJFGO

OBSERVATIONS ON THE FOREIGN EXPERT SYSTEM, THE CONDITION OF FOREIGN EXPERTS WORKING IN CHINA, AND THE NEED FOR FURTHER REFORM

The Foreign Expert system of China is a great institution which has allowed hundreds of thousands of foreign scholars and educators to experience life and culture in China while making a major contribution to China’s development. But it, like the related laws and regulations on visas, permanent residence and the status of all foreign persons in China suffers from serious flaws and still uncompleted reforms that leave serious shortcomings for both the foreign experts and for the benefit of the nation as a whole. In many cases well-intentioned reforms have been begun but are still half-incomplete.

INADEQUATE TENURE, RETIREMENT, PERMANENT RESIDENCE AND SOCIAL SECURITY SYSTEM FOR LONG-TERM FOREIGN EXPERTS IN CHINA

David & Isabel Crook 1947—Amoung the First Foreign Experts in China

Foreign Experts: Isabel and David Crook in 1947 near Yanan before National Liberation

Isabel Crook—Chinese Foreign Expert at 98 years

Isabel in her 90’s: A Lifetime of Service to China

This week’s coverage of Premier Li Keqiang’s celebration of the contribution of Foreign Experts in the China Daily, including an eye-witness account by Ravi Shankar Narasimhan, gave a rightful place of honor to Isabel Crook, doyenne of the foreign expert community from Bei Wai, the Beijing Foreign Studies University, a remarkable woman of 98 years, the last 75 years of which she has spent in China, who is the epitome of that sub-class of foreign experts who have given not one or two years to China, but their entire lives. Her late husband David Crook was a good friend of mine when we were both at Bei Wai, and we often had extended conversations together both at the Foreign Expert building and at the Friendship Hotel, where we would often go swimming at the only pool in the area in those early days, often meeting there other life-term expats such as Israel Epstein or Sydney Shapiro and recounting his remarkable experiences of the Spanish Civil War, his service as a KGB Anti-Trotskyist Spy, WWII, his marriage and family, Liberation and his imprisonment for five years during the Cultural Revolution.

For David Crook’s generation of Communist Party members the conundrum of Social Security, immigrant status and tenure was ironically more straightforwardly solved as they became Chinese citizens and were then eligible for normal permanent tenure and employment in their Chinese University. They received permanent housing from their work unit, or “Danwei” and a conventional pension on retirement. For later “Foreign Experts” such as myself this path to full citizenship and integration was either not open or desired.

One serious shortcoming of the Foreign Expert system today is the lack of a legal or contractual framework for foreign experts to attain either permanent employment, academic “tenure” or the concomitant job security, advancement, retirement and health benefits of such a status. The Foreign Expert contract is invariably a one-year contract which may be renewed for successive years with mutual agreement but is never permanent and never includes any prospective retirement benefits or security of tenure. It’s original concept, no longer necessarily true, was that it was a temporary job with no career path, “job equity” or job security attached. Thus while a US Permanent Resident or Green Card holder may be granted tenure, promoted to departmental chairmanships, and enjoy pension, health, disability and pension rights on an equal basis with US Citizens, such remains an impossibility to even a Foreign Expert with Chinese Permanent Residence. To be fair, this usually met the needs and desires of the majority of both the foreign experts and the employers, who usually only contemplated a few years of service at most before returning inevitably to their home countries to take up their lives they left behind. Most foreign experts were recent college graduates out to experience Chinese life and culture or have an adventure in the world, or perhaps were retired teachers seeking a stimulating one-year experience to prevent retired life degenerating into the life of the “couch potato” at home. Quite a few were sponsored by religious organizations from their home countries with a covert religious agenda.

However, life has its “Law of Unexpected Consequences” and persons such as myself after coming to China to savor Chinese culture found ourselves as I did, marrying a Chinese girl, having children and being transformed from the “transient” expectations of the normal foreign expert into a permanent member of the community with a career inside China. The trouble, however, is that the “Foreign Expert System” simply had no legal or contractual framework for such an existence or its unforeseen consequences. For the long-term or life-long foreign expert such as myself there is no permanent job beyond one-year contracts, no framework for job security or long-term career path, no workable retirement system, no system for our children’s education, no permanent health-care beyond the current employer or upon retirement, no system for assistance in acquiring permanent housing and no system for assistance in repatriating back to one’s country of origin after an extended stay in China, such as portability of unemployment benefits, retirement benefits or social security credits or other transitional assistance. Perhaps it was always sometimes tacitly assumed that “all foreigners are rich” and can take care of themselves without institutional support or that their home countries would provide such assistance. In the era of the “World Economic Crisis” of depression-like proportions for some countries and vulnerabilities for the poorly-paid class of teachers and both the young and the “too old,” this is far from the case.

Let’s look at how the present “Foreign Expert System” fails long-term foreign experts such as myself who have given “the best part of their lives” to China, despite some very substantial reforms China has recently made to accommodate them. I am twenty-years resident in China, having married a Chinese woman and fathered two children in Beijing and been granted the still relatively rare status of a “Chinese Permanent Resident” or “Chinese Green Card” holder. Despite the reforms of two years ago which theoretically extended applicability of the Chinese Social Security system to all foreigners, not only foreign experts, including liability for Social Security tax I still have no prospect of qualifying for Chinese retirement benefits. Why? Because although the law gives us a right to participate in the retirement system after fourteen years of employment in China and at 62 I am past the normal Chinese retirement age of 60, the benefits only derive from and are calculated from having had a Social Security account into which the employer has paid Social Security tax over the years of employment. Here the “Catch 22” is that until two years ago employers of foreign experts, mostly universities, while having deducted income taxes over the last twenty years did not make any contributions year-by-year for the foreign expert to any Social Security account. Thus by law I am fully eligible for Chinese Social Security, but because for those twenty years the universities have made no contribution to a Social Security account in the employee’s name, the reality is that I am entitled effectively to zero benefits. Under the US system I again qualify for US Social Security benefits, but since working in China for twenty years no credit has been made to my Social Security account in the US, so that the level of benefit based on contributions before coming to China is averaged down by the many years of no contribution while in China, with the result that benefits are skewed artificially down to the minimum level, inadequate to sustain life in retirement either in the US or in China. Similarly, there is no retirement health benefit available for the retired expat foreign expert living in China. Since there are only some 6000 expats who have qualified for Chinese Permanent Residence, all of this conundrum is further exacerbated by the fact that for all others one’s visa and residence status will automatically expire when your last job ends. Therefore, you will have to leave the country before you can qualify for unemployment or retirement benefits anyway, though most likely you will discover they don’t really exist in reality anyway despite the law granting them. Unlike the Crook generation, the contemporary retiring foreign expert will also not retain housing from the “danwei” or university or other employer, nor any employment-based private pension. Indeed, the contemporary retiring Foreign Expert will soon discover that “You’re on your own, buddy.”

David Crook in our swimming expeditions from Bei Wai to the Friendship Hotel used to laugh that one of his duties as a KGB spy in Spain during the Spanish Civil War was to maintain surveillance of George Orwell, author of 1984 and Animal Farm, a suspected “Trotskyist” and an author I much admired. One of the most poignant and heart-wrenching episodes of the Animal Farm allegory, you may recall, comes when the “inner party of pigs” discover that the work horses who have shouldered the main burden of the farm’s work have been thoroughly exhausted and worn out by old age and can no longer work. They are callously sold off and shipped to the meat factory to be butchered into dog food when they can no longer work. China has made immense progress in avoiding the condition or the Orwellian dystopian prophecy and should hasten and complete its reforms of the Foreign Expert System to prevent the foreign experts who have given the better part of their lives to China from suffering such an Orwellian end.

Thus, at a minimum to begin serious reform of the Foreign Expert System in respect of job security and Social Security, the Chinese government should study the implementation of the following possible reforms: 1) Extend retroactive credit within the Social Security system for qualifying for benefits to Foreign Experts reaching retirement age based on Income Tax paid by the foreign expert before the law changed requiring and enabling payment of Social Security Tax; 2) Negotiate immediately bi-lateral Social Security Portability treaties or with the nations from which most Foreign Experts come from—the US, Canada, Australia, UK and the EU, among others—providing for mutual recognition of contributions in bother systems and enjoyment of benefits across borders of both systems; 3) Negotiate bi-lateral Unemployment Insurance Portability treaties respecting the eligibility of persons returning from employment in one country for Unemployment Insurance benefits in the other country based on mutual recognition and credit of taxes paid in the other to support the repatriation process; 4) Provide for old-age medical and disability insurance and retirement housing assistance for Foreign Expert retirees at least on an equal basis of other Chinese nationals; 5) Implement regulations authorizing and promoting permanent employment and academic tenure on an equal basis with Chinese nationals for long-term Foreign Experts with Chinese Permanent Residence, rather than insecure one-year contracts, with legal protection against discrimination in hiring, retention, renewal of contracts , ordinary advancements and dismissals.

President Xi Jin Ping Outlines the Chinese Dream

EXTENDING PREMIER LI AND PRESIDENT XI’s CALL FOR INTENSIFICATION OF MARKET-BASED REFORMS TO THE FOREIGN EXPERT SYSTEM

“It is a truth universally acknowledged that a teacher is in want of adequate compensation,” is a global truism in apt paraphrase a well-known authoress. This is also true of the Foreign Expert in China, whether of the garden variety such as English and basic academic instructors or even of the special categories of foreign experts created to attract specialized talent. While on “Teachers’ Day” cards and flowers may be offered as a token of the Confucian sentiment of honor towards scholars, in China as well as most countries of the world governments, universities, schools and employers are most reluctant to “put their money where their mouth is.” This remains true even where vast fortunes are being made in the “industry” of education where parents are being drained of excessive amounts out of a frenzied desire to secure their children’s futures by hook or by crook.

The pay for ordinary Foreign Experts is poor. On the whole it is adequate to the condition of the typical foreign expert—a young college graduate looking for a cultural overseas adventure, first international job or travel opportunity or an older Western retiree seeking a twilight challenge or covert religious mission with church sponsorships and subsidies. For a single person without family burdens the pay is adequate for a modestly comfortable life in China, though the amount it is possible to save and take home on return after a year is so small as to hardly pay for a week in a hotel in the US. Exchange scholars and professors seconded or on leave from their home universities who enjoy their home salaries on top of the low-level Chinese salary have no problems. For these classes it is quite possible to have a comfortable and enjoyable year or two, especially with the benefit of the free housing and air-ticket home usually provided in the ‘Foreign Expert Package.” For long-term foreign experts unsubsidized from their home country, especially those with children and families the compensation is grossly inadequate for ordinary needs, let alone the exorbitant cost of children’s overseas education, forcing universal moonlighting and forced repatriation to attempt to make ends meet.

This is in no way accidental. The market for Foreign Expert’s professional services is a completely rigged and fixed system based on government monopoly. All universities and schools are required by law to base their teachers’ compensation levels on “State Foreign Expert Bureau Guidelines” which generally forbid universities and schools from paying more than a base level for each category of qualification, generally in the area of 4000-7000 RMB per month. Nor will the band of compensation increase with any achievement or accomplishment. The inevitable result of this monopoly government price fixing is that the best people after their year of new experience are quick to look for other employment in the sectors of the economy not price-fixed. The typical foreign expert job is seen only as a temporary stepping-stone to something better with a future. One of the greatest absurdities of this system I have witnessed firsthand is the outrageous disparity of the Foreign Expert salaries for professors at Peking University and Tsinghua University—supposedly the Harvard and MIT of China—-in which I have seen English-speaking Kindergarten teachers being paid literally three times the monthly salary of PKU or Tsinghua professors with PhD’s teaching advanced university graduate courses! Why? Because the for-profit Kindergartens are not within the leaden price-fixing system of the State Foreign Expert Bureau and respond to market demand and the near manic compulsion of Chinese parents to give their children even the slightest head start or advantage in the perceived crawl to the top of the heap.

To be fair, this system that keeps Foreign Experts poor had important justifications in its origins. At the beginning of the PRC China was in fact extremely poor and could only afford to pay little to foreigners. After “Kai Fang” or the “Opening Up” policy after 1979 it remained important to both conserve scarce funds and foreign exchange and to give poorer areas some chance to compete with the major centers in attracting foreign talent by not becoming perpetual losers in a bidding war. Foreigners were “assumed to be rich” and their pay in any case was more than their comparable Chinese colleagues, who suffered at least triple the underpay and exploitation as their relatively privileged foreign counterparts. Most foreign experts, moreover, were not motivated by money but rather by cultural curiosity, a spirit of adventure, altruism or other motives and were planning only a short sojourn before moving on to bigger and better things elsewhere.

Now, however, as China is moving fast towards “Xiaokang” or moderate prosperity many of those valid early justifications for the system have begun to obsolesce. As Premier Li and President Xi emphasize, the deepening of the market-based reforms applied to other sectors may now be usefully extended in the area of education. The price-fixing system for keeping Foreign Expert salaries low and uniform should be abolished or modified to allow greater compensation to greater talents, achievements and qualifications. Better compensation to highly skilled Foreign Experts is not only now affordable, but is essential for retention, development and deployment of their talents to meet China’s aspiration to develop a quality of education equal to and competitive with developed countries in the second-half of its national development. Foreign Experts, teachers and professors should be allowed to freely unionize and engage in collective bargaining to improve their compensation and working conditions. And Chinese teachers and scholars should be similarly empowered to bargain collectively with their employers for improvement of their much more severe conditions of undercompensation and exploitation! Though in the short-term this will be costly and inconvenient for the schools and government, in the long-run it will be the only way to lift the quality of the Chinese educational system and transform it into a system capable of fostering the critical thinking, innovative and creative capacity capable of raising China to fulfill its still unmet aspiration of a fully developed and globally competitive nation and economy, based on quality and not just bulk quantity. With due sensitivity to questions of cultural and political control, the scope for private and Chinese-Foreign joint-venture education should be markedly opened in the educational sector as it has been in the industrial sector, including increased attraction and participation of foreign talent and foreign experts at increasing levels of management.

THE TRAGIC “CATCH-22” FOR FOREIGN EXPERTS’ CHILDREN BORN IN CHINA

One of the serious shortcomings of the present Foreign Expert system in China is its lack of provision for the children of foreign experts, both those born abroad and accompanying their parents and those born in China, often of marriages with Chinese national spouses. These children often suffer severe challenges and vulnerabilities in securing adequate educational opportunities in China, both for economic reasons and because they are often caught between two cultures, two educational systems, two immigration and regulatory systems and nationality systems, leading to entrapment in perilous “Catch 22” dilemmas.

All expatriates in China, not only Foreign Experts have serious problems securing adequate educations for their children. In simple money terms, the cost of expat children’s education is astronomical. It is literally true that it often costs more to send foreign children to international kindergarten, elementary and high schools in China than to send them to a university in the US or other Western nations. Initial enrollment, “capital contribution” or other fees may reach $10-20,000 even before annual tuition per child of similar amounts. Disraeli famously observed that Britain was in danger of becoming “Two Nations: Rich and Poor,” and the expatriate community in China and other countries is even more polarized into two classes: 1) the corporate and embassy employees whose employment contract “package” provides a full employer-paid subsidy for payment of the exorbitant costs of overseas education for their children, and 2) the vulnerable, insecure underpaid independents and Foreign Experts whose employers provide no subsidy for their children’s education and have no free public school system to help them as they would have in their home countries. Needless to say, a Foreign Expert on a standard contract salary of perhaps 5000 RMB per month cannot pay the 100,000’s of RMB to send each of his children to such international school as ISB, WAB and others utilized by employer-subsidized corporate and diplomatic staff through their “fat package” employment contract provisions. A number of Chinese public schools have lower-cost “International Departments” such as the Fang Cao Di elementary school and the No. 80 Middle and High School in Beijing which accept children of foreign experts, but even these have initial enrollment fees plus annual tuition fees both in excess of 50,000 RMB. How can a Foreign Expert on 5000 RMB per month pay such an amount per child? The standard Foreign Expert Contract has no provision for the employer paying accompanying children’s educational cost. The result is extreme hardship for any children of Foreign Experts relying on earned income to educate their children.

Other barriers are those of the children’s language ability and the need for them to re-enter their own country’s educational system on repatriation from China. A very common initial total lack of Chinese language by the Foreign Expert’s children may preclude them from functioning in a Chinese-language public school (though it may be great for acquiring the language eventually) and a lack of money may deny them access to a bi-lingual or English-language International School. Even if these factors are overcome, the school may ill prepare them for competing to enter university in their home countries, including necessary subjects for college entrance exams.

In my own children’s case, Claire and Joseph were born in Beijing to parents of mixed US and Chinese citizenship, each with Permanent Residence in the other’s country. They attended Fang Cao Di, a Chinese public elementary school with an “International Department” for foreign children and had a successful experience growing up bi-lingual. Middle school was more problematical. Claire, the eldest had a Beijing Hukou and was assigned by lottery to No.13 Middle School but had great difficulty adapting to the regimented environment of a 100% Chinese school. We moved her to Xin Dong Fang’s Foreign Language School after they offered to give her free tuition in exchange for me giving some classes at the school. For Joseph No. 80 Middle School’s International Department proved workable at a cost of some 50,000 Rmb per year per child. In all cases the children’s educational costs would be unpayable from a Foreign Expert’s standard salary, and were only managed by supplementary outside income sources.

High School, however, found Claire trapped in a “Catch 22” situation that may ensnare foreign children born in China. She was accepted by No. 80 High School’s International Department but a new regulation of the State Education Commission required each student enrolling in an International School at the high school or higher level to have an updated visa in their foreign passport. But when we went to the Public Security Bureau with her US Passport to update a current visa they refused to issue one on the ground that she was born in Beijing to a Chinese mother and thus could be claimed as a Chinese citizen with a Beijing Hukou. Chinese law and treaties do not provide for dual citizenship. Thus they refused to issue a current visa until she went through a procedure to formally renounce her entitlement to Chinese citizenship, an unfortunate decision to force on a child and her parents, and one which takes more than a year to complete. So she could not enter any International High School because she lacked a current Chinese visa in her US Passport. She however could not enter any Chinese high school because she had not taken the “Zhong Kao” or Chinese Middle-School Entrance Exam. The result of the new regulation was that she was locked out of both Chinese and International High Schools, a tragic “Catch 22” with a deadly bite for those vulnerable and innocent children who are born between two nationalities.

In conclusion, with respect to the children of Foreign Experts, China should consider the following possible reforms to the Foreign Expert System: 1) With regard to the “Catch 22” exclusion of foreign children born in China from International Schools, regulations should be adopted immediately requiring all International Schools to accept such children legally resident in the country without regard to visa status, and the PSB should be forbidden to require children born in China to foreign parents to renounce any claim to Chinese citizenship prior to issuing a current Chinese visa prior to the child’s 18^th birthday; 2) Provision of education for Foreign Expert’s accompanying children should be a mandatory term of the standard Foreign Expert Contract; 3) To accomplish this state regulations should require all International Schools to accept and educate the children of foreign experts at fees no greater than 10% of their contracted Foreign Expert yearly salary; 4) Where no International Schools exist in the area, local Chinese schools or those attached to universities should be required to accept and make special provision for the education of the children of Foreign Experts at a cost not to exceed average fees charged to local Chinese children in the same area; 5) Foreign Expert contracts should require employers to provide full medical coverage for all children of foreign expert employees; 6) Discrimination in hiring, firing or non-renewal of Foreign Expert Contracts because of the presence of accompanying children should be illegal and subject to award of lost compensation and reinstatement by the Foreign Expert Bureau; 7) Employers of Foreign Experts should be required by regulation and the terms of the standard Foreign Expert employment contract to provide housing appropriate to the needs of families with children or the cash equivalent; 8) Employers of Foreign Experts should by regulation be required to file an annual Foreign Expert Dependent Children Educational Plan detailing their written agreement with local schools to provide for such children’s education in the coming year as a condition of renewing their authorization to employ Foreign Experts; 9) International treaties should be negotiated between the principal countries requiring each country to provide a voucher or payment to each child of its nationality to cover the costs of public education of each child in the foreign country—guaranteeing for instance that each US national child in China receives public funds from the US at least equivalent to the average expenditure of public funds in public schools per child in the US to insure their education in China, and each Chinese child in the US receives a voucher or payment equivalent to the average expenditure of public funds per child in China. This should insure that no child should be deprived of equal access to basic education regardless of their parents’ temporary country or place of residence, and redress the inequity that expatriate parents from the US must pay their US income taxes as well as Chinese income taxes but are deprived of the use of that tax money they have paid for the education of their children merely because of residence abroad.

MEDICAL CARE FOR FOREIGN EXPERTS IN CHINA: A PROMISE INCOMPLETELY FULFILLED

With regard to medical care for expatriate Foreign Experts in China my experience is that despite State Foreign Expert Bureau regulations and standard Foreign Expert Employment Contract provisions which mandate that all employers provide such care to the standard of the care enjoyed by comparable Chinese national employees, and despite recent laws extending comparable guarantees to all foreign workers in China, the actual care received, especially in medical emergencies such as required operations, births, and emergency hospitalization are far from adequate.

We all know how hospitals and health care providers are grossly overburdened and inadequately staffed to handle the incredible numbers of both Chinese national patients and the few foreign patients they are responsible for. A visit to a Chinese hospital or doctor will involve a wait in incredible lines and a very limited time with the doctor for communicating, diagnosing and treating the problem. This is a regrettable condition we hope will improve with time for both Chinese and foreign patients, and this is not the time or place to analyze the entire medical care and medical insurance program of the nation as a whole, which is slowly improving. I will make only a few comments and suggestions more specific to the experience of the average Foreign Expert with a serious medical condition.

For ordinary problems in a major city like Beijing foreign experts can generally receive adequate care if they are patient enough to go through the lines and waits and manage the communication and language problem by bring along a Chinese colleague or friend to translate. Many bigger hospitals like Xie He Hospital in the Embassy district have an international department which makes communication easier and lines shorter, though sometimes at a slightly increased but generally moderate cost. If a foreign expert wishes to pay a considerably higher fee out of his own pocket, which may not be reimbursed by the employer or its standard care plan he is free to use Western-oriented hospitals such as the Sino-Japanese Hospital or the Beijing Family United.

When a major medical emergency requiring hospitalization of a Foreign Expert occurs, however, the response of the employer is often far from adequate. The first major problem is that the Chinese hospital will require 100% prepayment before treatment or hospitalization. This means that for something big you have to first pay cash out of your own pocket, get receipts and then take them to the employer and beg for reimbursement, which may or not occur. For a major operation if you do not have 10-50,000 RMB in your pocket you would find great difficulty getting your employer to advance payment or a voucher for the funds. This system is detrimental because it forces people to often delay treatment until the condition worsens and costs more and more money.

Moreover, when major operations or hospitalization occurs for a foreign expert the university or employer is often obstructive and evasive in providing for reimbursement. The usual reason for this is that the employer has no system of funding, budgeting or insurance for its legal liability to the Foreign Expert under the employment contract and Foreign Expert Bureau Regulations. Costs of a hospitalization or major operation will come out of surplus funds already coveted by high administrators for their own perks and pet projects at best, and corrupt diversions of funds at worse. The employer will therefore often deny liability, insist you should have gotten your own insurance, delay, and often descend into dishonest practices in your greatest time of need. They may even take away your pay for the time you are disabled for the medical treatment and recovery. The foreign expert may be strongly urged to return his own country for treatment or deceptive reasons given for discontinuing the contract. In my own experience over twenty years most of the time I was very healthy and minor problems were managed reasonably. When I required an emergency hernia operation while employed as a professor at Peking University, however, I found that the supposedly top university was far from forthcoming and shamefully failed to meet its legal obligation of reimbursing health care to its Foreign Experts. To prevent such shortcomings every employer of Foreign Experts should be required to file an Annual Plan for meeting the unforeseen medical needs of foreign staff including either a third-party insurance or a pre-budgeted purpose-specific reserve fund account set aside for such emergencies. The State Foreign Expert Bureau should have a specific office available for Foreign Experts to appeal to with power to review and order delinquent payment by the employer, failure of which would cause cancellation of the school or employer’s authorization to employ Foreign Experts. Another shameful consequence of a Foreign Expert having a medical emergency is the very likely prospect that the contract will be cancelled or almost certainly the contract will not be renewed, simply because the employee is seen as a potential drain on funds. This is shameful behavior by employers of Foreign Experts. Having enjoyed the benefit and contribution of the worker for years the merest medical expense often results in showing the unfortunate worker the door at the time of greatest family need. The Foreign Expert Bureau should issue explicit regulations making it illegal to terminate or fail to renew a Foreign Expert’s employment because of past medical conditions or legitimate medical costs when the worker is capable of resuming their work. Appropriate temporary disability coverage by the employer should be required. Treatment of Foreign Experts as “disposable” upon encountering insurable medical costs and conditions is a gross breach of trust and waste of the talent contributing to China’s future.

Another area of abuse is the frequent failure of the employer to pay the return-air-ticket fee which is part of every Foreign Expert contract. In many instances if the Foreign Expert does not permanently return to his home country but instead changes to a new employer at the end of the year the Foreign Affairs Office of the school or employer often improperly refuses to pay and simply pockets the air-ticket money, often for official perks or worse. The Foreign Expert Bureau should have a Hotline to report and correct such abuses.

Let a Hundred Flowers Bloom—Let a Hundred Schools Contend

CONCLUSION

“Let a hundred flowers bloom, let a hundred schools contend!”—President Xi and Premier Li have asked for a gathering of experiences and of recommendations from Foreign Expert community in China for the better development of China, the Foreign Expert System and for a better global world of our future. I shall always treasure the experience and opportunities which I have had to contribute to the rise of China during the past twenty years of my service here. I hope that service and the suggestions made here based on that experience may make some small further contribution to improving our common future together.

WILL WWIII RESULT FROM A RUSSIAN INVASION OF THE UKRAINE OR A JOINT RUSSIAN-IRANIAN-CHINA SNEAK ATTACK ON THE MIDDLE-EAST OIL RESERVES?——MI6’S NEW SUPERSPY ETIENNE DEARLOVE IS THE NEW JAMES BOND!——-FREE!——-GET THE SNOWDEN-CLANCY-ORWELLIAN CYBERSPY THRILLER NOVEL THAT DEFINES OUR ERA!—-NSA/CIA/MI6/WWIII CYBERTHRILLER EPIC SPIRITUS MUNDI BY ROBERT SHEPPARD FREE TO YOU DURING THE PUSHCART PRIZE GIVEAWAY CELEBRATION!

Posted on January 15, 2014 by robertalexandersheppard

WILL WWIII RESULT FROM A RUSSIAN INVASION OF THE UKRAINE OR A JOINT RUSSIAN-IRANIAN-CHINA SNEAK ATTACK ON THE MIDDLE-EAST OIL RESERVES?——MI6’S NEW SUPERSPY ETIENNE DEARLOVE IS THE NEW JAMES BOND!——-FREE!——-GET THE SNOWDEN-CLANCY-ORWELLIAN CYBERSPY THRILLER NOVEL THAT DEFINES OUR ERA!—-NSA/CIA/MI6/WWIII CYBERTHRILLER EPIC SPIRITUS MUNDI BY ROBERT SHEPPARD FREE TO YOU DURING THE PUSHCART PRIZE GIVEAWAY CELEBRATION

#EtinneDearlove, #Dearlove, #MI6, #CIA, #Ukraine,#Crimea, #JamesBond, #TheNewJamesBond, #WWIII,#TheNewFleming,#‎TheNewJackRyan‬, ‪#‎TheNewClancy‬,‪#‎Clancy‬, ‪#‎JackRyan‬,‪#‎SpyThriller‬,‪#‎JackSartorius‬, ‪#‎SpiritusMundi‬,‪#‎RobertSheppard‬, ‪#‎Snowden‬

Follow the spellbinding Thriller Scenario of a threatened Russian-Iranian-Chinese Pearl Harbor-like sneak attack on the Middle-East Oil Reserves to permanently take away the dominance of the West with a New Eurasian Axis!———-Follow the exploits of MI6’s newest Superspy Etienne Dearlove—The New James Bond—-as he penetrates the closed world of the Chinese Politburo in Beijing to uncover the Secret Geopolitical Conspiracy to fatally change the world’s Balance of Power!——-How will it all end? —-Find out now in the Thriller Geopolitical WWIII Thriller Spiritus Mundi by Robert Sheppard!

World Literature Forum is honored to announce that Spiritus Mundi, the acclaimed Cyberthriller Action Novel by Robert Sheppard, the defining work of our Snowden-Orwellian Era, has been included in the nominations for the presitigious 2014 Pushcart Prize. The thriller action of the novel follows a NSA/CIA/MI6 Counterterrorism team’s cat and mouse cyber-pursuit of nuclear terrorists bent on infiltrating a group of global idealists campaigning for a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly for global democcracy, then unearthing a much bigger Apocalyptic conspiracy to start WWIII between a secretly allied China, Russia and Iran to make a Pearl Harbor-like sneak attack on the Middle-East’s oil reserves, severing the energy jugular of the vulnerable declining West. Cutting edge MI6/NSA Cyber-techno-penetration of the top-secret communications network of the Chinese Politburo through the tech-avvy and sexual wiles of neo-Bondian 21st Century MI6 Superspy Etienne Dearlove gives the West its last chance to head off Armageddon. Find out the final fate of the world by reading Spiritus Mundi now!

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ACT NOW TO DISCOVER THE WORLD’S FATE!

GET YOUR FREE e-COPY OF PUSHCART PRIZE NOMINATED CYBERTHRILLER SPIRITUS MUNDI BY ROBERT SHEPPARD (BOOK I) NOW BY FOLLOWING THIS SMASHWORDS LINK TO DOWNLOAD:

Spiritus Mundi Book I, The Novel (5.0 Stars on Smashwords) https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/303856

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In celebration of the Pushcart Prize Nomination for Spiritus Mundi a Pushcart Prize Giveaway Celebration has been declared as an introductory offer in which Spiritus Mundi, Book I will be made available free on Smashwords and affiliated outlets, including Barnes & Noble and many others. It is hoped that readers will be inspired by Book I to purchase Book II, Spiritus Mundi the Romance, either later or at the same time at the discount price of $3.99 (Remember you have to read Book II to find out how the story of Book I ends!).

The Pushcart Prize is an American literary prize by Pushcart Press that honors the best “poetry, short fiction, essays or literary whatnot”published in the small presses over the previous year. Magazine and small book press editors are invited to nominate up to six works they have featured. Anthologies of the selected works have been published annually since 1976.

The founding editors are Anaïs Nin, Buckminster Fuller, Charles Newman, Daniel Halpern, Gordon Lish, Harry Smith, Hugh Fox, Ishmael Reed, Joyce Carol Oates, Len Fulton, Leonard Randolph, Leslie Fiedler, Nona Balakian, Paul Bowles, Paul Engle, Ralph Ellison, Reynolds Price, Rhoda Schwartz, Richard Morris, Ted Wilentz, Tom Montag, and William Phillips.

Among the writers who previously received early recognition in Pushcart Prize anthologies were: Kathy Acker, Steven Barthelme, Rick Bass, Charles Baxter, Bruce Boston, Raymond Carver, Joshua Clover, Junot Diaz, Andre Dubus, William H. Gass, Seán Mac Falls, William Monahan, Paul Muldoon, Joyce Carol Oates, Tim O’Brien, Lance Olsen,Peter Orner, Kevin Prufer, Kay Ryan, Mona Simpson, Ana Menéndez, and Wells Tower.

Included in the Pushcart 2014 Nominations were several of well-known author Robert Sheppard’s “Poems from Spiritus Mundi” including “Moby Dick” and “Zeno’s Paradox” which were published in and nominated for the Pushcart Prize by Poetry Pacific and available here and on their website:

https://robertalexandersheppard.wordpress.com/2013/04/11/poetry-pacific-3-poems-by-robert-sheppard/

INTRODUCING PUSHCART PRIZE NOMINEE ROBERT SHEPPARD’S EPIC NOVEL SPIRITUS MUNDI

Author’s E-mail: rsheppard99_2000@yahoo.com

ON SPIRITUS MUNDI

“Read Robert Sheppard’s sprawling, supple novel, Spiritus Mundi, an epic story of global intrigue and sexual and spiritual revelation. Compelling characters, wisdom, insight, and beautiful depictions of locations all over the world will power you through the book. You’ll exit wishing the story lines would go on and on.” May 13, 2012

Robert McDowell, Editor, Writer, Marketer, Editorial Cra, The Nature of Words

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“Robert Sheppard’s novel, “Spiritus Mundi,” has everything. “Spiritus Mundi” is Latin, meaning “spirit” or “soul of the world.” According to the Norton Anthology of English Literature, the phrase refers to “the spirit or soul of the universe” with which all individual souls are connected through the “Great Memory.” This amazing novel is all inclusive and unceasingly riveting. If you are interested in politics, philosophy, human relationships, sex, intrigue, betrayal, poetry and even philosophy — buy and read “Spiritus Mundi”!”November 18, 2012

Raymond P. Keen, School Psychologist, Department of Defense Dependents Schools (DODDS)

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“Robert Sheppard’s new novel “Spiritus Mundi” is a new twist on a well-loved genre. Robert leaves no stone unturned in this compelling page turner you’ll experience mystery, suspense, thrills, and excitement. Robert touches on sexuality and spirituality in such a way that the reader is compelled to ask themselves “what would you do if faced with these trials?” Robert is a master at taking the reader out of their own lives and into the world he created. If you’re looking for a “can’t put down” read pick up Spiritus Mundi!” May 20, 2012

Nicole Breanne, Content Coordinator, Ranker.com _____________________________________________________

“Longing for a thrilling experience of the sexual and spiritual world? Expecting a thorough summoning of your inner heart? Aspiring to find an extraordinary voice to enlighten your understanding heart? Then you can’t miss this extraordinary novel, Spiritus Mundi by Robert Sheppard. The author will spirit you into a exciting world filled with fantasy, myth, conflicts and wisdom from a fresh perspective. Don’t hesitate, just turn to the 1st page and start out enjoying this marvellous journey.”November 17, 2012

Alina Mu Liu, Official Interpreter, Editor & Translator, HM Courts & Tribunal Service, London UK & the United Nations

—————————————————————————— “Robert Sheppard’s Spiritus Mundi is a literary novel for those with an extensive vocabulary, and who believe how you tell a story is as important as what occurs in it. It is as current as today’s headlines.

Jaime Martinez-Tolentino, Writer” November 19, 2012

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“Robert Sheppard’s exciting new novel, Spiritus Mundi, is an unforgettable read and epic journey of high adventure and self-discovery across the scarred landscape of the modern world and into the mysteries beyond. Its compelling saga reveals the sexual and spiritual lives of struggling global protesters and idealists overcoming despair, nuclear terrorism, espionage and a threatened World War III to bring the world together from the brink of destruction with a revolutionary United Nations Parliamentary Assembly and spiritual rebirth. This modern epic is a must read and compelling vision of the future for all Citizens of the Modern World and a beacon of hope pointing us all towards a better world struggling against all odds to be born.” May 19, 2012

Lara Biyuts, Reviewer and Blogger at Goodreads.com and Revue Blanche

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“Robert Sheppard’s “Spiritus Mundi” is a book of major importance and depth. A must read for any thinking, compassionate human being living in these perilous times. I highly recommend this powerful testament of the current course of our so-called life on his planet. April 25, 2012

Doug Draime Writer, Freelance

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“This new novel ‘Spiritus Mundi’ brings together history, politics, future society, and blends with a plausible World War Three scenario. I have read it and find it over the top fascinating. I am very glad to see Robert share his creativity with the world through this work of fiction, and know it will be a huge hit.” April 28, 2012

Jim Rogers, Owner and Director, AXL

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“Robert Sheppard is an exceptional thinker! His work should be read and made the subject of critical study.”May 26, 2012

Georgia Banks-Martin, Editor, New Mirage Journal

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“This novel rocks the reader with its supple strength. You want to say “No, No,” and you end up saying, “Maybe.” Political science fiction at its highest, most memorable level.”November 17, 2012

Carl Macki, Owner, Carl Macki Social Media

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“Robert Sheppard’s Novel Spiritus Mundi confronts politics and philosophies of the world. He’s examined multiple layers of personality in his characters; male, female, Chinese, Arab, English, and American melding them into a story of possible outcomes. How else can I convey the intelligent presentation of fiction woven with sensitivity to our world’s governments, religious influences and sectarian principles? We must not forget the influence of a largely secular world. Robert tirelessly checked, rechecked and triple checked his resources in order to bring a fiction of occurrence, and psychological impact as set forth in his novel Spiritus Mundi.”November 18, 2012

Glenda Fralin, Author, Organization NWG

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“Robert was one of my best guests. His novel is as wide ranging as are his interests and expertise. He can explain his various ideas with great clarity and he does this with compassion. Novel is worthwhile reading.”November 18, 2012

Dr. Robert Rose, Radio Show Host, http://www.blogtalkradio.com/icdrrose

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Related Links and Websites: Spiritus Mundi, Novel by Robert Sheppard

For Introduction and Overview of the Novel: https://spiritusmundinovel.wordpress.com/

For Updates on the Upcoming Movie Version of the Novel, Spiritus Mundi & Casting of Actors and Actresses for Leading Roles See: https://robertalexandersheppard.wordpress.com/

To Read Abut the Occupy Wall Street Movement in Spiritus Mundi: http://occupywallstreetnovel.wordpress.com/

For Author’s Blog: https://robertalexandersheppard.wordpress.com/

To Read a Sample Chapter from Spiritus Mundi: https://spiritusmundisamplechapters.wordpress.com/

To Read Fantasy, Myth and Magical Realism Excerpts from Spiritus Mundi: https://spiritusmundifantasymythandmagicalrealism.wordpress.com/

To Read Sexual Excerpts from Spiritus Mundi: The Varieties of Sexul Experience: https://spiritusmundivarietiesofsexualexperience.wordpress.com/

To Read Spy, Espionage and Counter-terrorism Thriller Excerpts from Spiritus Mundi: http://spiritusmundispyespionagecounterterrorism.wordpress.com/

To Read Geopolitical and World War Three Excerpts from Spiritus Mundi: https://spiritusmundigeopoliticalworldwar3.wordpress.com/

To Read Spiritual and Religious Excerpts from Spiritus Mundi: https://spiritusmundionspiritualityandreligion.wordpress.com/

To Read about the Global Campaign for a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly in Spiritus Mundi: https://spiritusmundiunitednationsparliamentaryassembly.wordpress.com/

To Read Poetry from Spiritus Mundi：https://spiritusmundipoetry.wordpress.com/

For Discussions on World Literature and Literary Criticism in Spiritus Mundi: http://worldliteratureandliterarycriticism.wordpress.com/

For Discussions of World History and World Civilization in Spiritus Mundi: https://worldhistoryandcivilizationspiritusmundi.wordpress.com/

To Read the Blog of Eva Strong from Spiritus Mundi: https://evasblogfromspiritusmundi.wordpress.com/

To Read the Blog of Andreas Sarkozy from Spiritus Mundi: http://andreasblogfromspiritusmundi.wordpress.com/

To Read the Blog of Yoriko Oe from Spiritus Mundi: http://yorikosblogfromspiritusmundi.wordpress.com/

To Read the Blog of Robert Sartorius from Spiritus Mundi: http://sartoriusblogfromspiritusmundi.wordpress.com/

I write to introduce to your attention my double novel Spiritus Mundi, consisting of Spiritus Mundi, the Novel—Book I, and Spiritus Mundi, the Romance—Book II. Book I’s espionage-terror-political-religious thriller-action criss-crosses the globe from Beijing to New York London to Washington, Mexico City and Jerusalem presenting a vast panorama of the contemporary international world, including compelling action from the Occupy Wall Street Movement to espionage and a threatened World War Three, deep and realistic characters and surreal adventures, while Book II dialates the setting and scope into a fantasy (though still rooted in the real) adventure where the protagonists embark on a quest to the realms of Middle Earth and its Crystal Bead Game and through a wormhole to the Council of the Immortals in the Amphitheater in the center of the Milky Way Galaxy in search of the crucial Silmaril Crystal, and to plead for the continuance of the human race in the face of threatened extinction from a nuclear World War III, all followed by a triple-somersault thriller ending in which a common garden-variety terrorist attack is first uncovered by MI6 and the CIA as the opening gambit a Greatpower Game of States threatening World War III and then, incredibly, as the nexus of a Time Travel conspiracy involving an attempt by fascist forces of the 23rd Century to alter a benign World History by a time-travelling raid on their past and our present to provoke that World War III, foiled by the heroic efforts of the democratic 23rd Century world government, the Senate of the United States of Earth, to hunt down the fascist interlopers before their history is irrevocably altered for evil.

When activist Robert Sartorius, leading a global campaign to create a European Parliament-style world-wide United Nations Parliamentary Assembly presses the proposal in New York on his old friend the UN Secretary-General and is rebuffed due to the hostile pressure of the conservative American administration, his Committee resolves to fight back by launching a celebrity-driven Bono-Geldof-Band Aid/Live 8-style “People Power” media campaign and telethon, allied to the Occupy Wall Street movement and spearheaded by rock superstars Isis and Osiris and former UN Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali to mobilize global public support and pressure. The Blogs of Sartorius, activist Eva Strong and Committee Chairman Andreas Sarkozy reveal the campaign’s working struggle, their tangled love affairs, a loss of faith, attempted suicide, reconciliation of father and son after divorce, and recovery of personal love and faith.

Things fall apart as the idealists’ global crusade is infiltrated by a cell of jihadist terrorists using it as a cover, then counter-infiltrated by CIA agent Jack McKinsey and British MI6 agent Etienne Dearlove. A cat-and-mouse game of espionage and intrigue ensues pitting them against the Chinese MSS espionage network allied with the Iranian Quds Force crossing Beijing, London, Moscow, Washington and Jerusalem unleashing an uncontrollable series of events which sees the American Olympic Track and Field Team bombed on an airplane in London, uncovers a secret conspiracy of China, Russia and Iran to jointly seize the oil reserves of the Middle-East, and witnesses Presidents Clinton and Carter taken hostage with Sartorius, McKinsey, Eva and other activists at a Jerusalem telethon rally cut short by the explosion of a concealed atomic device in a loaned Chinese Terracotta Warrior, then flown by capturing terrorists to Qom, Iran as “human shields” to deter a retaliatory nuclear attack.

In Book II, Spiritus Mundi, the Romance they encounter Iran’s Supreme Leader in Qom as the world teeters on the brink of nuclear confrontation and World War III, while mysterious events unfold leading Sartorius and McKinsey from their captivity in the underground nuclear facilities of Qom into a hidden neo-mythic dimension that takes them to a vast ocean and land at the center of the world, Middle Earth, Inner Shambhala, and to involvement in a mysterious Castalian “Crystal Bead Game” linked to the destiny of the human race on earth. They then embark on a quest for the Silmaril, or Missing Seed Crystal to the central island of Omphalos in the Great Central Sea in the middle of the globe, aided by Goethe, the Chinese Monkey King, Captain Nemo, the African God-Hero Ogun, and a Sufi mystic they traverse a ‘wormhole’ at the center of the earth guarded by ‘The Mothers’ and the fallen angel tribe of the Grigori (Genesis 6:1-4) which leads the way to critical meeting of the “Council of the Immortals” at the Black Hole in the center of the Milky Way Galaxy to determine the final fate of the human species. The heroes battle and overcome the treacherous opposition of Mephisto and his satanic subaltern Mundus through their Underworld and Otherworld adventures and successfully plead the cause of the continuation of the human species before the Immortals, returning with the critical Silmaril Crystal. resolving the Crystal Bead Game and thereby inspiring through the Archangel Gabriel a dream in the mind of Iran’s Supreme Leader which brings a new Revelation causing him to release the hostages and an end the crisis. China and Russia stand down from aiding Iran in seizing the Mid-East oil reserves, but in a treacherous blow the Chinese instead utilize their forward-positioned armies to attack their former ally Russia and seize Siberia with its large oil and gas reserves instead. President Barret Osama, America’s newly-elected first black President then invites Russia, Japan and South Korea to join NATO and together they succeed in expelling the Chinese from Siberia and usher in a new Eurasian and global balance of power and a New World Order.

Rock Superstar Osiris meanwhile, after undertaking a narcissistic Messianic mission in the wake of the Jerusalem atomic blast is dramatically assassinated on live world-wide television on Jerusalem’s Via Dolorosa by a disillusioned follower. His wife and rock-star partner Isis then leads a spiritual movement to reconcile and unite the clashing religions and catalyze a common global spiritual Renaissance through a Global Progressive Spiritual Alliance which seeks to construct an Inter-faith Temple on the ruins of the atomic blast in Jerusalem. In counter-reaction to the cataclysmic events the world finally implements Sartorius’ crusade for a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly, but not before Sartorius has himself has died, Moses-like of a heart attack while helping to foil a metaconspiracy mediated by Time Travel in which a fascist agent from the 23rd Century who has time-transited back to our time to alter a benign history by causing WWIII and thus preventing the evolution of a democratic world government, the United States of Earth, which follows him through time and nabs him just in the “nick of time” to prevent Aramgeddon. The book ends with the opening ceremony of the UN Parliamentary Assembly which is attended in Sartorius’ name by his widow Eva Strong, whom Sartorius had fallen in love with and married in the course of the novel, and by their son Euphy, newborn after Sartorius’ death. They are joined in cinematic climax at the ceremony by newly chosen UN Secretary-General Clinton, President Osama and UN Parliamentary Assembly Committee Chairman Andreas Sarkozy who have just received the Nobel Peace Prize for their work in creation of the world’s first world parliamentary assembly within the United Nations, bringing together the representative voices of the peoples of the world in face-to-face assembly and dialogue for the first time in world history.

Highlights:

All the Highlights of the novel cannot be contained in such a short Introduction, but a few of them would include:

1. Spiritus Mundi is the first novel in world history to portray the creation of a United Nations Parliamentary Assemblyon the working model, inter alia, of the European Parliament;

2. Spiritus Mundi is a prophetic geo-political WWIII novel of the near future forseeing a conflict and conspiratorial surprise attack by a resurgent “Axis” of China, Russia and Iran seeking by a decisive blow in jointly seizing the Middle-East oil fields to radically alter the global balance of power vis-a-vis the West in the world and Eurasia. Like Clancy’s The Bear and the Dragon, it forsees the inclusion of Russia in NATO, and goes far beyond in forseeing the inclusion of South Korea and Japan, following a joint Chinese-Russian occupation of a collapsing North Korea and the Axis strike at the Middle-Eastern oil fields;

3. Spiritus Mundi is an exciting espionage thriller involving the American CIA. British MI6, the Chinese MSS, or Ministry of State Security and the Russian SVR contending in a deul of intrigue and espionage;

4. Spiritus Mundi is a Spellbinding Terrorism/Counterterrorism novel involving a global plot to conceal an atomic bomb in a Chinese Teracotta Warrior to be detonated in Jerusalem;

5. Features the romantic and sexual searching and encounters of dozens of idealist activists, rock-stars, CIA and MI6 agents, public-relations spinmeisters and billionaires with a detour into the bi-sexual and gay scenes of Beijing, New York, California, London and Tokyo:

6. Establishes and grounds the new genre of the Global Novel written in Global English, the international language of the world,

7. Spiritus Mundi is a novel of Spiritual Searching featuring the religious searching of Sufi mystic Mohammad ala Rushdie, as well as the loss of faith, depression, attempted suicide and recovery of faith in life of protagonist Sartorius. Follows bogus religious cult leaders and the Messiah-Complex megalomanic-narcissistic mission of rock superstar Osiris that leads to his dramatic assassination on worldwide television in Jerusalem, followed by the religious conversion of his wife and rock-star parner Isis;

8. Features the search for love and sexual fulfillment of Eva Strong, a deeply and realistically portrayed divorced single mother involved in the United Nations campaign, who reveals her tortured heart and soul in her Blog throughout several disastrous sexual affairs and ultimately through her final attainment of love and marriage to Sartorius;

9. Features Sartorius’ experience of a bitter divorce, alienation and reconciliation with his son, his loss of faith and attempted suicide, his battle against drugs and alcoholism, his surreal and sexual adventures in Mexico City, and his subsequent redeeming love and marriage to Eva Strong;

10. Contains the in–depth literary conversations of Sartorius and his best friend, Literature Nobel Laureate Günther Gross, as they conduct worldwide interviews and research for at book they are jointly writing on the emergence of the new institution of World Literature, building on Goethe’s original concept of “Weltliteratur” and its foundations and contributions from all the world’s traditions and cultures;

11. Predicts the emergence of the institution and quest of “The Great Global Novel” as a successor to the prior quest after “The Great American Novel” in the newer age of the globalization of literature in Global English and generally;

12. Features the cross-cultural experiences and search for roots, sexual and spiritual fulfillment and authenticity of Asian-American character Jennie Zheng, and Pari Kasiwar of India;

13. For the first time incorporates in the dramatic narrative flow of action the mythic traditions of all the cultures and literatures of the world, including such figures as Goethe, The Chinese Monkey King, the African God-Hero Ogun, surreal adventures in the ‘Theatro Magico’ in Mexico City bringing to life figures from the Mayan-Aztec Popul Vuh, Hanuman from the Indian classic the Ramayana, and many more;

14. Book Two, Spiritus Mundi, the Romance is a fantastic Fantasy, Myth and Magical Realism Rollercoaster Ride: The more mythic Book Two utilizes a Wellsian motif of Time Travel to explore the making of history and its attempted unmaking (a la Terminator) by a hositile raid from the future on the past, our present, and the foiling of the fascist attempt by an alliance of men and women of goodwill and courage from past, present and future generations united in a Commonwealth of Human Destiny; Like Thomas Pynchon’s Against the Day and Welles’ Journey to the Center of the Earth it involves a journey to an interior realm of the “Middle Earth;” it also contains a futuristic travel through a wormhole to the center of our Milky Way Galaxy for a meeting with the “Council of the Immortals” where the fate of the human race will be decided;

15. Is a fantastic read on a roller-coaster ride of high adventure and self-exploration!

NEW BOOK RELEASE: SPIRITUS MUNDI BY ROBERT SHEPPARD NOW AVAILABLE ON AMAZON!

PUSHCART PRIZE NOMINEE ROBERT SHEPPARD’S SPIRITUS MUNDI NOW AVAILABLE ON AMAZON! —–INVITATION TO LISTEN TO MAY 17 BLOGTALKRADIO INTERVIEW WITH AUTHOR 10:00 AM PST _______________________________________________________________________

We are pleased to announce the launch of SPIRITUS MUNDI on AMAZON , including both Spiritus Mundi, Book I: The Novel (5.0-Star Amazon Rating Average), and Spiritus Mundi, Book II:The Romance (5.0-Star Amazon Rating Average). You can browse and sample both onlline for free now, then purchase immediaetly by clicking on the following Amazon sites:

Spiritus Mundi, Book I: The Novel: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00CIGJFGO

Spiritus Mundi, Book II: The Romance http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00CGM8BZG

CHECK OUT SPIRITUS MUNDI’S 5.O-STAR GOODREADS RATING AVERAGE & REVIEWS ON GOODREADS:

Book I (5.0-Stars on Goodreads) http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17857619-spiritus-mundi-book-i

Book II (5.0-Stars on Goodreads) http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17857704-spiritus-mundi-book-ii-the-romance

CHECK OUT A FULL SUMMARY OF SPIRITUS MUNDI ON SHELFARI before purchasing at:

http://www.shelfari.com/books/36123188/Spiritus-Mundi—Book-I-The-Novel http://www.shelfari.com/books/36123187/Spiritus-Mundi—Book-II-The-Romance

Spiritus Mundi is also available on SMASHWORDS in ALL FORMATS:

Book I (5.0 Stars on Smashwords) https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/303856 Book II (5.0 Stars on Smashwords) https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/303798

Spiritus Mundi is also now available at the following sites:

Spiritus Mundi: Book I: The Novel https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/303856 http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/spiritus-mundi-robert-sheppard/1115113181?ean=2940044432598&itm=1&usri=2940044432598 http://www.kobobooks.com/ebook/Spiritus-Mundi-Book-The-Novel/book-vYffC7MUUEyN0wJTQSpgFQ/page1.html https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/spiritus-mundi/id634577546?mt=11 http://www.diesel-ebooks.com/item/SW00000303856/Sheppard-Robert-Spiritus-Mundi-Book-I-The-Novel/1.html

Spiritus Mundi – Book II: The Romance https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/303798 http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/spiritus-mundi-robert-sheppard/1115113152?ean=2940044433182&itm=1&usri=2940044433182 http://www.kobobooks.com/ebook/Spiritus-Mundi-Book-II-The/book-PlMhvFBI5USTGkLFnO1TQA/page1.html https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/spiritus-mundi-book-ii-romance/id634586781?mt=11 http://www.diesel-ebooks.com/item/SW00000303798/Sheppard-Robert-Spiritus-Mundi-Book-II-The-Romance/1.html

CELEBRATING SPIRITUS MUNDI’S AMAZON RELEASE DAY WITH MAY 17 BLOGTALKRADIO AUTHOR INTERVIEW WITH DR. ROBERT ROSE 10:00 AM PST __________________________________________________________________________

We also invite you to listen in to the BlogTalkRadio Interview with Dr. Robert Rose interviewing Robert Sheppard on the topic of “World Consciousness and the Emergencer of World Literature” pre-recorded May 17, 10:00 AM, PST:

How to Tune In: ============ You can tune in by clicking on the following BlogTalkRadio link:

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/icdrrose/2013/05/17/robert-sheppard-global-consciousness

or you can listen in anytime to the recorded Podcasts of the May 17 Interview, or past Interviews:

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/icdrrose http://www.blogtalkradio.com/icdrrose/2012/08/01/robert-sheppard–spiritus-mundi-a-novel

Spiritus Mundi, Novel by Robert Sheppard: Table of Contents

Spiritus Mundi

Contents

Book One Spiritus Mundi: The Novel Chapters 1-33

Departure (Beijing)
A Failing Quest (New York)
War Council & Counteroffensive (Geneva)
New Beginnings (London)
Republic of Letters (Berlin)
Fathers and Sons (Washington,D.C.)
Ulysses: Blogo Ergo Sum (Beijing)
Frequently Asked Questions (London)
In the Middle Kingdom (Beijing)

10. Past and Present (London-South Africa)

11. Telemachus (Washington, D.C.)

12. The Everlasting Nay (Beijing)

13. My Brother’s Keeper (London)

14. In the Global Village (Beijing-Tokyo)

15. Deceits and Revelations (London)

16. Be Ready for Anything (Beijing)

17. The Obscure Object of Desire (London-Pyongyang)

18. Sufferings (Beijing)

19. Of the Yearnings of the Caged Spirit (London)

20. Cyclops (Washington, D.C.)

21. The Engines of Illusion (Beijing)

22. On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (London)

23. The Temptation of the Sirens (Beijing)

24. Truth or Consequences (London)

25. Lazarus Laughed (Beijing)

26. Neptune’s Fury & The Perils of the Sea (The Maldive Islands)

Naval Diaries and Ship’s Logs of Admiral Sir George Rose Sartorius (1780-1875)

27. Penelope (London)

28. The Volcano’s Underworld (Mexico City)

Teatro Magico

29. The Everlasting Yea (London)

30. Paradise Regained (Little Gidding)

31. To the South of Eden (Kenya-to Midrand-Johannesburg South Africa)

32. In a Glass Darkly (London)

33. Spiritus Mundi

Book Two Spiritus Mundi: The Romance Chapters 1-21

Gerusalemme Liberata & Orlando Furioso (Jerusalem)
In a Glass Darkly (London)
Great Expectations (Jerusalem)
The Parable of the Cave (Qom, Iran)
The Xth Day of the Crisis (London)
The Supreme Leader & The Three Messiahs (Qom)
Going for the Jugular (London)
The Night Journey, Goethe & The Monkey King (Qom)
The Central Sea, The Crystal Bead Game & The Quest

10. The Island of Omphalos & The Mothers

11. The Council of the Immortals & The Trial By Ordeal

12. Nemesis

13. Armageddon (London)

14. The Fever Breaks

15. High Noon & Showdown at the OK Corral (Washington, D.C.)

16. Ecce Homo (Jerusalem)

17. Deliverance (London/Lhasa)

18. For Every Action…. (Moscow/Beijing)

19. The Burial of the Dead (London/Little Gidding)

20. Spiritus Mundi (London/Jerusalem)

21. In My End is My Beginning

—-The Convening of the First Meeting of the

United Nations Parliamentary Assembly (New York)

Appendix 1: A United Nations Parliamentary Assembly: Frequently Asked Questions

Appendix 2: Spiritus Mundi: Index of Principal Characters

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GATES OF IVORY & GATES OF HORN: THE CHINESE DREAM, THE AMERICAN DREAM AND THE COMMON DREAM OF ALL MANKIND FOR THE 21ST CENTURY

Posted on January 9, 2014 by robertalexandersheppard

GATES OF IVORY & GATES OF HORN: THE CHINESE DREAM, THE AMERICAN DREAM AND THE COMMON DREAM OF ALL MANKIND FOR THE 21^ST CENTURY

A Tale of Two Dreams: The Chinese Dream & The American Dream

By Robert Sheppard, Professor of International Law & International Relations

Beijing, China

Professor of International Law & International Relations, Poet & Novelist Robert Sheppard—Author of Spiritus Mundi

Beautiful Dreamer!—–With the coming of the New Year the season of dreams, New Year’s Resolutions, prophesizing and dream interpretation is upon us. This is the time of a universal taking stock of one’s life, individually and collectively, and of measuring it and its progress against the hopes, desires and dreams that motivate it. By tradition it is the time in America of the President’s “State of the Union” address by which the nation measures its progress or lack of progress in relation to the fulfillment of “The American Dream.” In China, the new President Xi Jinping has launched a major initiative of defining the long-term “Chinese Dream” by which Chinese civilization will measure its progress, analogous to the American Dream for its nation. Above and beyond both of these national dreams humanity as a whole is taking stock of itself individually and collectively as “Citizens of the World” in relation to our common habitation of our sometimes fragile world, beset with the problems of global war and peace, a dysfunctional global economy, and of sustaining the global environment, all emblematic of our “Era of Globalization.” This year also in the United Nations will see the evaluation and renewal process of the “Millennium Goals” of the United Nations system and the world as a whole as it comes to the end of the first 15-year implementation period initiated at the Millennium Forum of 2000.

THE CHINESE DREAM

The Chinese Dream

This week in Shanghai saw the convening of an international forum entitled “International Dialogue on the Chinese Dream” to commemorate the one-year anniversary of President Xi’s proclamation of The Chinese Dream as “the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation” and the program to implement that dream announced at China’s Third Plenum of the 18^th CPC Central Committee. The forum brought together scholars and officials from China and from throughout the world to discuss the concept of The Chinese Dream：what it is, what it should be and what it should not be. In the context of the “Rise of China” as the most populous nation on earth, the world’s second largest economy which may well grow into its largest, and its increasing comprehensive power and global impact, all the participants recognized the great importance of the topic of its defining national dream and conception of itself in �n��world. Of implicit equal importance is the relationship of that “Chinese Dream” to the “American Dream,” the “European Dream,” the concomitant Russian, Japanese, Muslim, Indian and other national or civilizational dreams, as well as the overarching “World Dream” expressed in the United Nations Millennium Goals and world agenda for the coming century.

Chinese Dreamer

THE ELEMENTS OF THE CHINESE DREAM: NATIONAL, INDIVIDUAL, HISTORICAL, GLOBAL AND ANTITHETICAL

Although the phrase “Chinese Dream” has been used previously by Western and Chinese journalists and scholars, a translation of a New York Times article written by the American journalist Thomas Friedman, “China Needs Its Own Dream”, has been credited with popularizing the concept in China. The concept of Chinese Dream discussed at the Shanghai forum for many bears important points of resemblance to the idea of “American Dream.” For many it too stresses entrepreneurship and glorifies a generation of self-made men and women in post-reform China, such as those rural immigrants who moved to the urban centers and sometimes achieve magnificent improvement in terms of their living standards, and social life. The “Chinese Dream” can th

us be interpreted as the collective consciousness of Chinese people during the era of rapid social transformation and economic progress.

At the Shanghai Forum one of the better formulations of the “Chinese Dream” was given by Robert Kuhn, the well-known author of “How Chinese Leaders Think” and the biography of former Chinese President Jiang Zemin. He suggested a “taxonomy” of national dreams which would include at least five key elements: the National Dream, the common Personal Dream of individuals, and the Historical, Global and Antithetical dimensions of a shared dream. I will begin by following this schema in outlining my own conception of the Chinese Dream, derived from twenty years of living and teaching in China as a university professor, then expand upon it to consider the additional dimensions of the parallel“State of the American Dream” in our Era of Globalization, and the further necessity of a universal complementary “World Dream” to embrace and support the various national dreams converging at the global level, including a radically revised system of Global Governance to include the adoption of organs of democratic legitimacy within the United Nations system, most significantly the implementation of an advisory global United Nations Parliamentary Assembly on the model of the EU European Parliament.

THE NATIONAL CHINESE DREAM

The “Chinese Dream” at the top of the agenda of the Chinese government most iterated by President Xi Jinping focuses initially on the material concerns of the economy, linked to the material well-being of the Chinese people. China’s progress of the last thirty years has been phenomenal, but leaves the well-being of the average Chinese citizen still far behind those in the developed world. Thus, the collective “materialist” dream of the Chinese people is still far from completion and only in mid-course. The landmarks which it is still struggling to attain include a short-term goal known in China as “Xiao Kang” status, which might be defined as the attainment of “moderately well-off” prosperity for the average citizen in both urban and rural areas. This includes the most immediate goal of doubling the 2010 per capita GDP (approaching $10,000) in the next decade, possibly by 2021, the 100^th Anniversary of the founding of the Chinese Communist Party.

President Xi Jin Ping Outlines the Chinese Dream

In the longer term, the Chinese Dream looks forward to attaining “full development,” that is parity with the developed world in terms of the per capita GDP enjoyable to the average citizen. Phenomenal as China’s growth has been, this goal is still a distant one, attainable in theory on projection of existing growth rates into the future perhaps by mid-century, say by 2049 or so, which is the 100^th Anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China.

The particular challenge for China in this regard is that of its urbanization rate, which has recently passed the half-way point of more than 50% of the population having moved into cities and large towns from the countryside. America reached this benchmark in its urbanization around 1900 and now approaches 90%. More than 40% of Chinese, however still live in the countryside or in rural towns where their economic opportunities are still quite limited. The shear numbers are still daunting given a total population of 1.3 billion, which implies that a developed world condition of having 75% of the population urbanized and 1 billion city-dwellers would require the further city-building and urban infrastructure sufficient for the relocation of another 300 million rural folk, or a number equivalent to the entire population of the United States! However, if the proven record of the last thirty years can be sustained over the coming thirty years, an assumption far from a foregone conclusion, the task would be as attainable as it is dreamable.

In addition to these quantitative benchmark goals in the definition of the “Chinese Dream” China must also attain qualitative benchmarks with regard to “modernization” such as attaining the capacity for competitiveness and leadership in science and technology, quality higher education for all capable of it, defensive and comprehensive strength and power, and enriching and widening the scope of life of its citizens in an environmentally sustainable fashion and in terms of the social equity and justice that is a pre-condition of continued stability and progress.

The Two Chinas: Rich and Poor

The Challenge of Social Justice Amidst Development

Deng Xiaoping is famously quoted as saying “to get rich is glorious” but the rising levels of inequality in China threaten its “Chinese Dream” turning to “Chinese Nightmare” for those at the economic bottom of society and in terms of potential instability, even those at the top. China’s “Gini Coefficient,” the internationally accepted ratio measure of the level of inequality between the upper and lower quintiles of the population has been approaching the danger zone of dividing the country, in the phrase of Disraeli, into “Two Nations,” rich and poor. China’s Gini coefficient stood at 0.474 in 2012, down from a peak of 0.491 in 2008, according to its Bureau of National Statistics. A Gini Coefficient between 0.47 and 0.49 is well in the danger zone for social instability, threatening breakdown of the developmental process, especially in a nation whose official ideology and measure of legitimacy is still Communist and egalitarian. China has witnessed a growing disparity between the prosperous cities and the impoverished countryside since the early 1990s, while lower-income city residents have been left out of a property boom that enriched many since the housing market debuted in the late 1990s. China has 2.7 million U.S. dollar millionaires and 251 billionaires, according to the Hurun Report, but 13 percent of its people live on less than $1.25 per day according to United Nations data. The average annual urban disposable income is just 21,810 RMB ($3,500). The Gini Coefficient of the USA, an ideologically capitalist country and one of the most unequal of the developed countries by contrast, was lower at 0.468 in 2009 and rising through the World Economic Crisis which threatens the sustainability of the “American Dream.” Thus the Chinese Dream still faces the severe challenge of extending social equity and the benefits of development to the lower quarter of its population.

The Chinese National Dream may be described with several subcategories: A Strong China—economically, politically, scientifically and militarily; A Stable China—free from the chaos or social breakdown which has afflicted other rapidly developing countries at similar stages of development such as Indonesia; a Bountiful China—-capable of extending material prosperity for all of its citizens especially the lower third; A Socially Harmonious China—free of conflict between social classes, ethnic minorities and religious creeds; A Civilized China—build upon a sound foundation of social equity and fairness to all; A Beautiful and Healthy China—sustainable and enjoyable in its natural environment, livable cities, scenic landscapes and in its cultivation of the public arts; and a Creative China—exhibiting scientific excellence, artistic energy and entrepreneurial innovation. The measure of the material progress of China is the material well-being of its people enjoying all of the necessities of life including safe food, decent housing, personal security and safety, and access to the material opportunities and expectations of human life through access to high quality higher education for all, modern and adequate health care, and secure retirement on old age. The means of such well-being are well recognized in good jobs, viable families, diverse entertainment, freedom to travel and proper protection of individual rights, liberties and property under a rule of law.

THE PERSONAL AND INDIVIDUAL CHINESE DREAM

Chinese Dreamers

The “American Dream” has always focused on the dream of individual success and opportunity. American myths of success such as the “Horatio Alger” sagas and the lives of Presidents such as Abraham Lincoln and even Barak Obama have always emphasized the dream of a society in which the path of success is open to all social classes and in which enterprise is rewarded with achievement from the bottom rungs of society to its pinnacles. The Chinese equivalent of the Horatio Alger story has traditionally been that of the poor young scholar who through genius and hard study succeeds splendidly in the Imperial examinations and attains success as a government official or “Mandarin,” often winning the beautiful girl of his dreams as a consequence. Such sagas are expressed in innumerable classics of literature such as the “Xi Xiang Ji” or “Romance of the Western Chamber.” Though Chinese culture has been distinguished as a “collectivist culture” more focused on the family, group and society than in “individualistic” Western culture aspirations and norms remain similar. Both types of society have strengths and weaknesses and can, in their lives and dreams, fruitfully learn from one another.

The Chinese Dream nevertheless undoubtedly needs the dimension of a significantly enlarged degree of personal freedom, growth, individuality, intellectual and spiritual maturity and personal fulfillment. A useful paradigm in this regard is that of “Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs” ranging from the most urgent biological and physiological needs such as food and water and reproductive needs, to safety and security needs, social and belongingness needs and upwards to psychological needs, self-esteem and self-actualization needs.

Maslow’s Heirarchy of Needs: The Ascent from Deficit Needs to Self-Actualization Needs

The principal idea is that as more urgent lower-level needs are satisfied human wants and aspirations turn to higher-level needs. In China many have lamented the intellectual and spiritual vacuum of a nation focused on money and the acquisition and display of material possessions, to the great disappointment of China’s pre-existing spiritual, literary and artistic heritage. The scope of individual self-realization and fulfillment have been stymied at various phases in recent history by repressive and conformist political institutions such as the Communist Party and the excesses of the Cultural Revolution, as well as by the subsequent conformism and compromise of individuality necessitated by the fierce competition for success or survival in a neo-capitalist market economy. Many Chinese lamented this condition but accepted it, saying: “China is poor and we must work for the future—perhaps our children will enjoy the lives we never had.” Now that China is less poor the time has arrived for Chinese people to “move up Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs” and place less effort in the crass and Philistine struggle for money, survival and social status and more in the higher needs of self-realization, self-actualization, intellectual and spiritual growth and spiritual transcendence. Of course for individuals to achieve these social norms, conformities, expectations, customs and practices must evolve and change as well as individual behavior.

Former President Jiang Zemin was sensitive to the “spiritual vacuum” which characterizes much of contemporary China, arising from its peculiar history. Paralyzed for centuries by the corrupt and repressive feudal regime of the Emperors it turned decisively first to modernization and the embrace and idealization of Western values, and then in an intensified form to the ideals of Communism. In the communist era much of the spiritual heritage of Taoism, Buddhism and Confucianism lost its legitimacy, credibility and social acceptance and was both repressed and willingly abandoned. After the failures and excesses of the Cultural Revolution and disasters such as the Great Leap Forward and the bankruptcy of the Stalinist command economy many could not believe in Communism anymore and turned in the era of “Kai Fang” or opening up and embrace of the market economy and consumer capitalism to mere materialist concerns. Many lamented the empty and crass state of the culture, whose heroes were the Philistine nouveau riches, newly minted millionaires and ignorant Babbits of a bastardized “socialist market economy.” A capitalist “spiritual wasteland” followed on the Communist spiritual wasteland often leaving people cynical or with nothing to believe in or give meaning to their lives and precious little scope for individual self-development. Some turned to the project of rehabilitating traditional pre-Communistic ideals from Taoism, Confucianism or Buddhism or imported ideals from Christianity or Islam, some to a more enlightened socialism and others to Western ideals, often with limited success. Some turned to a renascent nationalism or call for a return to “Chineseness” after idealizing the Western norms of modernization and “catching up” for too long as they perceived it. In whatever direction it may take, it is a proper time in the evolution of the “Chinese Dream” to scale the Maslovian pyramid and reinvigorate the search for higher self-actualization and self-realization needs through increased investment in both the lives of individuals and through social institutions in literature, the arts, spiritual community and civilizational development.

A necessary part of any viable “Chinese Dream,” little mentioned in official forums due to sensitivity of the ruling elite, is the need for greater personal freedom from political repression, censorship, and the monopoly rule of the Communist Party over individual lives. Though China has made immense progress in this area over the last four decades and is far from the “Orwellian” state some paranoid observers in the West imagine it to be, there is still an immense need for greater individual and social freedoms. Individual Chinese yearn like all other persons for greater influence and control over their destinies through greater Democracy in political institutions and greater scope for dissent and individual expression as a check on Communist Party corruption and helplessness in the face of repressive and often corrupt institutions. Such dreams find little public expression in official forums but remain the unfulfilled dreams of the Chinese people waiting for opportunities for realization of this hitherto “dream deferred.”

THE HISTORICAL DIMENSION OF THE CHINESE DREAM

The Past is Always Present

The above observations lead into the historical dimension of the Chinese Dream. The “Historical Chinese Dream” includes several sub-categories: China’s long desire for a unified, sovereign, peaceful and prosperous country; progressive development of China’s political theory and the changing nature and evolution of the “Chinese Dream” over time.

China’s history is one of tragic disappointments of an immense potential and of incomprehensible paradoxes of fate. During the Han Dynasty China was fully comparable to the Roman Empire at its height, and suffered a similar decline and breakup through its medieval age. Unlike Rome, however, China was able to succeed in reunification after disintegration and “barbarian” invasions in the glorious Tang Dynasty. This was followed however in conquest and breakup of the empire by the Jurchen of the Jin Dynasty in the north, and the flourishing of the Southern Song’s remarkable urban, commercial and maritime civilization which produced the seeds of global “modernity” in such world-shaking inventions as the compass, gunpowder, printing and advanced paper-making. This remarkable fluorescence was cut short again, however, with the Mongol conquest under Genghis Khan and his successors. Han China again reunified and expelled the Mongols under the Ming, but the state descended into despotic corruption and stagnation leading to another foreign invasion, that of the Manchus of the north who established the Qing Dynasty which persisted until the final overthrow of the emperors and establishment of the Republic of China under Sun Yat Sen (Sun Zhongshan).

During the last two centuries China almost inexplicably declined from being perhaps the greatest economy and empire on earth—the producer of silks, porcelain, tea, paper, gunpowder, printing and other goods coveted by the entire world, to subjugation in a semi-colonial status and carving up, first amoung the Western imperialist powers through the grant of concessions and outright invasion by the Japanese, to the disintegration of the nation amoung regional warlords. All this was perceived by the Chinese people as a two-century “era of humiliation.”

A natural part of the Chinese Dream was thus to awaken and “stand up” from this nightmare and recoup China’s lost greatness and eminence of the past. A necessary part of this historical recovery was also the quest for “modernization” of the economy and nation which alone could support sovereignty, unity and independence. The foundation of the People’s Republic of China had these as principal goals. Thus part of the Chinese Dream has been to “catch up” to the West and the developed world, to re-attain the dignity and honor lost in its semi-colonial subjugation of the past, and recover the lost admiration and respect of past ages. In significant part the recent “Rise of China” of the past four decades has gone far in accomplishing these natural goals by pragmatically integrating large parts of Western culture in the forms of science and technology, business and economics and evolving social institutions, while preserving national independence and China’s core culture and civilization.

A still unanswered question of the Historical Chinese Dream is that of the ongoing role and further evolution of the Communist Party and its ideology. The Soviet Union and the East Bloc began in Communist revolutionary idealism, descended into Stalinist totalitarian dictatorship, attempted reform and finally disintegrated and abandoned the path of socialism. China to date has escaped that fate by pragmatic adaption and evolution, abandoning the excesses of totalitarian control and introducing a mixed economy and liberalized social institutions which embrace substantial aspects of capitalism while preserving the core communist state. The role of the Party has undergone parallel evolution from a command and control dictatorship by a self-chosen and self-perpetuating elite to greater flexibility and sharing of power with market driven institutions. Its ideology has gone from the Leninism and Stalinism of the initial period to the pragmatism of Deng Xiaoping, the “Three Represents” (San ge dai biao) of Jiang Zemin and forward into the present era. It has incorporated elective democratic procedures at the village level and some small democratic mechanisms at higher levels but has to date not taken the step of other one-party states such Mexico or India in opening the political process to full democracy including a choice of opposition parties and elections of Party and governmental officials by the people. It is fair to say that the Party has made significant strides in becoming more sensitive to the voice of the people through internet feedback and outreach, but always short of the point of subjecting itself to possible replacement by competing parties or of factions competing democratically within the Party for public support. Britain’s Labour Party originally embodied in its constitution a commitment to implementation of full socialism, but later changed its program of nationalization of the economy to indirect governmental regulation of a mixed economy. Mexico gradually relaxed the one-party grip of the PRI to allow other parties to challenge it and ultimately replace it, as did the Congress Party in India. Officially, the Communist Party of China refuses to budge on its monopoly position of “leadership” in the PRC, maintaining that it must always play the “leading role” to the exclusion of all other alternatives, and protesting that China’s system need not suffer the imposition of the Western model of democracy, which they maintain is alien and inappropriate to the “exceptional” nature of Chinese conditions. The voice of the people can be expressed through the Party without Western-style open elections amoung multiple competing parties and interest groups, they maintain, and “Democracy with Chinese Characteristics” is just as legitimate as Western electoral democracy, which they rightly point out is so dominated by the obscene power of money as to hardly retain any democratic legitimacy itself. The Chinese Communist party indeed has over 80 million members—the size of the whole population of Germany!—so how can it be far from the people, they argue.

However frequently such disingenuous arguments are put forward, the reality is that no one in China can unite with the people around him or her to change or remove either specific incompetent, corrupt or abusive powerholders or to change policies or practices backed by the Communist Party which may be objectionable to the larger majority of the Chinese people. Thus at the present time real democracy does not exist in China under the Communist Party. The Party is a self-chosen and self-perpetuating elite not accountable to the people of China, except insofar as they are forced to modify their behavior for their own protection. Most Chinese people know and admit this deplorable condition but submit to it, not without resentment—saying “mei you ban fa”—-there is nothing we can do about it. Many reformers question the wisdom of this balking at democratic reform, citing the great success the Party has made in accomplishing the “Rise of China” and in many of its long-term policies and suggesting that this record would allow it to actually win free and fair elections in most cases. Undoubtedly there have been many admirable leaders such as Wen Jiabao who were respected and even loved by the majority of the people and who could have been easily elected. The top positions in the Party and government are increasingly occupied by more competent technocrats rather than mere party hacks. However public resentment is very strong against the many corrupt Communist Party officials who abuse their powers and cannot at present be removed by the people in their just outrage, and such officials would rationally fear a real democratic process in the state and in the party. Apparatchiks are quite rational to fear a significant loss of power through real democratic reform. But it remains an open question as to whether the “Chinese Dream” of the Communist Party will be the Dream of the People or remain the “Dream of the Apparatchiks”—a possessory dream perhaps suggested by the Italian term for the mafia, another self-selecting and self-perpetuating insiders’ club, the “Cosa Nostra”—“Our Thing.” We hope for the former through a rational process of evolution and adaptation within the Party as has occurred in other one-party systems. Until then, this component of “The Chinese Dream,” dreamed by the bulk of its citizens will remain a dream unfulfilled and a dream deferred.

THE GLOBAL CHINESE DREAM

Chinese Treasure Fleet Under Zheng He–Seventy Years Before Columbus

What is China’s dream of itself in the world at large? The “Global Chinese Dream” has at least two elements: How does the Chinese Dream benefit the world? And How does the Chinese Dream Threaten the World? In theory and in substantial truth the Chinese Dream should serve to benefit the world immensely. As Ronald Reagan was wont to invoke, “a rising tide lifts all ships” and a growing China, even a China of the future as the largest economy in the world, in theory should provide immeasurable benefit in cheap and plentiful goods traded and distributed throughout the world and a more and more massive market for the import of goods and services from all nations, consequently providing more employment and prosperity throughout the global economy. China’s low cost products benefit not only consumers in the developed world but make middle-class lifestyles more accessible in the poorer and undeveloped countries.

The reverse side of the same coin of China’s growing economic strength, however is the perception of “The China Threat” amoung many countries, including the United States and its allies. The Chinese themselves often see this “China Threat” phenomenon as a reflection of the West’s own lack of mental balance and paranoia arising out of its own inner insecurities from its own perceived weakness and decline or from a demonizing projection of its own sublimated aggressive instincts. In either case it is dangerous, as fear and resentment are very apt to feed on themselves and become self-fulfilling prophecies or spiral out of control unless rationally managed on both sides.

While Chinese people and leaders protest their good intentions in the world, it is an axiom of geopolitical reality that military and strategic analysts rationally judge and react to nations based on their capabilities and not on their momentary intentions, which are subject to change under undeterminable future circumstances. The rise of China’s economy creates new capacities for good or for ill. It also expands the range and scope of new strategic interests and vulnerabilities, such as worries about oil and energy supplies shared by heavy importers such as China, India and Japan. This is also true for many other recently rising economies such as India, Brazil, a recuperating Russia, Korea and many others. The rising industrial capacity of European powers 100 years ago, especially of Germany and Japan, but including Russia, Italy, the Austro-Hungarian Empire and others paved the road to two catastrophic World Wars. Given the mere industrial and technological capacity for war-making other nations are necessarily forced to make rational plans for all possible future contingencies. War is certainly not the inevitable result of the industrial rise of many new strategic players on the global geopolitical gameboard, but unless positive steps for confidence and trust building are actively pursued, including pro-active arms control agreements, there is a very great likelihood of a vicious circle of mutual fears and distrust spiraling out of control out of its own irrational momentum, not to mention the possibility of real future aggressive intentions which might develop out of rising pride, jingoist resurgent nationalisms or the egotism of newly ascendant elites drunk on their own power. To China’s chagrin, even if it were to be as innocent, pacifistic and saintly in its intentions and motivations as is humanly conceivable, it would still be perceived by other nations as at least a potential threat based solely on the existence of its newfound capacities and strengths alone. It is ineluctable and tragic reality of the onieric economy that one man or nation’s dream may be another’s nightmare by the Law of Unintended Consequences, a theme treated more fully in the next section on the “Antithetical Dream.”

What then is China’s image and dream of itself in the world? This remains an unanswered question and a “work in progress.” To judge by superficial impressions of ancient or modern past history may be illusory under the changed conditions, material interests, altered elites and consciousness of the present and future.

At first glance one might imagine China as an “isolationist” nation based on its construction of the “Great Wall” and its periodic embargos of contact with outsiders. From ancient times China has often regarded itself as the “center of the world” or the center of “the”civilization surrounded by “barbaric” peoples—a view often described as “Sinocentric.” Historically, China enjoyed an advantage of geopolitical distance and isolation from other comparable centers of power such as to make such Sinocentric isolationism viable. In this it was comparable to the geopolitical advantages enjoyed by the United States in being thousands of miles from other great civilizations as potential powerful enemies and bordered only by weak kingdoms or steppe tribes, just as the US enjoyed the barrier of the oceans and faced only a weak Canada and Mexico on its borders. Unlike the ancient superpower of Rome it had no long-term dangerous enemy at an equal level of development such as Carthage in the early centuries or the Persian/Parthian Empire in the last centuries. Its major worry was a shifting grand confederation of the steppe tribes supercharged with hordes of mounted cavalry rather than a competing advanced empire, and its policy of cultural Sinicization and cooptation of the steppe tribes combined with the defense network of the Great Wall usually sufficed. When the steppe tribes did succeed in invading across the Great Wall, in most cases they were already converted to major aspects of Chinese culture such as to maintain traditional continuity.

Indeed, China until the 19^th Century had no “Foreign Ministry” to deal with other nations as nations, let alone as equals, but relied on the “tributary system” which assumed China itself was the “the superpower” or hegemon only granting communications and trade to the surrounding “barbarian” peoples after they acknowledged their subordinate status through the extraction of tribute. The assumption that China was the only “civilization” seemingly excluded the possible existence of any other civilization of equal worth, let alone the inconceivable notion of a civilization superior to China. This attitude, an ethnocentric or egocentric bias common to almost all early peoples, proved a very dangerous myopia causing a doubled humiliation in the 19^th Century when China was forced to deal with the objectively more powerful and advanced Western Powers and their emulator Japan with whom they had not striven to compete until too late. This Sinocentric view of the world was accompanied by alternating periods of expansion and aggressiveness and of withdrawal into a defensive isolationism. China also often used the policy of “using barbarians to control barbarians” or tactics of dividing and conquering or of playing off one adversary against another.

The First Emperor of China–Qin Shi Huang Di–The Alexander the Great of China—Conqueror of the Known World

Before unification under the first Emperor Qin Shi Huang Di the Warring States were a hotbed of intrigue and aggression bent often on extermination of rivals. Qin Shi Huang Di after defeating all his rivals for power to unite China continued an aggressive military expansion, invading and setting up commanderies in non-Han areas across what became South China—Fujian, Guangdong, Guizhou and Guangxi, and continuing to establish military control of what is now Vietnam and Korea. Indeed, the urge for universal conquest, universal empire and the desire for subjugation of any and all peoples reachable was as strong in Qin Shi Huang Di the first unifier of China as were the impulses and instincts of Alexander the Great who was turned back from India only by the threatened mutiny of his exhausted men, or that of Genghis Khan who with his heirs extended his empire from the Pacific to the borders of Germany and Egypt. The Han dynasty under Han Wu Di pursued an aggressive policy in Central Asia, Vietnam and Korea, sometimes defensively against the steppe confederations of the Xiongnu, and sometimes offensively, ranging westward to seek alliances. The resurgence of the re-unified empire under the Tang Dynasty again was marked by an aggressive and expansive policy in Central Asia, with conquests across Xinjiang and along the Silk Road until they were defeated by the ascendant power of the Islamic Arabs at the Battle of Talas. The early Ming Dynasty was systematically aggressive, planting forests decades in advance to supply the wood for building a “blue water navy” which would be commanded by Admiral Zheng He to extend hegemony across the Indian Ocean to the Middle-East and Africa before reversing their policy and turning isolationist later in the Dynasty, forbidding most external contacts and evacuating the seacoast completely. The Manchu Qing Dynasty grew through aggressive conquests in the areas now embodying Xinjiang and Mongolia, partially to meet the Russian threat, to increase the land area of China to its greatest size in history. Where important geopolitical needs were perceived to be at stake China historically has not shrunk from an aggressive foreign policy beyond the Great Wall. Nonetheless, it is illusory to conceive that the China of today and present realities is the same as the historical China of remote past eras.

China’s foreign policy under the early Communist regime was often centered on vigilance in maintaining national sovereignty, territorial integrity and independence, and attaining national re-unification with regard to Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan. This sovereignty centered foreign policy was a natural result of the previous century of foreign incursions, concessions and cessations of areas considered a part of China to the Western Powers and later Japan. The emphasis on national sovereignty was a corollary of China’s resistance to invasive foreign imperialism. To this was added the influence of Communist ideology, such as the incursion during the Korean War, which was motivated by its defensive territorial interest as McArthur’s armies threatened to cross beyond the Yalu to renew Western territorial aggression within China as well as sympathy for their fellow Communist regime in the north.

In most recent years China’s foreign policy has been measured and responsible with regard to the existing world order and relations with nation-states around it. To best serve its most immediate priority on which its continued national independence was considered to depend most, that of full development and modernization of the economy, China has embraced the existing system of trade relations embodied in the WTO and succeeded to such an extent that it has become the number one trading nation in the world with a large trade surplus, largely recycled back to the US in the form of purchase of US Government Bonds in amounts over one trillion dollars. In an almost comical series of ironies, China as a Communist country is one of the largest supporters of the capitalist “free trade” regime, and it is now the largest creditor of the leading capitalist nation, the United States. Enjoying immense competitive advantages China finds itself in its own economic interest a responsible stakeholder in the global capitalist trading system and increasingly in its supporting financial system. As a member of the United Nations, including veto-holding status on the Security Council China has again played the role of a reliable stakeholder and partner in the existing order. Thus one dominant version of the Chinese Global Dream consistent with the recent past is for China to ascend to occupying a seat at the high table of the existing order and preserve that order as a status quo power in protection of its own vested interests, as well as from an enlightened belief in the overall efficacy of that order for overall global governance.

There are those, however, who doubt the long-term truthfulness of this benign Chinese Global Dream of the Responsible Stakeholder. They maintain in the tradition of deciphering “Asian Inscrutability” that that proffered dream is a false mask intended to lull and deceive. They maintain that China pursues the Responsible Stakeholder role only to buy time while in the process of development from a condition of relative weakness. Once China attains comprehensive strength, technological advancement and full development, perhaps attaining the status of the world’s number one economy and modernizing her military and technological capacity, she will reveal her true and aggressive face and dream of grandeur from the security of a position of dominance. Often cited under this theory is the Chinese proverb of “Tao Guang, Yang Hui” or the stratagem of concealing one’s strength while enhancing one’s powers until an opportunity for surprise and dominance reveals itself. Then strike ruthlessly at the moment of the adversary’s weakness and inattention—a strategy ascribed to the Japanese in their “sneak attacks” on the Chinese in 1895, the Russians in 1905 and the Americans in 1941 and borrowed from the Chinese “Art of War.”

Thus, an alternative to the “Privileged Responsible Stakeholder” Chinese Global Dream is the “Return to Past Glory” Chinese Global Dream, in which China utilizes its newfound industrial and technological capacities along with its immense size and population to re-attain the position of imperial dominance vis-à-vis the rest of the world, perhaps even reverting to the hyper-aggressive mentality of the First Emperor, Qin Shi Huang Di who dreamed not of parity, balance of power or equilibrium with other states, but of universal conquest and unification of the known world under one universal empire. This of course is the nightmare, sometimes driven by shear paranoia or fear, of other states and their military and foreign policy elites.

Even when Chinese leaders repeat “no matter how strong China becomes, China will never seek hegemony,” some foreigners, particularly those who have no knowledge of China or Chinese history, remain suspicious. When, they fret, will a more powerful China become a more aggressive China? Perhaps some foreigners will never trust China or believe such trust is possible. In Europe plenty of people will never trust Germany, though it has played a responsible and even leading role in creating the “European Dream” of a united democratic Europe free from the threat of war. The case of Germany shows the possibility that a once aggressive power can become a reliable partner in peaceful common development. China can mitigate foreign concerns by re-emphasizing that aggression is not in its own interests nor those of the Chinese people who have much more to gain through utilization of their successful trading relationships with the world through the WTO and other frameworks than in threatening aggressive war, which would most likely defeat their own objectives or escalate to mutual Armageddon. It is our hope that both China and the world chooses the more benign form of the Chinese Global Dream, to the exclusion of the more sociopathic dream of a return to lost glories and hegemony, which is more likely to turn to nightmare for all concerned.

THE ANTITHETICAL CHINESE DREAM: THE GATES OF IVORY AND THE GATES OF HORN

Morpheus, The God of Dreams—Keeper of the Gates of Ivory & The Gates of Horn

Whom the Gods would destroy, they grant their wishes” is a tragic-comic paradoxical observation often attributed to Oscar Wilde, a corollary of which is undoubtedly: “Whom the Gods would destroy, they grant their dreams.” This is well to remind us that dreams are both powerful and dangerous things and that one should be very careful what one dreams of and what one wishes for. The unwise dream is the root of tragedy. The obscure object of desire is often more possessing than possessed. The bargain of Faust with Mephistopheles or the mythic “three wishes” tales remind us that the most beautiful of dreams often has a hook in it, one that may indeed lead to its and our own ultimate downfall.

The ancient Greeks and Romans took account of these paradoxes in their mythology. The chamber of the god of dreams, Morpheus, exhibited two antithetical doors, one of ivory and one of horn through which dreams entered into the mind of the dreamer. Those dreams which would come true as true prophecy entered through the Gate of Horn; those dreams which proved, like the Indian “Veil of Maya” to be composed of a false and illusory fabric entered through the Gate of Ivory:

Two gates the silent house of Sleep adorn;
Of polish’d ivory this, that of transparent horn:
True visions thro’ transparent horn arise;
Thro’ polish’d ivory pass deluding lies.

(Aeneid, Vergil)

The antithetical “Songs of Innocence” and the “Songs of Experience” of William Blake tell the same tale in other words. In the realm of national policy the “Old China Hand” Henry Kissinger famously lamented that “The Americans have no sense of tragedy” in their understanding of history, embracing more the “Songs of Innocence” than the “Songs of Experience.” It remains to be seen whether China’s new rulers will take in the sense of tragedy and of intrinsic contradiction in their “Chinese Dreaming,” though the intuitive presence of the dance of Yin and Yang in their culture gives good hope of some inherited wisdom.

One dimension of the “Antithetical Chinese Dream” is the tragedy of the Chinese environment. The great “Dream of Development” which would underpin a return to economic and geopolitical strength, seemingly for decades a “development at any cost” reminiscent of the “Great Leap Forward,” inflicted horrendous harm to the environment, with major rivers becoming sewers and lakes toxic dumping grounds and the face and breast of Mother Earth permanently scarred with the gougings of brick kilns, illegal coal mines and mindless deforestations. All this reminds us of the tragic truth that one dream may exclude, or kill another, along with itself.

The opportunity cost of dreams is emphasized also in the classic “guns versus butter” aphorism common to the American debate over its involvement in the Vietnam War in the 60’s. This is an intensification of the normal tradeoffs that all societies face—the contradictions and tensions amoung competing goods and policies. This allocation conflict not only forces a rational choice between and ordering of dreams but also emphasizes the sometimes antithetical and always limiting relationship of dreams to reality. Freud, the great author of “The Interpretation of Dreams” emphasized their roots in the chaotic and irrational cravings of the Id, and the tragic responsibility of the Ego and sometimes the Superego in managing the fateful relationship of the realm of dreams, driven by the “Pleasure Principle” and the “Reality Principle” of the conscious mind bound to the necessities of survival. Freud emphasized that civilized sanity requires not the suppression or abandonment of dreams, but their rational channeling in the interest of survival and civilized life. C.G. Jung added that it is our dreams, both individual and those born of the “Collective Unconscious” which truly make us human despite their potential for engendering mental disorder and mental illness.

For China in the near term, however, the primary tradeoff is not between military and social, but between economic development and its unintended byproducts, such as environmental degradation and income disparities and inequities. In the longer term, the “Law of Unintended Consequences” may impact the Chinese Dream in more complex ways, as in the “Dream of a Strong China” invoking the thermodynamic law “to every action there is an equal and opposite reaction” and find as is already happening, that her own quest for security through strength drives potential adversaries such as Japan, the United States, Vietnam, South Korea, Taiwan, India and the Philippines into closer oppositional “balance of power” alliance against her ambitions, forcing perhaps counter-alliances and escalation of arms-races which may cause the better-half of the Chinese Dream to begin to unravel beyond control. Thus the need for a rational “Dream Keeper” or “Shepherd of Dreams” to manage the sometimes errant and internecine herd of dreams and keep them from straying or injuring one another on the trail to the promised land of dreams fulfilled.

The Dance of the Antitheses—Yin & Yang

WHITHER THE AMERICAN DREAM IN THE 21^ST CENTURY?

The dialogue over the Chinese Dream healthily grows out of the tradition and cultural institution of “The American Dream,” a fixture of national consciousness since before the creation of the nation. (Indeed, some more cynically minded have attributed the recent fixation of the Chinese on the Chinese Dream to the “Keeping Up With the Joneses” mentality of the upwardly mobile suburbanite who lamentingly notices the new luxury car in the driveway next door and asks himself painfully: “Why don’t we have one of those?”). However in the Era of Globalization, particularly since the 2008 Global Financial Crisis it has become obvious that all is not well with the American Dream in the 21^st Century. Indeed, some have attributed to re-election victory of Barak Obama to the defensive mobilization of those newly threatened with exclusion from the American Dream, citing: “It’s the American Dream, stupid!”

THE AMERICAN DREAM

The American Dream

What is the “American Dream?” Roughly, we could say that the American Dream is a national ethos of the United States, a set of ideals in which freedom includes the opportunity for prosperity and success, and an upward social mobility achieved through hard work and creative enterprise. In the definition of the American Dream by James Truslow Adams in 1931, “life should be better and richer and fuller for everyone, with opportunity for each according to ability or achievement” regardless of social class or circumstances of birth.

The idea of the American Dream is rooted in the United States Declaration of Independence which proclaims that “all men are created equal” and that they are “endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights” including “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

The American Dream of Universal Opportunity

EVOLUTION OF THE AMERICAN DREAM

The meaning of the “American Dream” has varied and evolved over the course of history, and includes both personal components (such as home ownership and upward mobility) and a global vision. Historically the Dream originated in the mystique regarding frontier life. As the Royal Governor of Virginia noted in 1774, the Americans “for ever imagine the Lands further off are still better than those upon which they are already settled”. He added that, “if they attained Paradise, they would move on if they heard of a better place farther west.”

The ethos today implies an opportunity for Americans to achieve prosperity through hard work and creativity. According to The Dream, this includes the opportunity for one’s children to grow up and receive a good education and career without artificial barriers. It is the opportunity to make individual choices without the prior restrictions that limited people according to their class, caste, religion, race, or ethnicity, especially dissolving those restrictions which existed in the repressive lands from which the Americans had fled or emigrated. Immigrants to the United States sponsored ethnic newspapers in their own language; the editors typically promoted the American Dream.

The American Dream of Success and Plenty

The California Gold Rush of 1849 brought in hundreds of thousands of men looking for their fortune overnight—and a few did find it. Thus was born corollary of the American Dream, the California Dream of instant success. Historian H. W. Brands noted that in the years after the Gold Rush, the California Dream spread across the nation and became merged with the Stock Market “Casino Capitalism” of bets on railway and industrial investments:

“The old American Dream … was the dream of the Puritans, of Benjamin Franklin’s “Poor Richard”… of men and women content to accumulate their modest fortunes a little at a time, year by year by year. The new dream was the dream of instant wealth, won in a twinkling by audacity and good luck. [This] golden dream … became a prominent part of the American psyche only after Sutter’s Mill.”

Historian James Truslow Adams, writing at one of the great crisis periods of the American Dream, the onset of the Great Depression following the Stock Market Crash of 1929, popularized the phrase “American Dream” in his 1931 book Epic of America:

“But there has been also the American dream, that dream of a land in which life should be better and richer and fuller for every man, with opportunity for each according to his ability or achievement. It is a difficult dream for the European upper classes to interpret adequately, and too many of us ourselves have grown weary and mistrustful of it. It is not a dream of motor cars and high wages merely, but a dream of social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, and be recognized by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position.”

In the 20^th Century the American Dream generated an “export version” characterized by historian Daniel Boorstin a “democracy of things” would disprove both Malthus’ predictions of a looming doom from population outrunning resources to produce scarcity and Marx’s vision of endemic class conflict. It was “a vision of global social progress.” This overseas version of the American Dream, sometimes called “Liberal-Developmentalism” or the Neo-Liberalism of the “Washington Consensus” included five critical components:

(1) belief that other nations could and should replicate America’s own developmental experience; (2) faith in private free enterprise; (3) support for free or open access for trade and investment; (4) promotion of free flow of information and culture; and (5) growing acceptance of US governmental activity to protect private enterprise and to stimulate and regulate American participation in international economic and cultural exchange.

In the 21^st Century Era of Globalization, however, especially in the wake of the “World Economic Crisis” which began in 2008 and still continues unresolved many have been forced to face and call into question the contradictions and shortcomings of the “American Dream” as it has been seen to fail and exclude greater and greater swathes of the American people, particularly the downwardly mobile middle-classes, the working class and the long-term unemployed. Though the classical model of the American Dream, even its “get rich quick” sub-species the California Dream seemed to be alive and well in some regions of the country such as “Silicon Valley” and its offshoots such as the IPO circuit, for the broader middle and working classes the quest for the American Dream seemed to be rather a voyage on the Titanic. For the first time in American history the newer generation seemed to be facing living standards, long-term opportunities and a quality of life lower, or at best on a par with that of their parents.

Death of the American Dream?

DEATH OF THE AMERICAN DREAM?

Where had the American Dream gone wrong? Fundamentally, the American Dream is failing in the Era of Globalization because this globalization has proven to be highly unbalanced—-a globalization of the deployment and benefits of capital while the counterbalancing forces on the side of the middle-classes and workers such as labor unions, collective bargaining and the regulatory protection of the state in providing a Social Safety Net for the transformation of the economy have dismally failed to globalize. The net result is a massive failure of the middle and working classes to join in the benefits of globalization and a resulting gutting out of the social equity of the economy along with the enabling economic foundations of the American Dream. As this theme has been treated a greater length in the Pushcart Prize-nominated novel Spiritus Mundi by Robert Sheppard I will quote at length from the analysis contained therein regarding the underlying causes of the World Economic Crisis from 2008, its evisceration of the American Dream and the possible solutions, which may constitute the iteration of a dream of renewal of the American Dream itself:

“Specifically, the message I am here to deliver is that just as in 1929 we have suffered a massive failure of the Circulatory System of the Global Economy, a massive stroke and heart attack whereby the circulation of purchasing power to the middle and working classes has been blocked because of a chronic inordinate and dangerous maldistribution of income and over-concentration of ownership and wealth in the capital owning classes that prevents the consuming classes—the middle, lower-middle and working classes—from being able to sustainably continue their consumer participation in the economy and thus participate in the American Dream. The critical difference this time however is that in 1929 the Circulatory Failure of aggregate demand was within national economies, whereas in the much more globalized world of today the Circulatory Failure is within the circulatory system of an internationalized and globalized economy that functions across the world as a whole and not within any one nation. Even the well intentioned efforts at expanding the money supply—Quantitative Expansion or QE Initiatives are unlikely to have the effect intended in a globalized economy since the aggregate demand stimulated will flow in purchasing power to the low-wage developing economies like China rather than to US or EU-based production and employment, and our cross-border capital markets will channel the newly created money-supply again to the low-wage/high-profit developing economies rather than to investment in the US, EU and the developing world. Meanwhile sovereign debt crises in the EU and Federal and State budget crises in the US states will keep eroding aggregate demand. The key to restoring circulation of aggregate demand and sustainable effective purchasing power to the middle and lower classes despite the real estate bubble is to have Global Collective Bargaining, along with parallel means to raise worker and middle class incomes, including bolstering the Global Social Safety Net rather than de-funding it in the face of deficits. Most needed are Global Unions and globalized labour organizing, collective bargaining and industrial action capable of confronting and negotiating with Multi-national corporations on a unified collective global front across all their global subsidiaries, including the “Big Stick” of last resort of effective global strikes against all global units and subsidiaries of any multinational enterprise that remains unresponsive, to redress the outrageous loss of net income to the working and middle classes and redress the loss of the effective balance of power of employees against multinational employers of the last fifty years. In the first New Deal a national solution to this collapse of the economic circulatory system was found in the construction of national labour unions and collective bargaining coupled with the social welfare safety net of the nation-state—the NLRB and labor laws, Social Security, Unemployment insurance, Workers Compensation and so forth. The trouble after 2008 is that the nation-state is no longer capable of providing the same solution because the economy is no longer national but global. National labour unions have no bargaining power in a globalized economy and a generous social safety net of the nation-state has proven unsustainable in competition with cheap-labour in developing countries often without such benefits and safety nets, allowing multinationals to export jobs and eliminate the social safety net in the nations they have turned their backs on. Because there is no system of effective global governance, and certainly no global state to balance the abuses of global capital there is, of course, no “Global Social Safety Net” to replace the failing national social safety nets. To remedy all of this we need a newer “Global New Deal” to restore the viable circulation of purchasing power between the social classes and enable the evolution of a global social safety net, or the whole system will break down, as it just did in the World Financial Crisis exploding out of the Sub-Prime Crisis. This is similar to the idea of the ‘Social Contract’ in the European Union which also needs to be part of a Globalized New Deal. With regard to the dislocations in the industrialized economies which are the natural and unavoidable result of the process of Globalization, we need a “No Worker Left Behind Policy,” analogous to the phrase utilized in education. We are making an Exodus from the old industrial economy and moving towards a Post-Industrial economy, a “Trek” as you South Africans would put it———the migration of a whole people. We must make sure that no worker or person is left behind in that transformation, just as we resolved that in education there shall be “No Child Left Behind,” or left to the wolves. That means we need just as much of a Globalization Safety Net as we needed the Social Security Safety Net that was part of the New Deal during the previous crisis of the 30’s. No person should ever be “unemployed.” Any jobless person should be in a mandatory re-training and re-education program funded by the government with a minimum subsistence stipend for participation at all times as a condition or aid, and the nation should thus be incessantly re-investing in its “Human Capital” at all times. If we can’t find an analogous solution at the global level for what the US New Deal and the European counterparts did following the 1929 crisis at the primarily nation-state level the whole global economy will implode—and explode!—-just remember the result of the melt-down after 1929 was not simply the Great Depression but also the rise of Hitler and a World War between the Fascist, Communist and bourgeois nations. The race is on to find a Global New Deal before all of that blows up. Without it people are sure to go into the streets with a powerful ‘Occupy Wall Street’ or ‘Fight Back’ populist countermeasures, good in themselves, but which may become either ineffective, mindlessly destructive or the occasion of unjust brutal repression if they are not channeled into realistic constructive change. Indeed, the ‘Occupy Wall Street’ Movement needs to extend its scope of action up Manhattan Island at least as far as the United Nations to demonstrate in the streets for Robert’s United Nations Parliamentary Assembly as a first step to getting a global handle on the abuses and failures of global financial governance. Unless they realize that the Global Financial Crisis and the abuses of Wall Street are rooted in globalization and can only be cured through global governance they are sure to remain impotent and ineffective. The failure in global economic circulation is also reflected in the imbalance of the manufacturing economy and the service economy and in the imbalance of the financial economy and the real economy. The sale of goods is highly globalized, but the manufacturing sector is shrinking rapidly in the “post-industrial” developed west. The advanced economies on the other hand are expanding in the much less globalized service sector, but services are much less portable and exportable. Hence the need for a Global New Deal which opens the service sectors globally to balance the loss of jobs in the advanced countries, and the growth of unions in both manufacturing and service sectors globally to bring wages up. Without this the result will be the gutting out of the middle classes by the labor-rate arbitrage of globalization. Ultimately the deficits are unsustainable, and without a Global New Deal advanced nations will either turn back to protectionism or demand-failure depression. And in the absence of the Global New Deal the only “service sector” America is consistently succeeding in exporting is War! Contrary to the empty dream of the unrepentant Neo-Liberals or Tea Party fantasists, going back to the pre-crisis status quo ante is not an option—just as going back to the pre-1929 status quo ante was not an alternative at the nation-state level as Roosevelt proved against the Coolidge-Hoover right who disastrously attempted it in the first stage of national recovery. And I repeat at the top of my lungs—-This is not because it is morally or idealistically right, which may have its appeal to a sensitive minority, but is the result of the hard-headed conclusion that the alternative simply will not work!—which is ultimately the stronger argument for the majority and for the recalcitrant vested interests who have to be dragged in the right direction by the heels.

“That all sounds very good and humane Garry, but won’t all those New Dealesque measures cost a lot of money? What with this “Quantitative Loosening” of the money supply to finance these things by a monetary hat trick aren’t we in danger of undermining the value of the currency by inflation and devaluation?” asked Christina.

Money: The Supreme Fiction of Our Times

“Money is the Supreme Fiction of our times. Sometimes obsession with it makes us forget that Life and Death are the Supreme Realities. Some of the monetary Neanderthals want to go back to the gold standard to keep our money real and to head off so-called populist tampering with its value. But really we should just accept that money is just an invented tool that should be used in the service of life and not an absolute in itself. We can’t go back to the age of treating the Chairman of the Federal Reserve as a plutocrat’s tin God, and Oz-like defending the Pluto-cryptocratic Elite by shouting to the people “disregard that man behind the curtain!” Yes, money is a fiction, but we must still choose and use our fictions carefully, flexibly and pragmatically in the service of life. To insist on balanced budgets and hard money in a time of systemic crisis is to bow to the narrow vested interests of the wealth holders of the present rather than the wealth creators of the future. That’s a Hooveresque recipe that will only prolong this depression or crisis or whatever you want to call it. Fetishizing a balanced budget and a strong dollar, yen or euro will only cultivate a monetary and fiscal “Upas Tree of Java” which will poison and devastate all life around it. Sure we need to keep from going overboard with hyperinflation in managing this fiction of money and use some self-restraint to adjust its healthy relationship to reality and life, but let’s not forget the fundamental principle that money is an invented tool in the service of humanity and life and not an idol or fetishized Golden Calf that we should set up for false worship. Money is simply a flexible tool and catalyst enabling social economic interaction and measured exchanges of the fruits of human productivity. William Jennings Bryan, though no perfect man, is well remembered for his ringing phrase: “Thou shalt not crucify my people upon a cross of gold!” When the market economy of its own contradictions, vulnerability and intrinsic instability goes off the track and is derailed in systemic crisis passive wealth holders have to, as they say, “take a haircut” for the good of the whole economy and its future health and we can’t let the dead hand of propertied wealth and their obsession with fetishizing money strangle the recovery and the full re-mobilization of human productivity. We have to focus on the big picture and the long-term enlightened interest of the whole community and the community of nations of the world.”

Let me give you a little background to explain what I mean, if I can tax your patience for a few minutes………….It is no accident that the Taft-Hartley Act in the United States that set up the basic framework for national industry-wide collective bargaining occurred as a response to the last general economic crisis of this magnitude—the Crash of 1929 and the Great Depression that followed. That showed that the free market by itself, contrary to false-idealizing Free Market ideologues then and now, would not respond to any quasi-divine “Invisible Hand” and achieve a magical balance of interests in the distribution of income and benefits from industrial enterprise. That “invisible hand” was “invisible’ for the very good reason that it was not there and in large part did not exist!——Or the working and middle classes discovered that the only occupation of such an invisible hand was in invisibly picking their pockets for the benefit of the capital controlling classes. The New Deal in America and socialist reforms across Europe and the world recognized that the power of overly-concentrated industrial and financial capital would not only result in abuse of power but in positive self-destruction unless constrained by the balancing power of both a regulating strengthened democratic state and, equally importantly, through the balancing power of legally protected and flourishing labour unions which would ultimately utilize their enhanced bargaining power within that marketplace to win a fairer distribution of the benefits of productive enterprise vis-à-vis exploitative ownership and capital, and a strengthened social safety net, both within and emanating from the enterprise, and as part of the state.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt—Father of the New Deal—Extended the American Dream to the Middle and Working Classes

Thus it was only with the New Deal in the US that unions won national legal protection and sponsorship and were able to organize nationally and collectively organize and confront the new national-scale industrial enterprises like General Motors, US Steel and Ford, threatening them with effective strikes and shutdowns if they failed to reach equitable settlements. The result of all this is what we now call the “Social Contract” and the foundation for the participation of the middle and working classes in the American Dream. Corporations made good profits, yes, but were also forced to provide their workers through collective bargaining union contracts with health insurance, pensions, unemployment benefits and severance pay, and they were forced to pay taxes, including new progressive income taxes, inheritance taxes, and corporate taxes to support Social Security, welfare, Medicare and Medicaid, Food Stamps, universal primary and higher education and other public benefits of the social safety net underpinning and making possible the sustainable free marketplace. Thus the New Deal and analogous socialist reforms in Europe in the last crisis resulted in a workable tri-partite balance of power and benefits between capital, labour and the state.

Where did all this break down? It ended with the progressive Globalization of the world economy after the Sixties. What we call “union density” or the prevalence of unions in the labour marketplace plummeted from that time. In the Fifties around 30% of American workers were unionized, including strong national unions with strong bargaining power in key industry sectors such as steel, automobiles, transportation, and other industries where a strike could bring things to a general halt. Now after fifty years of globalization only 12% of American workers are unionized, and only 8% in the private sector. The bankruptcy of General Motors and other firms in the new World Financial Crisis saw the final dismantling of the union pension plans and health plans and a rolling back of wages—-in short a complete gutting out of everything that was won by the ordinary worker since 1929. But likewise 2008 also proved incontrovertibly that if aggregate workers’ wage benefits are cut back over and over, shrinking as a percentage of GDP, and thereby their ability to service their inflating mortgage loans and maintain their consumption disintegrates into default, then the whole financial system will come tumbling down Humpty-Dumpty after them.

Why? Well we’d need an encyclopedia to include all the contributing causes but we’d find the asymmetrical and unbalanced Globalization of the economy is at the root of most of them. Ownership and capital moved with freedom across national boundaries in a globalizing world and new industrial capacity was relocated readily to developing countries where wage and benefit rates were miniscule. On the other hand, what happened to labour unions? Labour unions did not go international with their companies. General Motors workers in Shanghai should by law or practice be part of the same union and collective bargaining as those in Detroit, and if the company fails to deliver higher benefits in all its subsidiaries a global strike should effectively shut down the enterprise worldwide until it changes its mind. Rather than eliminating health and pension benefits of UAW workers in America in bankruptcy proceedings, the real solution is to make those same benefits mandatory for the GM workers in Shanghai and Brazil, or at least relative to their proportionate compensation. And any company like Wal-Mart that engages in union busting should be broken up and banned from international trade or the international sourcing of supplies and operations by the collective action of national governments secured by international treaties and labour organizations to that effect—and likewise the same fate should be given to phony communist unions and company unions that are in bed with or in the pocket of the state and employers and don’t have the freedom or incentive to organize and fight for their members rights and interests.

IPad—An All-American Idea Made in China by Chinese Workers

A case in point, illustrating the tragedy of the creative genius of globalized American capitalism is the saga of Apple Computer’s iPod, iPhone, iPad. Here we can be rightly proud of the creativity and innovation of Steve Jobs and Apple, creating products, like Edison’s light bulb, movie camera and phonograph, which have literally changed and re-shaped the world. Yet what is the result for the American worker? Almost no iPhones and iPads are manufactured in the United States, and the power of unions to bargain fairly with the colossus of capital is virtually non-existent in this sector at home and abroad. Instead, almost all iPads and iPhones, phenomenally dominating their markets, are made by subcontractors like Foxconn in China, which employs over one million workers in such dismal conditions that a national scandal has erupted in China over the mass suicides of Foxconn workers subjected to inhuman conditions on endless assembly lines that would make Charlie Chaplin in Modern Times look humane and utopian in comparison. Apple Computer was found recently to have more cash-on-hand than the Federal government! Yet most of that cash is idle and not even being reinvested in Apple so as to create new jobs in its own company or anywhere. Where are the global unions that would represent Apple workers and Foxconn workers alike globally in a common union with common collective negotiations backed up by the power of global strikes backed by consumer support such as to force global improvement in their dismal wages and working conditions such that they get a fair share of the pie and that the global social safety net is sustainably maintained? When are Foxconn and Apple workers going to stop committing suicide and begin going on global strikes for the better wages and working conditions they deserve, with supporting boycotts of Apple customers if they don’t comply? What an affront to human dignity in the Kafkaesque failure of Asian companies like Foxconn in introducing the further dehumanizing control of their workers through the newly popular “Electronic Fingerprint Recognition” devices as a means to fine and punish workers even one-minute late to the assembly line, which in some cases had to be abandoned for the ironic reason that too many of the assembly-line workers had had their fingerprints “erased” as if by sandpaper by the constant friction of their fingertips on the electronic parts and products they assembled! Here we see the market in capital and products being effectively globalized, but the necessary counterbalance of global union organization and redress of a vacuum of collective bargaining power being strangled in its cradle. The resulting severe imbalances from such unbalanced and one-sided globalization is now recognized as completely unsustainable, and threatens not just the well being of the workers and middle-classes themselves, but the viability through them of the entire financial system and economic system.

The main problem is that the “Social Contract” that gave us a workable balance of industrial power from 1929 to say 1970 and sustained the American Dream for the middle and working classes has been broken by a globalization that only worked for one party of the three-legged balance—capital, and not for the other two legs—-labour and the democratic regulatory state, which have been rendered globally ineffective and impotent in relative and absolute terms.

But just as the Climate Change and Global Warming Crises have demonstrated that there are feedback mechanisms which cannot be escaped however much anyone tries to ignore them, so also with the toxic economic feedback mechanisms causing the World Financial Crisis. How did the Crisis occur? In part from the inability of the average American or European to carry the weight of mortgage debt required to maintain their standard of living. Why？At root because the real wages and purchasing power of the average American and most European workers and working middle classes have not risen or even actually declined for thirty years, in real terms and as a proportion of GDP, under the influence of unbalanced globalization while the cost of living, particularly the cost of housing, rose constantly. With the failure of the bargaining power of labour the only means for maintaining that standard of living was through the appreciation in value of the one principal asset of the common worker, the house he or she owned, or perhaps a small portfolio of equities in their retirement plans. Working and Middle-class homeowners were forced to use their houses as ATM’s to finance their consumption out of the capital gains and equity accruing from the inflation of their house’s appreciating market value. Demagogues denounced this as irresponsibility and the result of irrational credit and credit card binges. It may have been a little of that, some irresponsible overspending certainly, but in large part it simply reflected the failure of the capital owning classes to fairly distribute the productivity gains of a globalized economy to the working and middle classes that had built that economy and made it possible. Their proportionately shrinking aggregate incomes could not keep up with the stretch and strain required. The ignored cause of the Financial Crisis, beyond the excesses of the sub-prime mortgage lenders and the intricacies of credit default swaps, was the failure of wages and employment benefits to rise to keep up with necessary expenditures of the ordinary household, including most saliently their housing costs. In effect globalized industrial capital learned, or should have learned from the World Financial Crisis that strangling labour and denying it any participation in the economic benefits of globalization was in effect preventing the circulation of the necessary consumer power necessary to sustainably purchase their own industrial products and services and sustain the companies themselves. Their greed was cutting off their own noses to spite their faces. In the end the financial crisis was caused by the inordinate build-up of debt, particularly mortgage debt on the consumer side and over-leveraged corporate debt on the supply-side—–but the key factor on the consumer side is that the slide into consumer debt has not been caused by overspending but by imposed and exploitative underearning rendering existing consumption and rising debt service unsustainable, all in turn largely caused by imbalanced globalization and the unfair and unsustainable loss of bargaining power of labor; plus the cancerous growth of the hypersophisticated unproductive financial sector draining more and more from the real economy. The same loss of labour’s earning power is ironically just as true in “Communist” China and other developing countries where the percentage of GDP received as personal income and benefits has shrunk even during the economic miracle of a dramatic rise of GDP. The Chinese worker is even more exploited than the American even though he may put the American out of his job as he creates more Chinese billionaires. Demagogues on both sides then foment the one side against the other—the Americans shrieking at the Chinese worker to spend more and save less, and the Chinese ranting at the American to spend less and save more, while the true villain in the piece is their common employers and their collusive states and political establishments that have reduced the percentage of GDP going to workers on both sides of the Pacific to an intolerable and unsustainable level. And similarly the so-called “National Debt Crisis” is another false construction—–not caused by “overspending” as in the mindless rant of the Tea Party, but the majority of the deficit caused by the Reagan-Bush tax cuts to the upper income and wealth-holding elite, inheritance tax gutting, and wastage on the Iraq and other wars in the service not of the American people but of the narrow oil, military-industrial complex, and Israeli interests, and from the ageing of the nation through demographic change.

And, an additional side effect of the imbalanced globalization leading to this shrinkage of personal income from wages is the smashing of the family, where now both husband and wife must work at reduced wage levels to keep the family afloat economically, destroying their ability to devote themselves or their resources to the family itself, causing increased divorce, delinquency, maleducation and social problems—-a fortiori for the hyper-exploited migrant labor class in China—–and making the hypocritical protestations of the capital owning classes to champion “family values” and “Confucian values” an empty farce…………………”

“You may well be right on the matter of China” interjected Sartorius, “I lived many years there and watched the growth of their capital and labour markets. Their competitive advantage derived from low wages, high foreign investment and protection of state capital, multinational and private big capital making them into a manufacturing economic powerhouse, accounting for up to half of the US merchandise trade deficit. But the working class and most of the middle-class in China is effectively locked out of the benefits of this prosperity. The government outlaws free labour unions—incredibly in a Communist country!—and the Party controlled unions do nothing for the workers but are in service to the party and state, rented out to the highest bidder. There is no effective independent labour organization, collective bargaining and use of the strike to increase wages and benefits. The result? China systematically exploits its working population in both the labour markets and the capital markets. Banned free unions keep wages low, but interest paid by banks is strictly controlled so that working people derive little profit from savings, ironically forcing them to save even more and exacerbate the trade deficit with the industrialized countries. Nowadays real interest rates are negative—subsidizing the state and state-owned and big capital sectors which receive artificially cheap loans while workers lose money on their savings—-you get 2.3% interest on your saving accounts fixed by law, but inflation is 2.8% and rising towards 6% levels. Result? You lose money by putting it in the bank and the only effective alternative investment is speculation in the real estate, commodities or immature stock markets, which creates bubbles for future disasters. Yet to your chagrin you have to save even more to make up for the fact that your savings are falling in value relative to what you need to purchase in the future—housing inflated by the collusion of corrupt local government and Communist Party leaders and property developers bleeding working people white in the real estate markets, education for your children and your retirement without an effective social security system.

The further result is that wage compensation in real terms as a percentage of GDP has steadily decreased during the boom of the last twenty years, though rising in absolute terms. Bearing the brunt of the exploitation are the hundreds of millions of migrant workers unable to unionize and used, abused and shipped back to their countryside villages. Marx advocated a classless society but China exploits a new lower class—the hukouless migrant New-Proletariat. On the supply and capital side the over-profitability of capital leads to gross overinvestment in surplus capacity, causing further export surpluses and wastage of social resources. The simple fact is that in terms of a circulatory system the money is not circulating through China back into the outside world in any sustainable way—hence the two and three trillion dollar foreign exchange buildup——and significantly it is not even circulating back to the Chinese working and middle classes effectively. Because wages are artificially low Chinese workers and consumers do not buy American and European goods (or notably services) in sufficient quantity. Profits build up for the entrepreneurial and capital-owning classes, but strict government control of the capital account prevents even them from recirculating their excess profits even in the form of individual overseas portfolio investment or personal investment of the wealthy or middle-classes in stock and securities markets of the USA, Europe or elsewhere because they are prohibited from personally directly buying foreign stocks and bonds for investment or retirement accounts. The surplus capital derived from China’s formidable export surpluses since she joined the WTO thus can’t recirculate back to the West and elsewhere in either the trade account through Chinese consumption or in the capital account through Chinese individual investment abroad. The result? The excess liquidity builds up in two places: in the excess foreign currency reserves of the Chinese treasury, and in the general economy it builds up in unsustainable bubbles in the real-estate and fixed investment sector and in the immature stock market and commodity runs and crashes unrelated to the underlying productivity of the listed companies but only a function of excess liquidity seeking somewhere to go, cut off from much more profitable and sustainable foreign investments. The excess liquidity only recirculates back into US Treasury securities, unhealthily and unstably funding the US fiscal deficit. The funds should be recirculating in the trade and capital accounts through Chinese consumer import purchases and Chinese wealth-holders personal investments abroad but these channels are cut off by nationalist and mercantilist Chinese controls.

The final result? As economists like Paul Krugman and others have aptly pointed out, you then have massive circulatory failure in the global economy, a stroke, with a liquidity embolism building up in China which is going to burst sooner or later if there is no change and quite possibly provoke another crash or deeper systemic crisis along these unstable fault lines.” Sartorius agreed.

World Economic Crisis—2008 to ????

LESSONS OF THE WORLD ECONOMIC CRISIS FOR THE AMERICAN DREAM

“Exactly! That’s exactly the point I have been trying to make!” jumped back Garry, “What then are the lessons we take away from the World Financial Crisis?

The first lesson is that markets are not self-correcting and in fact in the adverse conditions of a financial panic are apt to melt-down under systemic risks, system failure and malfunctions. Therefore the Neo-Liberal illusory dream of the invisible hand of the market serving as the invisible hand of God’s justice is demagoguery. Governments must remain strong and vigilant in their regulation and balancing of power vis-a-vis industrial and financial interests and in the public interest, both national and international.

Second, we must accept that the market system will periodically run amok and collapse and that therefore the state and the international collectivity of states and international organizations must use their powers to mainCtain an adequate Safety Net for times of recession, trade imbalance, depression and systemic breakdown. By safety nets, I mean not only sustainable aid for the hard-stricken workers but also the systemic safety nets capable of stopping meltdowns and preventing irrational bankruptcies in the corrupted financial sector or other sectors in systemic crisis, and for which the bailout costs are imposed on the capital owning classes in times of recovery through either full re-compensation of the public or public assumption of full or partial equity-ownership.

Third, we must come to grips with the gutting out of the New Deal safety net previously based on a long-term benefit-sharing relationship between labor and capital which no longer exists or functions. It is clear that to the modern multinationals, apart from their highly paid managerial and technocratic elite core, workers are disposable in its struggle to survive in intensified global competition and that therefore they are unwilling to maintain the pension plans, job security, health plans and other social safety net expenses within the enterprise that formerly prevailed from the era of collective bargaining. General Motors’ gutting out of labor benefits is the exemplary case of erasing all that has been won for fifty years.

Given this reality the safety net must be either taken up by an enlarged state in concert with new international “Social Contract Treaties” which impose the same burdens on all enterprises globally, or concerted legislation must force the enterprises to do so without the escape route of offshoring to jurisdictions without such safety net burdens. It is both unacceptable and unsustainable for enterprises and financial intermediaries to privatize profits while socializing costs and risks at the expense of taxpayers and working people. We cannot be deterred by the right-wing red-herring of “socialism”—-the benefits the New Deal secured for industrial workers must be secured from gutting out by unbalanced globalization and guaranteed to all workers and if the enterprise cannot accomplish this, then, just as in the case of the New Deal, there must be an acceptance of an increased responsibility of the state for being forced to take over the Safety Net resulting from the default of the capital-owning classes at the enterprise level from this obligation, and there must be a general acceptance of an increased responsibility of the capital owning classes to pay taxes for this burden which they are shunting off onto the state by disburdening their enterprises of equitable wages and fringe benefits and by international tax-flight.

Fourth, the bailout of the hypocritically “too big to fail” investment banks and the financial sector has egregiously transferred immense wealth from and imposed incalculable future burdens and liabilities upon the ordinary worker and taxpayer to the benefit of the financial sector. Never have so many given so much to so few, and so unjustly! The financial enterprises must be therefore be held to a standard of public trust—they can no longer operate as mere private enterprises for private gain, regardless of whether and when they pay back the short-term bail out loans—having underwritten their survival the taxpayers, workers and citizens have become irrevocable stakeholders in those enterprises and capital and management will ignore their interests at their own peril, including reasonable intervention by the state in their outrageous conduct to prevent predatory externalized risk creation if necessary to the public interest.

Fifth, government regulation must end the abusive “externalities” of the present abusive system by which private profit and irrational risk taking by the financial elite imposes systemic risk on other institutions, the state and the taxpaying public at no cost to the perpetrators. In particular this means a firm regulation and control of such egregious instruments as credit default swaps and a firm re-imposition of their externalities and costs upon the capital owning classes which exploit them. Just as firms must be made to pay for the externality of the pollution they cause, so they must be made to pay for the externalized systemic risks their abusive risk creation imposes on others. We have come full circle in 2008 back to 1929, and we now know that Keynesian economics still works and is vital for regulation and calibrating the market system and the corporate, financial and moneyed elite sectors must be harnessed to bear their share of the necessary burden, with “risk-adjusted” increases in the tax and penalty on speculative income, capital gains, inheritance and wealth taxes as needed to restore the circulation of spending power to the working and middle-classes on a globalized basis. We have to overturn the myopic and class-biased Reagan revolution of Offensive Tax-Cuts and strict monetary policy only focused on preventing inflation and imposition of artificial deficits on the public sector via the bogus tactic of lowering taxes for the upper classes thus creating a False Deficit.

Sixth, we cannot trust the marketplace to discount risk by itself, and we need strict regulation of the derivatives market, including the infamous “credit default swaps.”—we can no longer accept that financial innovations are a good in and of themselves ignoring the horrific systemic externalities they impose on others and the general public for private gain. Credit-Default Swaps are essentially a predatory Class Instrument—–those within the golden circle of capital ownership mutually guarantee themselves against loss, even beyond their financial capacity, creating a Guaranteed Class. Those outside the golden circle—workers, government, consumers and the taxpayer—they are relegated to the Unguaranteed Class that will be forced to transfer present and future wealth to the Guaranteed Class—The “Too Big to Fail” Class to bail them out of their unsustainable conspiracy against the public. We need stronger regulation of such instruments, accounting standards and a rooting out of institutionalized financial fraud to stabilize markets globally…………………..

President Barak Obama—The American Dream of Open Opportunity

………………….The amount of individual freedom a people, or all the peoples of the world may keep depends on its collective political maturity. The maturity of the masses of the people depends on their ability to recognize their own interests. In history a pendulum swings back and forth between relative liberation and repression. The swing towards the loss of freedom begins with the panic and delusion of a headless people driven to stampede by a demagogic and predatory reactionary elite and the tools and mignons which serve them.

Every quantum leap of technological and economic progress leaves the intellectual development of the people or the masses of peoples a step behind. It takes a considerable time for their values and understandings to adjust and adapt to the novel circumstances. The demagogic manipulators of the right are far quicker in identifying and defending the narrow self-interests of their own and those they serve. In the present era the universal phenomenon of Globalization as accelerated at breakneck speed has left the consciousness of the “People of Peoples” of the world, not to speak of the outmoded institutions of the nation-state, far behind, causing their political maturity to regress in the unfamiliar new global landscape.

A mistake of the idealists of democratic and socialist consciousness has been to assume that mass-consciousness by benign historical laws could only rise and rise constantly and never regress. Many pessimists and cynics would cite Pareto’s Iron Law of Oligarchy, whereby every economic and political system is subject to perversion and corruption by a small minority who seek to forcibly monopolize the control of resources and power—an Iron Law of Predatory Leverage, whereby under any and all social and economic systems a tiny oligarchic elite ineradicably seeks to secure and monopolize illegitimate advantages to the harm and detriment of the majority and institutionalize them as rentier class privileges—the guaranteed profits of the Guaranteed Class—the Financial Rent Seeking/Rent Keeping Class. They would have us believe that the predatory stateless financial elite, the “hot money,” and its economic oppression and its stranglehold on the newly globalized economic system is unopposable and unreformable. They would label futile our attempts to build a system of global governance to balance the abusive excesses of that stateless kleptocratic financial elite, constituting itself into a new rentier class of unproductive stateless usurious exploiters—our investment banks and their ilk and hangers on, hitherto unrestrainable by any state, combinations of states, or supra-national institutions of governance. They would label as hopeless the gullible mass movements such as the Tea Party, who as the unthinking and unteachably manipulated dupes of the financially controlled media buy into the mindless rant of neo-liberal ideology and end up both destroying their own interests and serving the interests of predatory capital rather than the people or any fair and sustainable system of global governance——a peculiarly though not exclusively American mental disease. Hence our latest conundrum before the latest swing of the pendulum following the World Financial Crisis………

Not All is Lost Yet!

Is our situation hopeless then? By no means!—-I am still moved by the native optimism of being an American and a child of the Enlightenment—–As our former HEW Secretary John W. Gardner was wont to say: “We are continually faced with a series of great opportunities brilliantly disguised as insoluble problems!”—I believe there are the makings of a quantum leap forward in our present morass……….

HOW CAN THE AMERICAN DREAM BE SAVED?

………………What then is the way out—How can the American Dream be saved? Am I or the labour movement against globalization per se? Absolutely not. We are internationalists and in particular labour internationalists in a long tradition. We could never turn back the clock of history even if we weren’t. Is a communist revolution and command economy the answer? The history of China and Eastern Europe also show the pitfalls of that path in terms of both economic stagnation and inefficiency and loss of individual and entrepreneurial liberty, to the extent that even the Chinese Communists have largely abandoned it. They endorse a “Socialist-market Economy,” or a mixed economy in which a vibrant and innovative marketplace plays a vital role alongside and including a state sector which provides a social safety net and regulatory framework. We need that at a minimum, though striking the proper balance may well come down differently, preserving many more of the strengths of the free market system while reining in and eliminating its weaknesses and abuses. Despite the opium dreams of the Tea Party there is no way to unglobalize the world economy and go back to a faux-ideal of self-sufficiency, hard work and an imagined ‘invisible hand’ of a fictitiously idealized marketplace, unless we take the path of hermit countries like North Korea and accept their levels of poverty—and we would probably then later need to confront a world war with whoever did dominate the global economy in our stead. What we need is more globalization not less globalization—-that is globalization of the labour movement and collective bargaining as well as globalization of the New Deal institutions of the regulatory state and social safety net to balance the runaway abuses of globalized and globally irresponsible capital. We don’t need an EU bailout of Greece—–we need an EU assumption of the Europe-wide costs of the international social safety net based on an expanded and balanced international tax-base including taxes on international financial transactions.

And we need a rebalancing of the maldistribution of the fruits of the increases of productivity of the new globalized economy, conferring higher wages and benefits and sustainably restoring purchasing power to the working and middle classes across the globe to prevent purchasing power circulatory meltdown. To correct the imbalances of the overgrowth of the financial sector vis-à-vis the real economy, much but not all of it vicious, irresponsible and predatory, we need strong and international financial regulation and a firm shifting of tax burdens onto unearned financial profits, unearned gains from financial speculation and short-term speculative securities trading. To counter this Neo-Disraeli-like growth of two-nations, Rich and Poor, we need a firm shifting of the tax burden onto the Neo-rich, with Excise taxes on luxury items during time of severe recession, claw-back of higher tax-rates on the rich recovering from the pseudo-deficits of the Reagan-Bush tax cuts for the rich, and we even need to shift from mere Income Tax to a Wealth Tax, administered on financial assets on an ongoing basis as well as through inheritance taxes on death.

The sheer demagoguery of the right, calling this “class war” seeks to ignore that the class war, if there is one, was started by the conscienceless upper class offensive of faux-deficits brought on by the Reagan-Bush tax cuts for the rich, the imbalanced globalization of capital while gutting out national social safety nets, social security and collective bargaining, and the excess military spending of the neo-Imperialist wars and the overgrowth of the ‘Military-Industrial Complex’ which Eisenhower warned so much against.

Keynes demanded this at the national level in the 30’s and would demand the same at the international, EU-wide and globalized level after 2008 were he alive today. And this rebalancing of international trade and of the benefits of globalization needs to be equally effective in the service sector that is increasingly the dominant sector of most advanced economies, as well as in the traditional areas of industry and agriculture. China and the emerging market countries need to liberalize access to services, the dominant part of developed economies, including financial services for individual Chinese from the West to balance their freer access to the developed world under the old WTO in their dominant sector of manufactured products such as textiles so that the structural trade gap can be controlled and growth in both the developed and developing world can be sustainable.

That is also why I am on your side in fighting for the United Nations Parliamentary Assembly as a means of strengthening the international public sector functions necessary to preserve a “Globalized Social Contract” or “International Social Contract” as one might say in the European Union, or an “International New Deal” as we might put it in plain old American. Two crucial keys needed to restored balance would be globalized labour unions and effective globalized collective bargaining through them and a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly to give strength, effectiveness and democratic legitimacy to globally operating public institutions commensurate with the now globalized economy and generally globalized society and environment.”

THE FURTHER SPIRITUAL EVOLUTION OF THE AMERICAN DREAM

Towards a Deeper Dream

Spiritus Mundi also addresses the shortcomings of the American Dream as a Dream of Life and provides a road map for its further and onward evolution. Once again I shall quote at length from the novel to illustrate this point. The speaker in the novel is Günter Gross, a Nobel Prize winning author from Germany who discusses the American Dream with the protagonist of the novel, Robert Sartorius:

“While Günter was residing in Berkeley Sartorius asked him if he would consider staying permanently in America, like others of his countrymen such as Thomas Mann and Albert Einstein, and if he was not attracted to the American Dream. Günter responded: “Well if you talk about Thomas Mann and Einstein I think that while indeed they were attracted by and admired America, the root of their emigration was less the American Dream than the European Nightmare—particularly that of Hitler. If you ask me about the American Dream though, I would have to confess only an ambivalence towards it—while I think it is a fine dream as far as it goes—a dream of freedom, self-realization and self-fulfillment—your famous “pursuit of happiness”——I think it is an incomplete dream—offering less than is necessary for the deeper life. You see the American Dream is a dream of the future, of a Promised Land, where the country and the individual becomes all that it should be, but is now not. You go forth across the Frontier and conquer the wilderness, leaving behind the old country, and perhaps society and history itself with some kind of new beginning. It assumes that this future to which you are venturing will somehow offer life’s fulfillment.

But to my mind where you come from and where you will return to is more important than where you are going. Making peace with the past is just as important as rushing forward into the dream of a promising future. Where you have come from, your origin, includes those things most fundamental to healthful psychic life—–home, family, your self and your soul, that to leave them out of the dream is to risk having it turn to nightmare. Your American Dream is a fine dream of the future and the man of the future, as is your science fiction and your eternal cowboy and eternal venturing. I wish to be part of the American Dream, but I am also a man of the Old World as well as a man of the New World. I wish to travel forward through the American New World and reunite again with the Old World.

I admire your American Literature, but I am more at sympathy with its T.S. Eliot of the Four Quartets, the old man in the lamplight rediscovering his origins and his true self for the first time, than with your Leatherstocking and John Wayne cowboy hero on the high frontier. But, don’t get me wrong—-I am not a reactionary who wishes to throw up the great American Dream and the adventure of modernity and return to an ever so flawed past. No, I am not a man of the Old World or of the reactionary old order, rejecting your American New World—-I am rather a man of the Whole World—I want to move through and beyond your New World and your Modernity to reunite with the Old World, the world of origins, of family, of home and of history and of authentic self and psyche and soul—even revisiting the Heart of Darkness, the savage jungle cradle of our so-called African past, and I speak here purely metaphorically, before returning sane to the present to begin anew. I want to complete the global circumnavigation of our human world, its conscious and unconscious wholeness, and thus I will not settle here in your California, but I will push on to complete the Magellantic voyage.

I have a bone to pick with this American Dream. Yes, I think it is a fine and inspiring dream. But I think it is also an immature and incomplete dream. In a sense the American Dream is an extroverted and youthful dream of a bright and inspiring future. It is the Dream of Morning in the life of man, and a fine dream for inspiring a strong and vigorous life in reshaping the world. But in the larger sphere of life, we must include not only the Morning of Life, but also the Evening of Life.

Instead, I am attracted to the Universal Mythic Dream. A man’s life includes success within the world, subduing the world to his will and building a civilization out of the wilderness, yes, but it also includes decline, growing old and death, along with reconciliation with nature and the past, with soul and the spirit. This also includes and implies the inner or spiritual life, which becomes increasingly important as the high noon of life is passed and we begin to face our own decline and awaiting death. Today we speak of Environmentalism, but environmentalism cannot be limited to our relationship to the outer, physical environment. This Mythic Dream is part of the newer movement of what I term “Inner Environmentalism,” a renewal and reformation of relationship and conservation of our most vital spiritual roots and equilibrium within the psychical biosphere, to complement our renewal of relationship and conservation of the physical biosphere. The Mythic Dream is the dream of the Evening of Life and of Life’s Night, to complement the hero’s dream of success and assertion in this world, the ethos of the Morning and Afternoon of Life contained in the American Dream. Thus, the Mythic Dream is more complete than the American Dream. It sustains life not only in its growth from strength to strength in the successes of the Morning of Life but also sustains life spiritually and psychologically when individual life comes to its time of decline and death, followed by renewal. We need a dream valid for both the morning and for the evening of life, for the brightness of success, but also for the darkness of death and dissolution. It addresses not only the promise of a fulfilled future but also the vital life of the present moment and reconciliation with the past, as well as with tradition and eternity.

Myth is truer than history—it is a life above life; and it is rooted in a truth far deeper. Beyond even your British historical realism or American pragmatism the mythic artist must dramatize the oneness of human experience and the common focus of man’s multiple vision. The American Dream discovers a new continent of the future on which dreams can be built, but the Mythic Dream goes beyond it by completing the global voyage, circumnavigating the human psyche as well as the globe, a Magellantic circumnavigating of the twinned lobed hemispheres of the conscious and unconscious mind, of nature and culture, and of reintegrating them through the never-ending cycle through a return to its vital, archetypal and life-giving origins.

……..And though I do admire the American Dream, particularly as it has given new life and hope to those crushed by the oppressions of Eurasia, I am also forced to observe that it can become easily corrupted. Too often the American Dream shapes the frontier of the future as a realm of unbridled subjugation to the unlimited desires of the Id, or the vanity of the Ego. Too often the American Dream sorrowfully unveils itself as the egocentric dream of a “Paradise of Me!” blind to either the wider responsibilities or deepest bonds of the individual to human society or to the deeper claims of the inner spiritual life beyond the quotidian ego and the workaday world.”

THE COMMON DREAM OF ALL MANKIND FOR THE 21^ST CENTURY: TOWARDS A UNITED NATIONS PARLIAMENTARY ASSEMBLY

Towards a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly

Thus have we seen two great national dreams, The Chinese Dream and The American Dream in evolution side by side, in some ways reinforcing one another as but one dream shared by two great dreamers, in other ways threatening to become each the other’s worse nightmare. What becomes obvious is the direly critical need for a common dream to unite not only the two, but the dreams of other dreamers throughout this fragile globe: the Dream of Europe being dreamed by 28 states of a European civilization united, democratic, and free from threat of war or economic crisis, the dreams of a secure and flourishing Russia, Japan, India, Iran, Brazil and of all of the nations, great and small, each on their onward course towards a common future on earth.

All human communities and peoples have their own dreams which are part of the common dream of all mankind on our fragile earth, as do all individuals, and civilization is the process of learning to dream together, rather than against one another, and to find a common spiritual basis of our common dreams, whether in visions of a common humanism of humanity, a common family united as the children of God, or as the spiritual creatures of Nature and a life-sustaining cosmos. To attain this vision what is most obvious is the first need to communicate, share and nurture each other’s dreams and visions of our common world, a common bed of dreamers in which we must not only dream, but also live together, sometimes aiding and sometimes chafing up against one another as those dreams are pursued in the world of realities.

A UNITED NATIONS PARLIAMENTARY ASSEMBLY: AN IDEA WHOSE TIME HAS COME

The Proposed Logo of the United Nations Parliamentary Assembly featuring the “benches” at which the elected representatives would sit.

The great problems of our times – such as the World Economic Crisis, war and peace, Global Warming and climate change, international terrorism, epidemic diseases such as AIDS -– cannot be solved by individual nations acting alone. It is more and more obvious in our Era of Globalization that the most fundamental problems affecting the lives of individuals can only be addressed by global action on a worldwide basis, and that the mechanisms of the past for doing so, such as informal intergovernmental cooperation as in the G-20 and such treaty conventions as the glacially-paced failed Climate Change conferences of Copenhagen, South Africa and Warsaw are ineffective, slow, unwieldy and so divorced from the people as to suffer fatal democratic deficits.

At the same time our international institutions have been slowly evolving more effective models for international and global governance, most successfully in the case of the European Parliament of the European Union (EU), which brings together the elected representatives of 27 European Union member states in a permanent parliamentary assembly representing not simply the member states and their governments, but the independent elected representatives of all segments of European public opinion, whether in government or in opposition. The pioneering model of the European Parliament has now been copied across the world with analogous parliamentary assemblies now in successful operation, such as the Pan-African Parliament of the African Union (AU), the Arab Parliament of the Arab League and the Latin-American Parliament (Parlatino). Now that the concept of an international parliamentary assembly has been proven on the ground passing the test of time and reality, the time is now ripe for the creation of such an institution on a global scale as a new organ of the United Nations beside the existing General Assembly and Security Council to enable the United Nations and our system of global governance to be strengthened to an extent necessary to solve our globalized problems in a globalized world, and to bring the United Nations and its related international institutions into closer communication, responsiveness and accountability to the peoples of the world, not just governments in power, and by so doing address the democratic deficit in our system of global governance.

Former United Nations Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali, leader of the Campaign for a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly (UNPA)

An energetic coalition under the leadership of former United Nations Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali is now working hard and effectively to bring about the creation of a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly, spearheaded by the Campaign for a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly whose website is accessible at:

Campaign for a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly: http://en.unpacampaign.org/about/unpa/index.php

Former United Nations Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali, leader of the Campaign for a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly (UNPA)

The European Parliament has endorsed the creation of such a UN Parliamentary Assembly and it is supported by hundreds of Members of European Parliament and similar support groups across the world. The fact that it is supported by the former UN Secretary-General and the European Parliament and Pan-African Parliament proves both that it is a highly practical, tested and workable idea whose time has come.

The Proposed Logo of the United Nations Parliamentary Assembly featuring the “benches” at which the elected representatives would sit.

A United Nations Parliamentary Assembly (UNPA) for the first time would give citizen representatives, not only states, a direct and influential role in global policy. The assembly would not replace existing UN bodies but would be an additional means to integrate parliamentarians more effectively into the shaping of globalization. In tabling this initiative it is also important to clarify what a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly would not be. It would not be a world government. It would not in any way attempt to make law on a global scale or in any way limit the sovereignty of existing national governments. The existing United Nations General Assembly and the Security Council would continue to exist side-by-side with the new UNPA and would continue their existing work, just as the national governments of the EU along with the European Council continue to function alongside the European Parliament. The creation of a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly, at least initially would not increase or decrease the sovereignty of UN member states nor alter the powers of the existing UN organs, the Generally Assembly and Security Council. Instead, it would add the voice of the peoples of the world to the existing institutions and increase their accountability to those peoples, from whom they derive all their existing powers.

Direct citizen representation could help the world develop a greater understanding of itself as a global community. At the highest levels of the United Nations, a UNPA could function as a world conscience and watchdog, and a catalyst for further reforms. Over time, the UNPA could evolve from a consultative body to a world parliament with genuine rights of information, participation and control.

As a transitional step until global direct elections become practical, the UN Parliamentary Assembly could consist of delegates from national and possibly regional parliaments, reflecting their political diversity. The UNPA would therefore include members of minority parties whose opinions are often not represented in the United Nations. Unlike current UN ambassadors, UNPA representatives would not be subject to the authority, direction or control of national governments. These parliamentarians would be free to ask probing questions, raise sensitive issues, and table innovative proposals for consideration by the Security Council, the General Assembly, the Bretton Woods financial institutions and other UN bodies, just as the European Parliament successfully functions within the European Union.

Contrary to popular belief, creation of a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly would be procedurally quite easy as all that is required is a majority vote of the UN General Assembly, and its creation is not subject to any veto power under the United Nations Charter. A consultative Parliamentary Assembly at the UN could be established as a subsidiary body by a simple vote in the General Assembly under Article 22, without changing the UN Charter. The historical record demonstrates, as with the Land Mines Treaty and the International Criminal Court, that if a few countries urged on by civil society take the lead, significant transformation at the international level is indeed possible. “We the People” of the World can bring about this fundamental democratic change through an energetic “People Power” campaign pressuring our national governments to vote “Yes” on the proposal in the UN General Assembly.

If the creation of a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly is so drastically needed to address the core problems of our age and it is so procedurally easy to accomplish it, you may ask, why hasn’t it been done already? One reason is that the proposal has often been misunderstood when raised, both from those who have hoped or feared too much from the proposal and those who have expected too little. Many people dismiss the idea as an unworkable utopian dream by mistakenly thinking that the UNPA would hope to bring about a “One World Government” replacing or subordinating existing nation-states in one swoop. But this is a “red herring” and “straw-man” argument irrelevant to reality. The United Nations Parliamentary Assembly would not reduce the sovereignty or freedom of action of any national government and is neither utopian nor a threat. Its work would be essentially similar and of restricted scope to that of the European Parliament within the EU, which no one sees as a threat.

A second reason for resistance to the idea is the natural disinclination of existing governments, regimes and powerholders to any limitation of their personal powers. But the idea of democracy on the national or international level is precisely that power holders MUST be made accountable to their peoples and that applies to the international arena as well as the national arena. Clemenceau famously said that “war is too important to be left to the generals.” and a fortiori government and global governance in an age of globalization is far too important to the lives of the people to be left to the nation-states, the diplomats, heads-of-state, regimes, generals and power holders of the world, and you and I and the peoples of the world must insist that they finally be made accountable to the people and their interests above and beyond the “power game” interests of those functionaries and politicians who purport to act in the people’s name but place priority on the exercise of their own power. That is what democracy, national and international, is all about.

We urge all the “People of the World” to support Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali and the Campaign for a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly, and encourage you to access their website to learn more and contribute your support. We also urge all Americans to write to President Obama and Secretary of State Kerry to introduce and support the proposal for its creation in the UN General Assembly. Leadership in its creation would be the crowning achievement of this outgoing administration and merit the awarding of a further edition of the Nobel Peace Prize for all concerned.

The novel Spiritus Mundi by Robert Sheppard is the first novel in World Literature to expressly illustrate and urge the creation of a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly for global democracy. At the link below is an FAQ, or “Frequently Asked Questions” concerning the concept of a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly which appears as an embedded part of the novel.

https://robertalexandersheppard.wordpress.com/2013/11/24/a-united-nations-parliamentary-assembly-an-idea-whose-time-has-come/

We also invite all readers to join in the Campaign for a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly under the leadership of former United Nations Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali by following this link:

http://en.unpacampaign.org/index.php

CONCLUSION

Beautiful Dreamer–The Last Song Composed by Stephen Foster before his Death

Beautiful Dreamer!—We are all dreamers, and our dreaming is what makes us all fully human. Our dreams are precious and must not be lost, nor must they be allowed through mutual incomprehension to become the seeds of one another’s nightmares. The process of our common universal civilization is precisely in learning to dream together rather than against one another. A popular idiom in Chinese is同床异梦Tong Chuang Yi Meng —Same bed, different dreams: a recipe for conflict and potential nightmare. The American Dream and the Chinese Dream occupy the same world and the same bed, as do the dreams of all nations on earth. We, in our dreaming of the future and future worlds, must learn to unite our dreams in a common dream of a shared humanity within a shared common earth and its environment. Our dreams, both individual and common can be beautiful, but only if we work in common faith towards translating them into a common reality in the common work of building our Universal Civilization on earth. Only by our common work together may we determine whether our dreams enter the world through the Gates of Ivory or the Gates of Horn. The creation of a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly, a global forum for the sharing of dreams and of the work of realizing them is a necessary first step to sharing a common future in peace and creative harmony. The immortal song of Stephen Foster enshrines the archetypal image of the Beautiful Dreamer:

Beautiful dreamer, wake unto me,
Starlight and dewdrops are waiting for thee;
Sounds of the rude world, heard in the day,
Lull’d by the moonlight have all pass’d away!
Beautiful dreamer, queen of my song,
List while I woo thee with soft melody;
Gone are the cares of life’s busy throng,
Beautiful dreamer, awake unto me!
Beautiful dreamer, awake unto me!

(Stephen Foster, 1862)

May we all enter our most beautiful dreams, and share our dreams as we share our future lives on earth together. May we awaken from our beautiful common dreams into more beautiful future in a more beautiful world.

—————————————–

The novel Spiritus Mundi, which elaborates this common dream of all mankind, may also be accessed at:

PUSHCART PRIZE NOMINEE ROBERT SHEPPARD’S NOVEL SPIRITUS MUNDI _______________________________________________________________________

Spiritus Mundi, Book I: The Novel: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00CIGJFGO

Spiritus Mundi, Book II: The Romance http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00CGM8BZG

CHECK OUT SPIRITUS MUNDI’S 5.O-STAR GOODREADS RATING AVERAGE & REVIEWS ON GOODREADS:

Book I (5.0-Stars on Goodreads) http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17857619-spiritus-mundi-book-i

Book II (5.0-Stars on Goodreads) http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17857704-spiritus-mundi-book-ii-the-romance

CHECK OUT A FULL SUMMARY OF SPIRITUS MUNDI ON SHELFARI before purchasing at:

http://www.shelfari.com/books/36123188/Spiritus-Mundi—Book-I-The-Novel http://www.shelfari.com/books/36123187/Spiritus-Mundi—Book-II-The-Romance

Spiritus Mundi is also available on SMASHWORDS in ALL FORMATS:

Book I (5.0 Stars on Smashwords) https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/303856 Book II (5.0 Stars on Smashwords) https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/303798

Spiritus Mundi is also now available at the following sites:

WHAT EVERY EDUCATED CITIZEN OF THE WORLD NEEDS TO KNOW IN THE 21ST CENTURY—WORLD TRAVEL CLASSICS—THE TRAVELS OF IBN BATTUTA AND THE TRAVELS OF MARCO POLO —-FROM THE WORLD LITERATURE FORUM RECOMMENDED CLASSICS AND MASTERPIECES SERIES VIA GOODREADS—-ROBERT SHEPPARD, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

Posted on January 5, 2014 by robertalexandersheppard

WHAT EVERY EDUCATED CITIZEN OF THE WORLD NEEDS TO KNOW IN THE 21ST CENTURY—WORLD TRAVEL CLASSICS—THE TRAVELS OF IBN BATTUTA AND THE TRAVELS OF MARCO POLO —-FROM THE WORLD LITERATURE FORUM RECOMMENDED CLASSICS AND MASTERPIECES SERIES VIA GOODREADS—-ROBERT SHEPPARD, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

The Travels of Ibn Battutah by ابن بطوطة My rating: 5 of 5 stars

WORLD TRAVEL CLASSICS—THE TRAVELS OF IBN BATTUTA AND THE TRAVELS OF MARCO POLO —-FROM THE WORLD LITERATURE FORUM RECOMMENDED CLASSICS AND MASTERPIECES SERIES VIA GOODREADS—-ROBERT SHEPPARD, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

For most of us coming from a Western background when we think of the great travelers and travel accounts of world history the name that first comes to mind is of course that of Marco Polo, the 13th Century Venetian whose Odyssey took him to the China court of the Mongol Emperor of Yuan Dynasty Kublai Kahn in 1275, and from whence he returned by sea via India and Persia to his native land years after his departure to dictate in a Genoese prisoner-of-war compound his immortal “Travels of Marco Polo.” We may thus approach the travels and writings his contemporary Moroccan Muslim world traveller Ibn Battuta (or Battutah) by thinking of him initially as “The Muslim Marco Polo,” though giving to each equal dignity, and given that Ibn Battuta’s journeys from 1325 to 1354 totalled over 73,000 miles, nearly three times the distance covered by Marco Polo, including not only their common visits to China, India and Persia, but ranging much farther, transiting the whole of North Africa from Morocco to Cairo, down the Swahili Coast of East Africa to Kenya and across the Sahara southwards from Morocco to the Niger River Kingdom of Mali in the deep interior of West Africa, we would be equally justified in considering Marco Polo, “The Western Ibn Battuta.”

Ibn Battuta

That Marco Polo became the much more famous of the pair was owing less to the prowess of his travels than the fact that his book was far more widely circulated and read, especially after the Gutenberg Revolution of the printing press made his works extensively available across Europe, having a profound effect on public consciousness, whereas Ibn Battuta’s work languished relatively obscure and unknown, even in the Muslim world, until re-discovered and brought to light by Western scholars of the 19th Century.

The travels of Ibn Battuta are truly awe-inspiring in their scope and range, especially considering the limits of transportation technology of his and Marco Polo’s age. He set out alone at the age of 21 on a Hajj to Mecca from his native Tangier in Morocco in 1325, one year after Marco Polo’s death in the Venetian Republic, leaving behind his tearful mother and father whom he would never see alive again. The challenge was perhaps even greater for Battuta compared to Polo, since although the young Marco departed at the younger age of 17, it is often forgotten that Polo was accompanied through his entire journey by his father and uncle who had both been to the Mongol capital on a previous journey and already knew the route well, whereas Batutta struck out alone and had no experienced guide. Luckily, the travel infrastructure of the Hajj throughout the Muslim world to and from Mecca would make his journey possible, though still extremely difficult.

The first leg of Battuta’s transcontinental travels began with a long camel caravan across North Africa from Morocco to Cairo in Egypt that would last 16 months. His departure from the home he would not see again for another 24 years was solemn:

“I set out alone, finding no companion to cheer the way with friendly intercourse, and no party of travellers with whom to associate myself. Swayed by an overmastering impulse within me, and a long-cherished desire to visit those glorious sanctuaries, I resolved to quit all my friends and tear myself away from my home. As my parents were still alive, it weighed grievously upon me to part from them, and both they and I were afflicted with sorrow.”

Ibn Battuta in Egypt

After arriving in Cairo, the capital of the Mamluk Sultanate, Battuta attained his goal of visiting Mecca by the roundabout path to Damascus and down through the holy sites of Jerusalem and Medina. Not quitted of his Wanderlust even then, after a soujourn in Mecca he joined a caravan of homeward bound pilgrims and ventured northward into Iraq and Persia, where he met the last surviving Mongol ruler of the conquest of the Mongol Khans, Abu Sa’id in Baghdad before returning again to Mecca.

Ibn Battuta in Tabriz, Mongolian Persia

Battuta then stayed in Mecca for three years, continuing the law studies he had begun in Tangier and advancing in the profession. This was an important skill that enabled him to pay for and prosper on his travels in the Muslim world, where he continuously was employed as a judge or legal scholar or administrator of the Sharia law, a skill much in demand in the outlying regions of Islam.

The next great leg of his travels was a sweep down the Red Sea into East Africa where he visited such Arab trading centers as Mogadishu in Somalia, Mombassa in modern Kenya, Zanzibar and Kilwa, a region known as the Swahili or Arab Slave Coast. There as throughout the Muslim world he encountered the trade and practice of slavery, which had endured for centuries since before even the Roman Empire. Indeed it is estimated by some scholars, surprisingly to many, that the total Arab Slave Trade From East and West Africa into the Muslim world from the time of Mohammad until slavery’s abolition by the Western Powers in the 19th Century (650-1900) totalled 12-18 million Africans exceeding the total numbers of slaves transported to the Americas, the 12-13 million via the “Middle Passage” (1500-1900) by several millions, albeit over a much longer time frame. To this is added the several million white European slaves captured and sent to the Muslim world, especially the Slavs, some of whome became mainstays in the Ottoman Janissary corps, and ironically, after a revolt of these European Mamluk slave-soldiers in Egypt, they became the rulers of the Mamluk Sultanate,(Slave Kings)the only force to have defeated the Mongol armies in their conquest from China to Palestine. Famous slave uprisings in the Muslim world occured intermittently, such as the Zanj Rebellion in Basra, Iraq in 869 which involved the temporarily successful rising of 500,000 slaves, mostly African, rivaling the Spartacus Rebellion of Rome in scope, and successful for fifteen years until brutally crushed by the Caliphate. Ibn Battuta himself bought and sold slaves on his travels, and fathered several children by his slaves, including one Greek woman slave. As a Sharia law judge he held that though fornication and adultery were forbidden, sex and engendering children with owned slave women was lawful. When he was a magistrate to the Musllm Sultan of Dehli and later appointed as the Sultan’s Ambassador to the Chinese Emperor in India a gift of 100 Chinese slaves to the Sultan’s royal court was reciprocated with a countergift of 200 Indian slaves sent by the Sultan in return to the Chinese court.

Returning from the Swahili Slave Coast he then spent another year in Mecca in his legal work before undertaking a journey to take up employment as a Sharia judge and magistrate in India in the Sultanate of Dehli, headed by Sultan Muhammud bin Tugluq. His route carried him into the realm of the Mongol Golden Horde, where he met its leader Uzbeg Khan. There he was engaged to accompany one of the Khan’s wives, a Byzantine princess given to the Kahn in a diplomatic marriage who was pregnant and wished to return to her family in Constantinople to give birth. While in Constantinople, which would become the modern city of Istanbul after the Ottoman conquest a century later, he met the Christian Emperor of Byzantium Andronikos III Palaiologos and visited the famous Greek Orthodox cathederal, the Hagia Sophia, which would later be converted into a mosque after the conquest, and whose domed design was the Western model for much of Arabic architecture.

Thereafter, returning from Constantinople he passed through the realm of the Mongol Golden Horde and beyond until descending through Afghanistan and Sind he reached India and Dehli. A second reason for Battuta’s success in travel was the well developed infrastructure of the Mongolian Empire, suradded to the travel routes within the Muslim world developed for purposes of the Hajj. Indeed,, we can say that without the Mongol Empire’s accomplishment of uniting and pacifying Eurasia neither Marco Polo nor Ibn Battuta would have been able to complete their transcontinental journeys and leave behind their accounts to the world. Travel in the Mongol empire was relatively safe and provided an unending chain of hostelries for caravans and travellers from Europe to China. We can say that the Mongol interlude of Globalization is a forgotten but highly significant aspect of the unification of the world and an underrated era of World History, second only to the impact of Columbus’ discovery of the New World.

By connecting by their conquest East and West, the Mongols catalyzed the transfer of many of the seeds of the Rise of the West, ironically sometimes derived from the East, such as the transfer of the technologies of gunpowder, printing and advanced papermaking and the compass, none of which the Mongols were the originators of, but of which they enabled the diffusion. Even Marco Polo’s very fame through the printed book, which became common in Europe about a century after his death with the Gutenberg Revolution in the 1450′s, would have been impossible without the seed technologies of proto-printing and papermaking from China and the East. Columbus’s later voyage, inspired by Marco Polo’s book, would also have been impossible without the transfer of the Chinese compass for navigation via the Arab or Mongol world.

But as the return of Ibn Battuta later in his story proves, the logistical linking of East and West by the Mongol Empire was not at all completely benign, and had evil aspects rivaling the impact of Columbus’ linking of the New and Old Worlds. For in the very year Battuta arrived in Damascus on his return from China, 1348, the Black Plague, or Bubonic Plaugue, also known as the Black Death broke out in Europe and the Middle-East. Modern scientists have retraced the roots of the Black Plague from its origins in Yunnan, China across Eurasia, through the Crimea to the Mediterranian and throughout Europe. One result of the Mongolian Globalization was the death of perhaps 200 million people across the world from the Black Plague, which took the lives of from one-third to one-half of the populations of many countries in Europe. It is often forgotten that the Black Plague also killed a similar proportion of urbanites in Egypt, Syria, Pelestine and Arabia and many parts of the Muslim world and was never a strictly European phenomenon. Indeed the country of origin of the Black Plague, China, also suffered massive depopulation and mass deaths of urban populations in the same era. Thus it is very likely Battuta himself or his traveling companions and their animals in caravans or on ships laden with rats may have brought some of the fleas which transferred the disease. While never affected by the disease personally, he was indirectly affected, as before resolving to return to his home in Tangiers he first considered seeking the patronage of his old friend Abu Sa’id, the last Mongol ruler of the Ilkhanate over Persia and Iraq. But when he got to Basra he discovered that Abu Sa’id had died, probably of plague, and in the wake of his death a fierce civil war broke out between the remaining Mongols and the Persians. In light of his lost prospects and the impact of the plague elsewhere, he decided to return to Morocco.

From both the Mongol conquest, as well as the conquest of the Americas proceeded good and ill. Thus Globalization in history has proven far from wholly benign, with the Mongol Empire Globalization effacing 200 million through the Black Death across Eurasia and the Columbian Transatlantic Globalization resulting in the death of 80% of the populations of Aztec Mexico, Incan Peru and the New World, driven by the lack of any immunity of the indigenous population to smallpox, plague, malaria and other Eurasian diseases. You are recommended to read Jared Diamond’s excellent work on this topic, “Guns, Germs and Steel” to realize the depth of the impact of contagious disease and globalization on World History. The same plague that affected Ibn Battuta also gave us Boccaccio’s Decameron, however, without which we may not have had Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, so the hand of nature or God giveth even while it taketh away.

Dehli Ruler’s Tomb Whom Ibn Battuta Served As Qadi

Arriving in India he gained the favor of the Sultan of Delhi, Muhammud bin Tugluq, and gained employment as a qadi, or Sharia law judge and magistrate, based on his excellent scholarship derived from his years in Mecca. The Sultan of Dehli was the reputed wealthiest man in all Islam and gave patronage to Muslim sscholars, teachers, artists, architects and sufis. He sought Ibn Battuta’s aid in extending Islam and Sharia law amoung his Indian subjects, but found little success amoung the Hindu subject population, with its influence extending little beyond the royal court and its attached communities.

The roots of Ibn Battuta’s travel to China came through his service at the court of the Sultan of Dehli in India. The Sultan was erratic, sometimes rewarding Battuta and sometimes suspecting him of conspiracy or treason. Battuta wished to leave and requested permission to return to Mecca but was refused. The Sultan, however, did consent to send him as his Ambassador to the court in China, the genesis of Battuta’s trip further eastward. The embassy to China was ill fated, however, as the travellers were attacked by bandits and pirates and ships were sunk in storms. Battuta was stranded in southern India for a time, then detoured to the Maldive Islands. His skills as an Islamic Sharia judge were in demand on the Islands as the Muslim rulers were hard put to convert the Buddhist nation to Islam. Battuta stayed for nine months, taking a member of the Muslim royal family as a new wife. There his semi-Puritanical streak began to show as he loudly objected to the native women going about in public virtually naked, or naked from the waist up, and vented his anger at the women’s refusal to abandon “the garb of Eve” for traditional Muslim dress.

Maldive Islands

Finally he left the islands and was able to continue his mission to China, sailing to Sumatra, Singapore and finally arriving in the great Chinese port of Quanzhou. Later he made his way to Hangzhou, which he observed to be the most magnificent city he had ever seen, seconding the opinion of Marco Polo when he had been there a generation before. He made his way to Beijing and the Mongol Yuan court, then back to Quanzhou in Fujian province where he was able to book passage on Muslim trading ships headed back to India and the Middle-East. He decided it dangerous to return to Dehli for political reasons, and as mentioned above considered going to Abu Sa’id in Persia and Iraq, but with his death and the Black Plague hitting the Muslim world and soon Europe, he decided home was best and headed back to Morocco. He succeeded in returning home, but not happily, as on arrival he learned his father had died fifteen years ago and his mother heartbreakingly only a few months before his return.

The Great Wall of China Desciribed by Ibn Battuta in his Travels

Partly because of this he soon set out on the last leg of his travels, this time south from Morocco across the Sahara and deep into the interior of Africa, reaching the Niger River and the Mali Kingdom. This would be the same region later visited by the famous British traveller Mungo Park, who also wrote a memorable travel account of his adventures.

Madrassa in Timbuktu visited by Ibn Battuta

On his return from Mali and the Niger, Ibn Battuta was celebrated and the ruler of Morocco insisted that he must write an account of his travels for posterity. The circumstances of his composition of the “Rihla,” his record of his travels thus proved to be remarkably similar to that of Marco Polo, albeit luckily without the imprisonment. A scholar was assigned to Battuta, Ibn Juzayy, and Battuta embarked on dictating orally to him, which the scribe wrote down and edited. Marco Polo composed his Travels by dictating to a fellow prisoner, the romance writer Rusticello de Pisa, who wrote down and edited the manuscript. Perhaps surprisingly, but not really, neither Marco Polo nor Ibn Battuta had kept any notes, diary or travel records, or had lost anything they had. Both had to dictate from memory alone. The scholar helped Battuta to remember this incredible thirty year adventure, sometimes by refreshing his memory from other writings. This led to claims by some in both the cases of Marco Polo and Ibn Battuta that their accounts were not authentic or derived from hearsay and never occured. However recent scholars in both instances have verified their essential authenticity from numerous details impossible to know if they had not personally been on the scenes described. Omissions, such as Polo’s non-relating of Chinese details such as the Great Wall, chopsticks or foot binding have been explained as either lapses of memory, selective or negligent recording of their dictation or the circumstance that they lived with Mongol rulers and not common Chinese. Discrepencies in Battuta’s narrative are likewise explicable as additions of the scholar from other sources or lapses of memories thirty years old on dictation.

THE TRAVELS OF MARCO POLO

Marco Polo

Marco Polo (1254 – 1324) was an Italian merchant traveller whose travels are recorded in Livres des merveilles du monde, a book which did much to introduce Europeans to Central Asia and China. He learned the mercantile trade from his father and uncle, Niccolò and Maffeo, who travelled through Asia, and apparently met Kublai Khan. In 1269, they returned to Venice to meet Marco for the first time. The three of them embarked on an epic journey to Asia, returning after 24 years to find Venice at war with Genoa; Marco was imprisoned, and dictated his stories to a cellmate. He was released in 1299, became a wealthy merchant, married and had three children. He died in 1324, and was buried in the church of San Lorenzo.

Route of the Travels of Marco Polo

Marco Polo was not the first European to reach China, but he was the first to leave a detailed chronicle of his experience. This book inspired Christopher Columbus and many other travellers. There is a substantial literature based on his writings. Polo influenced European cartography, leading to the introduction of the Fra Mauro map:

Map inspired by Marco Polo’s Travels

Narrative of the Travels of Marco Polo

Early Ediion of Il Milione, The Travels of Marco Polo

The book opens with a preface describing his father and uncle traveling to Bolghar where Prince Berke Khan lived. A year later, they went to Ukek and continued to Bukhara. There, an envoy from Levant invited them to meet Kublai Khan, who had never met Europeans.In 1266, they reached the seat of the Kublai Khan at Dadu, present day Beijing, China. Khan received the brothers with hospitality and asked them many questions regarding the European legal and political system. He also inquired about the Pope and Church in Rome.After the brothers answered the questions he tasked them with delivering a letter to the Pope, requesting 100 Christians acquainted with the Seven Arts (grammar, rhetoric, logic, geometry, arithmetic, music and astronomy). Kublai Khan requested that an envoy bring him back oil of the lamp in Jerusalem. The long lapse between the death of Pope Clement IV in 1268 and the election of his successor delayed the Polos in fulfilling Khan’s request. They followed the suggestion of Theobald Visconti, then papal legate for the realm of Egypt, and returned to Venice in 1269 or 1270 to await the nomination of the new Pope, which allowed Marco to see his father for the first time, at the age of fifteen or sixteen.

Polo wearing a Tartar outfit, age of print unknown.

In 1271, Niccolò, Maffeo and Marco Polo embarked on their voyage to fulfill Khan’s request. They sailed to Acre, and then rode on camels to the Persian port of Hormuz. They wanted to sail to China, but the ships there were not seaworthy, so they continued overland until reaching Khan’s summer palace in Shangdu, near present-day Zhangjiakou. Three and a half years after leaving Venice, when Marco was about 21 years old, Khan welcomed the Polos into his palace. The exact date of their arrival is unknown, but scholars estimate it to be between 1271 and 1275. On reaching the Yuan court, the Polos presented the sacred oil from Jerusalem and the papal letters to their patron.

Marco knew four languages, and the family had accumulated a great deal of knowledge and experience that was useful to Khan. Thus he became a government official; he wrote about many imperial visits to China’s southern and eastern provinces, the far south and Burma.

Kublai Khan declined the Polos’ requests to leave China. They became worried about returning home safely, believing that if Khan died, his enemies might turn against them because of their close involvement with the ruler. In 1292, Khan’s great-nephew, then ruler of Persia sent representatives to China in search of a potential wife, and they asked the Polos to accompany them, so they were permitted to return to Persia with the wedding party – which left that same year from Zaitun in southern China on a fleet of 14 junks. The party sailed to the port of Singapore, travelled north to Sumatra, sailed west to the Trincomale port of Jaffna under Savakanmaindan and to Pandyan of Tamilakkam. Describing the Pandyan kingdom as the richest empire in existence, Polo arrived during the reign of Maravarman Kulasekara Pandyan I son of Jatavarman Sundara Pandyan I and one of five brother kings on the continent. Eventually Polo crossed the Arabian Sea to Hormuz. The two-year voyage was a perilous one – of the six hundred people (not including the crew) in the convoy only eighteen had survived (including all three Polos).^[The Polos left the wedding party after reaching Hormuz and travelled overland to the port of Trebizond on the Black Sea, the present day Trabzon.

Thus the Travels of both Marco Polo and Ibn Battuta have rightfully taken their place in the canon of great travel writing in World Literature, alongside other greats such as the Travels of Captain Cook, Mungo Park in East Africa, Sir Richard Burton in Africa and the Muslim world, the travels of Xuan Zang from Tang China to India to seek out Buddhist scripture immortalized in the “Journey to the West” of Wu Chengen, the Travels of the “Ottoman Marco Polo” Evliya Celebi, the travels of the Japanese monk Matsuo Basho,the Voyages of the French explorer Bougainville, Stanley and Livingston and many others. In addition travels of the imagination, such as Italo Calvino’s “Invisible Cities,” based on Polo’s work or Pynchon’s zepplin travels of “Against the Day” enrich our World Literature.

My own recent novel, Spiritus Mundi, draws on many aspects of the Classics of World Travel Literature. Book I of Spiritus Mundi includes Ibn Battuta as a fictional character in the account of Sartorius’ ancestor Admiral Sir George Rose Sartorius’ shipwreck on the Maldive Islands and his encounter with the “Sultan of the Sea of Stories,” related to Ibn Battuta’s sojourn on the Islands, and includes a mythic account of Battuta’s role in converting the islanders from Hinduism to Islam, as well as Admiral Sartorius’ encounter with “Sir She” the sorceress Lilith on the same voyage. The protagonist of Spiritus Mundi, Robert Sartorius completes a circumnavigation of the world traveling to China, the Maldives, London and New York, symbolically also completing the Odyssey of his family from its origin in Little Gidding, England and back.

I highly recommend and invite everyone to read and enjoy the Travels of Ibn Battuta and Marco Polo, and the novel Spiritus Mundi, by Robert Sheppard, all of which contribute to our vision of our globalized world and to this genre of World Literature.

For a fuller discussion of the concept of World Literature you are invited to look into the extended discussion in the new book Spiritus Mundi, by Robert Sheppard, one of the principal themes of which is the emergence and evolution of World Literature:

For Discussions on World Literature and Literary Criticism in Spiritus Mundi: http://worldliteratureandliterarycrit…

Robert Sheppard

Editor-in-Chief World Literature Forum Author, Spiritus Mundi Novel Author’s Blog: https://robertalexandersheppard.wordp… Spiritus Mundi on Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17… Spiritus Mundi on Amazon, Book I: The Novel: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00CIGJFGO Spiritus Mundi, Book II: The Romance http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00CGM8BZG

View all my reviews

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Arab Slave Coast of East Africa, Arab Slave Trade, Arab Slave Trade & Transatlantic Slave Trade Compared, Basho, Book Reviews, Bouganville, Captain Cook, Celebi, Classics of World Literature, Classics of World Travel Literature, Columbus and Infectios Disease, Germs and Steel, Global Empires and Infectious Diseases and Plagues, Globalization, Globalization and World Epidemics, Goodreads Book Reviews by Robert Sheppard, Greatest Travelers in World History, Greatest World Travelers, Guns, Ibn Battuta, Ibn Battutah, Islamic Slave Trade, Italo Calvino, Italo Calvino Invisible Cities, Jared Diamond, Marco Polo, Marco Polo and Ibn Battuta, Middle Passage, Mongol Empire and Columbus, Mongol Empire and Globalization, Mongol Empire and Infectious Disease, Mongol Empire and the Black Death, Mongol Empire and the Bubonic Plague, Mongol Empire and World History, Mongolian Empire, Mungo Park, Muslim Slave Trade, Robert Sartorius, Robert Sheppard, Spiritus Mundi, Spiritus Mundi Novel by Robert Sheppard, Sultan of New Dehli, Sultan of the Sea of Stories. Admiral Sir George Rose Sartorius, Travel and World History, Travel Classics of World Literature, Travel Literature, Travels of Ibn Battuta, Travels of Ibn Battutah, Travels of Marco Polo, World Classics of Travel Literature, World Literature, World Literature Forum | Leave a comment

PUSHCART PRIZE NOMINEE ROBERT SHEPPARD’S “POEMS FROM SPIRITUS MUNDI” FEATURED ON PYROKINECTION & POETRY PACIFIC

Posted on December 25, 2013 by robertalexandersheppard

PUSHCART PRIZE NOMINEE ROBERT SHEPPARD’S “POEMS FROM SPIRITUS MUNDI” FEATURED ON PYROKINECTION & POETRY PACIFIC

Spiritus Mundi, Novel by Robert Sheppard

Three poems from Pushcart Prize nominee Robert Sheppard’s “Poems from Spiritus Mundi” are featured on the acclaimed poetry journal “Pyrokinection,” edited by A.J. Huffman. The “Poems from Spiritus Mundi” are an embedded integral part of the dual novel “Spiritus Mundi” and have also been nominated for the Pushcart Prize by “Poetry Pacific” a sister renown online journal of poetry.

To See Poems from Spiritus Mundi on the Pyrokinection site see: http://www.pyrokinection.com/2012/06/three-poems-from-robert-sheppard.html

To see three more of the Poems from Spiritus Mundi on Poetry Pacific see: http://poetrypacific.blogspot.com/2013/03/3-poems-by-robert-sheppard.html

Poet & Novelist Robert Sheppard, Author of Spiritus Mundi

Pyrokinection

Where words come to burn . . .

Pages

Three Poems from Robert Sheppard

Tree in Winter

Exfoliate of lives errant,
Exfoliate of dreams illusive,
Exfoliate of desires obscurant,
Exfoliate of loves derisive,
This only Tree
In Winter,
Inward flows its long sap,
Like the flowing of glass.
Far below, hung as on one branch,
City of Illusions,
Derisive, Buzzes,
Eternal dwelling place of subjective beings,
Stares out of windows, refracted honeycombs;
Do not believe they exist,
The men who pursue them.

The Lunatic of One Idea

In the Kingdom of the Blind,
The one-eyed man is King;
In the Empire of the Clouded Mind
The Lunatic of One Idea
Is tyrant dictator
And First Mover.
Hail the Saturnalia!
The First shall be Last!
Joyous Monomania!
Free at last,
Free at last,
Thank God Almighty,
Free at Last!

“Solip-sliding Away”

Over-much selving,
So lips, so lips, so lips
Sliding away,
Tongue, tongue, tonguing
Tonguing, engine of
Tongue,
Run-away, runaway, awaying
A weighing
Auto-drive,
Driverless,
Drive-train,
No one there,
Behind the wheel,
No one there,
Run away engine
Auto-pilot — tongue in the cheek of God.

**These poems first appeared as part of Robert Sheppard’s novel, Spiritus Mundi. They are being reprinted here, with the author’s permission, for the reader’s convenience and enjoyment. (Copyright 2010).

A.J. HuffmanA.J. Huffman has published five solo chapbooks and one joint chapbook through various small presses. Her sixth solo chapbook will be published in October by Writing Knights Press. She is a Pushcart Prize nominee, and the winner of the 2012 Promise of Light Haiku Contest. Her poetry, fiction, and haiku have appeared in hundreds of national and international journals, including Labletter, The James Dickey Review, Bone Orchard, EgoPHobia, Kritya, and Offerta Speciale, in which her work appeared in both English and Italian translation.

POETRY PACIFIC

a literary e.zine for true lovers of words & wisdom

Monday, 4 March 2013

3 Poems by Robert Sheppard

Moby Dick

Again,

the human need for

surfacing

from meaningless

voids.

Again, She blows, She breaches!

Again,

must we float,

that we may live.

These depths bring not

enlightenment,

but death.

Flotsam and jetsam,

return

the things

Of this world.

_____

Zeno’s Paradox

Words have power

To arrest the flight of an arrow

And the arrival of death

Is deferred

In a word—-

The delimiting case

Of the world.

The approach of

Death

Hollows out

Our present,

And the void

From which we speak.

Life begins in silence,

Ends in silence,

Its obituary

Then told in a language–

But a further edition

Of silence on silence.

______

Ineffable Qualia

What is it like to be a bat?

In the dark dark to live,

Hanging upside down in caves,

Navigating blind—

By the sonar of our own shrieks

Echoing from a shrieking world?

It is like nothing.

It is like nothing—-

Nothing but ourselves.

_______

[Editors Note: The above poems first appeared as part of the novel, Spiritus Mundi, by Robert Sheppard.]

————

Poetry Pacific Founding Publisher/Editor-in-Chief:: Changming Yuan [pen name of Yuan Wumin], 7-time Pushcart nominee, grew up in rural China, began to learn the English alphabet at the age of 19 in Shanghai, and published several monographs before moving to Canada as an international student. While pursuing his graduate studies in University of Saskatchewan, he helped establish the Saskatchewan Chinese Monthly, and served as its chief editor until 1992. Since he obtained his PhD in English, he has been tutoring in Vancouver. Changming started to write poetry in English in early August 2004; since mid-2005, he has had poetry appearing in nearly 800 literary journals/anthologies across 28 countries, which include Asia Literary Review, Best Canadian Poetry (2009, 2012), BestNewPoemsOnline, In Other Words, Istanbul Review, Kwani?, LiNQ, London Magazine, Paris/Atlantic, Poetry Kanto, Poetry Salzburg Review, SAND, Saraba Magazine, Taj Mahal Review, Threepenny Review and Two Thirds North. On the Remembrance Day of 2013, Yuan established Poetry Pacific Press (PP Press) at http://poetrypacificpress.blogspot.ca/ in Vancouver. Blogsite:: yuanspoetry.blogspot.ca.

Selected Publications:: 1. Chansons of a Chinaman [Paperback]. Murfreesboro, TN: Leaf Garden Press, 2009. 2. Politics and Poetics: A Comparative Study of John Keats and Li He [Paperback; Monograph]. Berlin: LAP, 2009. 3. Waiting [e.Chapbook]. Red Box Kite, 2012. 4. Landscaping [Paperback]. San Jacinto, California: Flutter Press, July, 2013. 5. Plein Air [Paperback; Micro Chapbook]. Origami Poems Project, 2013.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged 2014 Pushcart Prize Nominated Spiritus Mundi by Robert Sheppard, 2014 Pushcart Prize Nominee Robert Sheppard, A.J. Huffman, Booker Prize Shortlist, ChangMing Yuan, New American Poetry, New American Poets, New Voices in American Poetry, New Voices in World Poetry, New World Literature Poetry, New World Literature Poets, New World Poets, Poems from Spiritus Mundi, Poetry, Poetry Paciific, Pulitzer Prize Shortlist, Pushcart Prize, Pushcart Prize Nominated Spiritus Mundi by Robert Sheppard, Pushcart Prize Nominee Robert Sheppard, Pyrokinection, Robert Sheppard, Spiritus Mundi, Spiritus Mundi Novel by Robert Sheppard, World Literature, World Poetry | Leave a comment

PUSHCART PRIZE GIVEAWAY CELEBRATION!—-BOOK I OF THE DUAL NOVEL SPIRITUS MUNDI IS NOW AVAILABLE FREE ON AMAZON, SMASHWORDS, BARNES & NOBLE AND OTHER OUTLETS!

Posted on December 15, 2013 by robertalexandersheppard

PUSHCART PRIZE GIVEAWAY CELEBRATION!—-BOOK I OF THE DUAL NOVEL SPIRITUS MUNDI IS NOW AVAILABLE FREE ON AMAZON, SMASHWORDS, BARNES & NOBLE AND OTHER OUTLETS!

World Literature Forum on LinkedIn is honored to announce that Spiritus Mundi, Novel by Robert Sheppard has been included in the nominations for the presitigious 2014 Pushcart Prize, including several of the “Poems from Spiritus Mundi,” which appear as an embedded and integral part of the novel. The novel brings the world together spiritually and in world community—the inspiring story of People Power leading to the formation of a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly where the world comes together in an advisory democratic forum similar to the EU Parliament for the first time in world history!

________________________________________________________________

ACT NOW!

TO GET YOUR FREE e-COPY OF PUSHCART PRIZE NOMINEE ROBERT SHEPPARD’S SPIRITUS MUNDI NOW FOLLOW THIS SMASHWORDS LINK TO DOWNLOAD:

Spiritus Mundi Book I, The Novel (5.0 Stars on Smashwords) https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/303856

_______________________________________________________________

https://robertalexandersheppard.wordpress.com/2013/04/11/poetry-pacific-3-poems-by-robert-sheppard/

INTRODUCING PUSHCART PRIZE NOMINEE ROBERT SHEPPARD’S EPIC NOVEL SPIRITUS MUNDI

Author’s E-mail: rsheppard99_2000@yahoo.com

ON SPIRITUS MUNDI

Robert McDowell, Editor, Writer, Marketer, Editorial Cra, The Nature of Words

______________________________________________________

Raymond P. Keen, School Psychologist, Department of Defense Dependents Schools (DODDS)

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Nicole Breanne, Content Coordinator, Ranker.com _____________________________________________________

Alina Mu Liu, Official Interpreter, Editor & Translator, HM Courts & Tribunal Service, London UK & the United Nations

Jaime Martinez-Tolentino, Writer” November 19, 2012

————————————————————————–

Lara Biyuts, Reviewer and Blogger at Goodreads.com and Revue Blanche

________________________________________________________

Doug Draime Writer, Freelance

___________________________________________________

Jim Rogers, Owner and Director, AXL

______________________________________________

“Robert Sheppard is an exceptional thinker! His work should be read and made the subject of critical study.”May 26, 2012

Georgia Banks-Martin, Editor, New Mirage Journal

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Carl Macki, Owner, Carl Macki Social Media

——————————————————————————

Glenda Fralin, Author, Organization NWG

__________________________________________________________

Dr. Robert Rose, Radio Show Host, http://www.blogtalkradio.com/icdrrose

________________________________________________________________

Related Links and Websites: Spiritus Mundi, Novel by Robert Sheppard

For Introduction and Overview of the Novel: https://spiritusmundinovel.wordpress.com/

For Updates on the Upcoming Movie Version of the Novel, Spiritus Mundi & Casting of Actors and Actresses for Leading Roles See: https://robertalexandersheppard.wordpress.com/

To Read Abut the Occupy Wall Street Movement in Spiritus Mundi: http://occupywallstreetnovel.wordpress.com/

For Author’s Blog: https://robertalexandersheppard.wordpress.com/

To Read a Sample Chapter from Spiritus Mundi: https://spiritusmundisamplechapters.wordpress.com/

To Read Fantasy, Myth and Magical Realism Excerpts from Spiritus Mundi: https://spiritusmundifantasymythandmagicalrealism.wordpress.com/

To Read Sexual Excerpts from Spiritus Mundi: The Varieties of Sexul Experience: https://spiritusmundivarietiesofsexualexperience.wordpress.com/

To Read Spy, Espionage and Counter-terrorism Thriller Excerpts from Spiritus Mundi: http://spiritusmundispyespionagecounterterrorism.wordpress.com/

To Read Geopolitical and World War Three Excerpts from Spiritus Mundi: https://spiritusmundigeopoliticalworldwar3.wordpress.com/

To Read Spiritual and Religious Excerpts from Spiritus Mundi: https://spiritusmundionspiritualityandreligion.wordpress.com/

To Read about the Global Campaign for a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly in Spiritus Mundi: https://spiritusmundiunitednationsparliamentaryassembly.wordpress.com/

To Read Poetry from Spiritus Mundi：https://spiritusmundipoetry.wordpress.com/

For Discussions on World Literature and Literary Criticism in Spiritus Mundi: http://worldliteratureandliterarycriticism.wordpress.com/

For Discussions of World History and World Civilization in Spiritus Mundi: https://worldhistoryandcivilizationspiritusmundi.wordpress.com/

To Read the Blog of Eva Strong from Spiritus Mundi: https://evasblogfromspiritusmundi.wordpress.com/

To Read the Blog of Andreas Sarkozy from Spiritus Mundi: http://andreasblogfromspiritusmundi.wordpress.com/

To Read the Blog of Yoriko Oe from Spiritus Mundi: http://yorikosblogfromspiritusmundi.wordpress.com/

To Read the Blog of Robert Sartorius from Spiritus Mundi: http://sartoriusblogfromspiritusmundi.wordpress.com/

Highlights:

All the Highlights of the novel cannot be contained in such a short Introduction, but a few of them would include:

1. Spiritus Mundi is the first novel in world history to portray the creation of a United Nations Parliamentary Assemblyon the working model, inter alia, of the European Parliament;

4. Spiritus Mundi is a Spellbinding Terrorism/Counterterrorism novel involving a global plot to conceal an atomic bomb in a Chinese Teracotta Warrior to be detonated in Jerusalem;

6. Establishes and grounds the new genre of the Global Novel written in Global English, the international language of the world,

12. Features the cross-cultural experiences and search for roots, sexual and spiritual fulfillment and authenticity of Asian-American character Jennie Zheng, and Pari Kasiwar of India;

15. Is a fantastic read on a roller-coaster ride of high adventure and self-exploration!

NEW BOOK RELEASE: SPIRITUS MUNDI BY ROBERT SHEPPARD NOW AVAILABLE ON AMAZON!

Spiritus Mundi, Book I: The Novel: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00CIGJFGO

Spiritus Mundi, Book II: The Romance http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00CGM8BZG

CHECK OUT SPIRITUS MUNDI’S 5.O-STAR GOODREADS RATING AVERAGE & REVIEWS ON GOODREADS:

Book I (5.0-Stars on Goodreads) http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17857619-spiritus-mundi-book-i

Book II (5.0-Stars on Goodreads) http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17857704-spiritus-mundi-book-ii-the-romance

CHECK OUT A FULL SUMMARY OF SPIRITUS MUNDI ON SHELFARI before purchasing at:

http://www.shelfari.com/books/36123188/Spiritus-Mundi—Book-I-The-Novel http://www.shelfari.com/books/36123187/Spiritus-Mundi—Book-II-The-Romance

Spiritus Mundi is also available on SMASHWORDS in ALL FORMATS:

Book I (5.0 Stars on Smashwords) https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/303856 Book II (5.0 Stars on Smashwords) https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/303798

Spiritus Mundi is also now available at the following sites:

How to Tune In: ============ You can tune in by clicking on the following BlogTalkRadio link:

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/icdrrose/2013/05/17/robert-sheppard-global-consciousness

or you can listen in anytime to the recorded Podcasts of the May 17 Interview, or past Interviews:

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/icdrrose http://www.blogtalkradio.com/icdrrose/2012/08/01/robert-sheppard–spiritus-mundi-a-novel

Spiritus Mundi, Novel by Robert Sheppard: Table of Contents

Spiritus Mundi

Contents

Book One Spiritus Mundi: The Novel Chapters 1-33

Departure (Beijing)
A Failing Quest (New York)
War Council & Counteroffensive (Geneva)
New Beginnings (London)
Republic of Letters (Berlin)
Fathers and Sons (Washington,D.C.)
Ulysses: Blogo Ergo Sum (Beijing)
Frequently Asked Questions (London)
In the Middle Kingdom (Beijing)

10. Past and Present (London-South Africa)

11. Telemachus (Washington, D.C.)

12. The Everlasting Nay (Beijing)

13. My Brother’s Keeper (London)

14. In the Global Village (Beijing-Tokyo)

15. Deceits and Revelations (London)

16. Be Ready for Anything (Beijing)

17. The Obscure Object of Desire (London-Pyongyang)

18. Sufferings (Beijing)

19. Of the Yearnings of the Caged Spirit (London)

20. Cyclops (Washington, D.C.)

21. The Engines of Illusion (Beijing)

22. On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (London)

23. The Temptation of the Sirens (Beijing)

24. Truth or Consequences (London)

25. Lazarus Laughed (Beijing)

26. Neptune’s Fury & The Perils of the Sea (The Maldive Islands)

Naval Diaries and Ship’s Logs of Admiral Sir George Rose Sartorius (1780-1875)

27. Penelope (London)

28. The Volcano’s Underworld (Mexico City)

Teatro Magico

29. The Everlasting Yea (London)

30. Paradise Regained (Little Gidding)

31. To the South of Eden (Kenya-to Midrand-Johannesburg South Africa)

32. In a Glass Darkly (London)

33. Spiritus Mundi

Book Two Spiritus Mundi: The Romance Chapters 1-21

Gerusalemme Liberata & Orlando Furioso (Jerusalem)
In a Glass Darkly (London)
Great Expectations (Jerusalem)
The Parable of the Cave (Qom, Iran)
The Xth Day of the Crisis (London)
The Supreme Leader & The Three Messiahs (Qom)
Going for the Jugular (London)
The Night Journey, Goethe & The Monkey King (Qom)
The Central Sea, The Crystal Bead Game & The Quest

10. The Island of Omphalos & The Mothers

11. The Council of the Immortals & The Trial By Ordeal

12. Nemesis

13. Armageddon (London)

14. The Fever Breaks

15. High Noon & Showdown at the OK Corral (Washington, D.C.)

16. Ecce Homo (Jerusalem)

17. Deliverance (London/Lhasa)

18. For Every Action…. (Moscow/Beijing)

19. The Burial of the Dead (London/Little Gidding)

20. Spiritus Mundi (London/Jerusalem)

21. In My End is My Beginning

—-The Convening of the First Meeting of the

United Nations Parliamentary Assembly (New York)

Appendix 1: A United Nations Parliamentary Assembly: Frequently Asked Questions

Appendix 2: Spiritus Mundi: Index of Principal Characters

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged 2014 Literary Prizes, Best New Books, Best New Epic Novels, Best New Novels, Best New Spy Novels, Best New Thriller Novels, Best New WWIII Novels, Best Novel of the Year, Best Novel of the Year 2013, Best Novel of the Year 2014, Book Giveaways, Book Giveaways December, Booker International Prize Shortlist, Booker Prize Shortlish, Christmas Giveaway e-Books, Christmas Giveaways, Free, Free Books, Free Books for Christmas Presents, Free Books Online Now!, Free Books Online!, Free Christmas e-Book Gifts, Free Christmas Gift Books, Free Christmas Gifts, Free e-Books, Free e-Books for Christmas Presents, Free e-Books Online, Free Giveaways!, Get Free Books Now!, Get Free e-Books Now!, Giveaways, Hit Books 2014, Hot New Free Novels, Hot New Novels, Hottest Free Books, Literary Prizes, Literary Prizes 2014, Literature Prizes, Man Booker Prize Shortlish, Nobel Prize Shortlist, Orwell Prize Shortlish, Pulitzer Prize Shortlist, Pushcart Prize, Pushcart Prize 2014 Nominees, Pushcart Prize Giveaway Celebration, Pushcart Prize Nominee Robert Sheppard's Novel Spiritus Mundi, Pushcart Prize Nominee Spiritus Mundi Novel by Robert Sheppard, Pushcart Prize Shortlish, Robert Sheppard Nominated for Presigious Pushcart Prize, Robert Sheppard Nominated for Prestigious 2014 Pushcart Prize for Literature, Spiritus Mundi, Spiritus Mundi Nominated for Prestigious 2014 Pushcart Prize, Spiritus Mundi Nominated for Pushcart Prize, Spiritus Mundi Novel by R, Spiritus Mundi Novel by Robert Sheppard, Spiritus Mundi Novel by Robert Sheppard Nominated for Prestigious 2014 Pushcart Prize for Literature, Spiritus Mundi Novel by Robert Sheppard Nominated for Prestigious Pushcart Prize 2014 | Leave a comment

WHAT EVERY EDUCATED CITIZEN OF THE WORLD NEEDS TO KNOW—-WORLD THEATER—CLASSICAL DRAMA IN WORLD LITERATURE——AESCHYLUS, SOPHOCLES, EURIPIDES, ARISTOPHANES, KALIDASA, THE NATYASASTRA & CLASSICAL SANSKRIT THEATER, JAPANESE NOH, BUNRAKU AND KABUKI THEATER, CHINESE ZAJU YUAN DRAMA, MENANDER, PLAUTUS, TERENCE, SHAKESPEARE, CALDERON, RACINE & MOLIERE——FROM THE WORLD LITERATURE FORUM RECOMMENDED CLASSICS AND MASTERPIECES SERIES, ROBERT SHEPPARD, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

Posted on December 13, 2013 by robertalexandersheppard

WHAT EVERY EDUCATED CITIZEN OF THE WORLD NEEDS TO KNOW—-WORLD THEATER—CLASSICAL DRAMA IN WORLD LITERATURE——AESCHYLUS, SOPHOCLES, EURIPIDES, ARISTOPHANES, KALIDASA, THE NATYASASTRA & CLASSICAL SANSKRIT THEATER, JAPANESE NOH, BUNRAKU AND KABUKI THEATER, CHINESE ZAJU YUAN DRAMA, MENANDER, PLAUTUS, TERENCE, SHAKESPEARE, CALDERON, RACINE & MOLIERE——FROM THE WORLD LITERATURE FORUM RECOMMENDED CLASSICS AND MASTERPIECES SERIES, ROBERT SHEPPARD, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

When we think of the term “literature” in modern times immediately novels, short stories, epic and lyric poetry and heavy tomes such as the Norton Anthology come to mind, but in our modern mental compartmentalization we often forget that drama, theater, tragedy and comedy have always been an organic part of literature since times immemorial, a fortiori, in the times before the existence of the printed word or even the invention of writing itself. The even more modern invention of cinematic film also suffers from this artificial separation of performed narrative from written narrative genres and forces us to remind ourselves that it too constitutes an integral part of our modern “literature” and World Literature, the means by which we collectively represent, share and interpret our world and our lives.

Classical Greek Theater

CLASSICAL GREEK DRAMA: AESCHYLUS, SOPHOCLES, EURIPIDES & ARISTOPHANES AND THE BIRTH OF TRAGEDY AND COMEDY

It is probable that drama in the widest sense—-narrative performances, rites and rituals of primitive religions, tribal ceremonies involving recitation, impersonation, music and dance and campfire enactments of fictional storytelling and divination have been with us from primordial times antedating Neolithic hunter-gatherer societies from the advent of human language. Drama as we know it as an institution of literature, however, may be traced to the birth of tragedy and comedy in Ancient Greece, paralleled by other traditions such a Sanskrit Theater in India and Noh Drama in Japan.

Drama is the specific mode of fiction represented in performance. The word comes from the Greek word meaning “action,” (δρᾶμα, drama) or “to do.” Unlike written fiction, drama presupposes enactment of a narrative within a theater, performed by actors on a stage before an audience, and is thus by its nature a collaborative means of literary production with a collective form of reception. The development of the dramatic tradition is long and continuous, from such classics as Sophocles’ “Oedipus the King” (c. 429 BC) to Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” (1601) to modern works such as Eugene O’Neill’s “Long Day’s Journey into Night (1956). Indeed, the tradition has been not only continuous over millennia, but highly regenerative, with plays such as Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” and “A Comedy of Errors” “borrowing” key plots and elements such as the mistaken identity of identical twins, prologues to the audience, and the type of the comic courtesan from the Roman dramatist Plautus’ in his “Menaechmi” and “Amphitryon,” works which in turn owe much to borrowings from the earlier Greek “New Comedy” masters such as Menander of the Periclean era.

Masks of Comedy and Tragedy

Greek drama generally developed through the twin genres of Comedy and Tragedy, typically represented by the disparate “laughing mask” of Thalia, the Muse of Comedy, and the “weeping face” of Melpomene, the Muse of Tragedy. Drama is often combined with its sister arts of music, song and dance, epitomized in modern Opera, and such was the case in Greek comedy and tragedy, as well as sister traditions such as Peking Opera and the Japanese Noh theater. This organic connection of the verse of drama its music was emphasized by Nietzsche in his seminal work “The Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Music” (Die Gebürt der Tragȍdie aus dem Geist der Musik” in which he formulated the famous aesthetic categories of the Apollonian and Dionysian.

Actor Performing Oedipus Tyrannus in the Mask & Costume of Classical Greek Tragedy

TRAGEDY

Tragedy is a form of drama based on human suffering that invokes in its audience an accompanying catharsis, or pleasure and emotional release in the viewing. While many culture have shared this seemingly paradoxical experience, tragedy has become one of the hallmarks of the self-definition of Western Civilization, providing a powerful source of cultural identity and historical continuity from the Greeks through Shakespeare, Lope de Vega, Racine, Schiller, through the naturalistic tragedy of Strindberg, the “Gesamtkunstwerk” of Wagner’s Ring Cycle, the modernist meditations on death and human existence of Beckett and on to Müller’s postmodernist reworkings of the tragic canon. A long list of philosophers have analyzed and philosophized on the nature and implications of tragedy including Plato, Aristotle, Saint Augustine, Voltaire, Hume, Diderot, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Freud, Benjamin, Camus, Lacan and Deleuze.

The deepest analysis of the nature of Tragedy comes for Aristotle’s “Poetics” in which he defines tragedy as an imitation ( μίμησις mimesis) of an action characterized by seriousness and dignity, often involving a great person who experiences a reversal of fortune (peripetia, περιπέτεια) from good to bad, which in turn invokes in the audience pity and fear through identification, leading to catharsis (κάθαρσις) , or emotional cleansing and healing through their vicarious experience of these emotions through the suffering of the protagonist.

According to Aristotle, the structure of the best tragedy should not be simple but complex, although limited by the “unities” of time, place and action, i.e. an action occurring in a single place, within a single day and focused on a single protagonist’s downfall. The reversal of fortune must be caused by the tragic hero’s “flaw of character or mistake” (hamartia, ἁμαρτία), implying that the protagonist should be neither perfectly good nor perfectly evil but of mixed or imperfect human character. The downfall or reversal should be the inevitable but unforeseeable result of the protagonist’s imperfection or lack of wisdom, and typically is realized too late by the protagonist himself in some moment of tragic recognition or revelation (anagnoresis, ἀναγνώρισις). Thus Aristotle gives the classic definition of Tragedy (τραγῳδία) as:

“Tragedy is an imitation of an action that is admirable, complete (composed of an introduction, a middle part and an ending), and possesses magnitude; in language made pleasurable, each of its species separated in different parts; performed by actors, not through narration; effecting through pity and fear the purification of such emotions.”

This definition of tragedy in the “Poetics” has guided the understanding of the genre in Western Civilization for 2500 years, though some have diverged or disagreed with it. Berthold Brecht even defined his “Epic Theater” as a kind of “Anti-Aristotelian Tragedy,” purposely rejecting the identification of the audience with the tragic hero and its catharsis in favor on a non-identification which would instead stimulate revolutionary understanding and real social action.

The three greatest writers of classic Greek tragedy are traditionally recognized as Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides:

AESCHYLUS

Aeschylus–The Father of Greek Tragedy

Aeschylus (525– 455 BC) was the first of the three ancient Greek tragedians and is often described as the father of tragedy. According to Aristotle, he expanded the number of characters in plays to allow for conflict amongst them, whereas previously characters had interacted only with the chorus. At least one of his works was influenced by the historical events of his day, “The Persians” which recounts the Persian invasion of Greece which took place during his lifetime. Very few of that kind were ever written. He is most remembered, however, for his great “Orestia Trilogy,” consisting of “Agamemnon,” “The Libation Bearers” and “The Eumenides” based on the Homeric saga of Agamemnon’s participation in the siege of Troy in the “Iliad” in which he had sacrificed his innocent daughter Iphigenia to the gods for the success of the war, and the tragic aftermath of his subsequent murder by his wife Clytemnestra and her lover, bringing about the tragic dilemma of his son, Orestes, who must choose between his duty of avenging his father or sparing his own mother, his father’s murderer.

SOPHOCLES

Sophocles

Sophocles’ (c. 497-406 BC) 123 plays were written later than those of Aeschylus and earlier than or contemporary with those of Euripides, but only seven have survived in a complete form: Ajax, Antigone, The Women of Trachis, Oedipus the King (Oedipus Tyrannus), Electra, Philoctates and Oedipus at Colonnus. He competed in around 30 drama competitions at the religious festivals of Athens and won 24, never being judged lower than second place. Aeschylus won 14 competitions, and was sometimes defeated by Sophocles, while Euripides won only 4 competitions.

His most famous tragedies of Sophocles feature Oedipus and Antigone and are generally known as the Theban Plays. Sophocles influenced the development of the drama, most importantly by adding a third actor, thereby reducing the importance of the chorus in the presentation of the plot. He also developed his characters to a significantly greater extent than earlier playwrights such as Aeschylus.

“Oedipus Tyrannus” is his most famous play and the source for much later analysis, including Freud’s famous formulation of the theory of the “Oedipus Complex.” Oedipus is the kingly protagonist who wrestles with fate and only belatedly achieves self-recognition of his blindness to his own faults. Oedipus’ infanticide is planned by his parents, Laius and Jocasta, to avert him fulfilling a prophecy; in truth, the servant entrusted with the infanticide passes the infant on through a series of intermediaries to a childless couple, who adopt him not knowing his history. Oedipus eventually learns of the Delphic Oracle’s prophecy of him, that he would kill his father and marry his mother; Oedipus attempts to flee his fate without harming his parents (at this point, he does not know that he is adopted). Oedipus meets a man at a crossroads accompanied by servants; Oedipus and the man fought, and Oedipus killed the man. (This man was his father, Laius, not that anyone apart from the gods knew this at the time). He becomes the ruler of Thebes after solving the riddle of the sphinx and in the process, marries the widowed Queen, his mother Jocasta. Thus the stage is set for horror. When the truth comes out, following from another true but confusing prophecy from Delphi, Jocasta commits suicide, Oedipus blinds himself and leaves Thebes, and the children are left to sort out the consequences themselves–which provides the grounds for the later parts of the cycle of plays, “Oedipus at Colon’s” and “Antigone.”

EURIPIDES

Euripides—Greek Tragedian

Euripides is identified with theatrical innovations that have profoundly influenced drama down to modern times, especially in the representation of traditional, mythical heroes as ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances. This new approach led him to pioneer developments that later writers adapted to comedy, some of which are characteristic of romance. Yet he also became “the most tragic of poets,” focusing on the inner lives and motives of his characters in a way previously unknown. He was, as one critic put it, “the creator of…that cage which is the theatre of Shakespeare’s Othello, Racine’s Phèdre, of Ibsen and Strindberg in which “…imprisoned men and women destroy each other by the intensity of their loves and hates”, and yet he was also the literary ancestor of comic dramatists as diverse as Menander and George Bernard Shaw.

He was also unique among the writers of ancient Athens for the sympathy he demonstrated towards all victims of society, including women. His conservative male audiences were frequently shocked by the ‘heresies’ he put into the mouths of characters, such as these words of his heroine Medea:

Sooner would I stand

Three times to face their battles, shield in hand,

Than bear one child!

His contemporaries associated him with Socrates as a leader of a decadent intellectualism, both of them being frequently lampooned by comic poets such as Aristophanes.

When Euripides’s plays are sequenced in time, they reveal that his outlook underwent profound change and disillusionment towards a harsher, harder maturity, providing a “spiritual biography” along these lines:

an early period of high tragedy (Medea, Hippolytus)
a patriotic period at the outset of the Peloponnesian War (Children of Hercules, Suppliants)
a middle period of disillusionment at the senselessness of war (Hecuba, Women of Troy)
an escapist period with a focus on romantic intrigue (Ion, Iphigenia in Tauris, Helen)
a final period of tragic despair (Orestes, Phoenician Women, Bacchae)

COMEDY

Greek Comedy Performance of Aristophanes’ “The Birds”

ARISTOPHANES AND THE “OLD COMEDY”

Aristophanes—The Father of Greek Comedy

The Greek word for ‘comedy’ (κωμῳδία, kōmōidía) derives from the words for ‘revel’ and ‘song’ (kōmos and ōdē) and according to Aristotle comic drama actually developed from song. The first, official comedy at the City Dionysia was not staged until 487 BCE by which time tragedy had already been long established there. The first comedy at the Lenaia Festival was staged later still, only about 20 years before the performance there of The Acharnians, the first of Aristophanes’ surviving plays. According to Aristotle, comedy was slow to gain official acceptance because nobody took it seriously, yet, only sixty years after comedy first appeared, Aristophanes observed that producing comedies was the most difficult work of all. Competition at the Dionysian festivals needed dramatic conventions for plays to be judged, but it also fuelled innovations. Developments were quite rapid and Aristotle was able to distinguish between ‘Old’ and ‘New’ Comedy by 330 BCE. The trend from Old Comedy to New Comedy saw a move away from highly topical concerns often satirizing and lampooning real individuals or local issues towards generalized or universalized situations and stock characters. This was partly due to the internationalization of cultural perspectives during and after the Peloponnesian War. For later ancient commentators such as Plutarch,New Comedy was a more sophisticated form of drama than Old Comedy. However Old Comedy was in fact a complex and sophisticated dramatic form incorporating many approaches to humor and entertainment.

In his famous Poetics, Aristotle defined Comedy as one of the original four genres of literature. The other three genres are tragedy, epic poetry, and lyric poetry. “Literature” in general is defined by Aristotle as a mimesis, or imitation of life. Comedy is the third form of literature, being the most divorced from a true mimesis. Tragedy is the truest mimesis, followed by epic poetry, comedy and lyric poetry. The Poetics itself focuses on tragedy, but it is believed that Aristotle either wrote or intended a parallel work to analyze the deeper workings of Comedy, but that it was either never written or has been lost.

The genre of comedy is defined by a certain pattern according to Aristotle’s definition. Comedies begin with low or base characters seeking insignificant aims, and end with some accomplishment of the aims which either lightens the initial baseness or reveals the insignificance of the aims. A modern application of this theory would be the story the “loser” who goes about things the wrong way, but in the end wins the “pretty” girl. Comedies usually also have elements of the supernatural, typically magic and, for the Ancient Greeks, the gods. Comedy thus includes the unrealistic in order to portray the realistic. For the Greeks, all comedies ended happily which is opposite of tragedy, which ends sadly. In a wider perspective, Comedy becomes an enactment of the renewal of life, whereby a conflict of “the old order or older generation” yields to and is reinvigorated by the challenge of “the younger generation and a new order,” generally typified in the “happy ending” which embodies not only the triumph of the young lovers over adversity but the eternal renewal of life itself.

Aristophanes’ (c. 446 – 386 BC) most famous play is “The Clouds” in which he satirizes Socrates, philosophers and the disreputable practice of a prostituted “rhetoric” modernly associated with “shyster lawyers.” It presents the story of a near-bankrupt father who wishes to send his son to “The Thoughtery,” a Socratic school reputed to produce rhetoricians capable of winning law cases against creditors through clever and slippery arguments. The father himself begins study at “The Thoughtery” and encounters Socrates in a balloon communing with the clouds and attempts to learn the secrets of rhetoric which might deliver him from his creditors. Socrates attempts to stimulate his imagination, but the old man fails miserably and is dismissed from the school. Thereupon he persuades his reluctant son to enter the school, which he does and becomes a star pupil. However the outcome is not happy for the father as the son uses his new corrupt cleverness to think up arguments as to why the father has no right to beat or punish the son, even that the son, being made wiser by education, now has an obligation to instruct, beat and punish his father and mother! The play ends with the father in outrage leading a mob to destroy “The Thoughtery.” Plato, however, recorded that the effect of “The Clouds” was not innocuous humor but actually had a deleterious effect in poisoning Socrates reputation in Athens, contributing in part to the events leading to his execution.

Aristoophanes and Menander: The Old Comedy & The New Comedy

MENANDER AND THE “NEW COMEDY”

Menander—Father of the “New Comedy”

The trend from Old Comedy to New Comedy featuring a move away from highly topical concerns satirizing and lampooning real individuals and local issues towards generalized or universalized situations and archetypal stock characters was spearheaded by Menander (342– c. 290 BC). An admirer and imitator of Euripides, Menander resembles him in his keen observation of practical life, his analysis of the emotions, and his fondness for moral maxims, many of which became proverbial: “The property of friends is common,” “Whom the gods love die young,” “Evil communications corrupt good manners.” These maxims were afterwards collected and edited into a kind of moral textbook for the use of schools.

New Comedy tends to shift the scene of comedic action from the public city life of the forum to the recurrent private household situations of domestic life, and from lampooning public figures to portraying recurrent fictional private conflicts, such as those between fathers and sons or the older generation and youth. It thus becomes less local and fixed in time and potentially more universal.

It is said that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. In this Menander exercises influence down to the present time through both works of direct imitation and of further imitation of imitators. Menander found many Roman imitators. Thus the Roman comic playwright Terence in his Eunuchus, Andria, Heauton Timorumenos and Adelphi were avowedly taken from Menander, though adapted and reconfigured into original works in new contexts. Thus in the Andria were combined Menander’s The Woman from Andros and The Woman from Perinthos, in the Eunuchus, Menander’s The Eunuch and The Flatterer, while the Adelphi was compiled partly from Menander and partly from Diphilus. The Bacchides and Stichus of Plautus, “The Roman Shakespeare” were based upon Menander’s The Double Deceiver and Brotherly-Loving Men. In turn, Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” and “A Comedy of Errors” “borrowing” key plots and elements such as the mistaken identity of identical twins, prologues to the audience, and the type of the comic courtesan from the Roman dramatist Plautus’ in his “Menaechmi” and “Amphitryon,” works owing much to borrowings from the “New Comedy” motifs and comedic conventions pioneered by Menander.

ROMAN DRAMA: COMEDY AND TRAGEDY—PLAUTUS, TERENCE & SENECA

PLAUTUS—THE ROMAN SHAKESPEARE

Plautus—The Roman Shakespeare

Playwrights throughout history have looked to Plautus (254–184 BC) for character, plot, humor, and other elements of comedy. His influence ranges from similarities in idea to full literal translations woven into plays. The playwright’s apparent familiarity with the absurdity of humanity and both the comedy and tragedy that stem from this absurdity have inspired succeeding playwrights centuries after his death. The most famous of these successors is Shakespeare—Plautus had a major influence on the Bard’s early comedies. In addition, Plautus like Shakespeare, coming early in the development of Latin literature as a popular medium had a seminal influence on the development of Latin vernacular as a literary language. Like Shakespeare also, he was a prolific borrower from his Greek models and an agent for the transfer of Greek culture into Roman culture, just as Shakespeare in the mode of the Renaissance, translated many aspects of classical Greek and Roman culture into popular English consciousness beyond the confines of academic scholarship.

Shakespeare borrowed from Plautus as Plautus borrowed from his Greek models. Nevertheless, Shakespeare covers a much greater area in the structure of his plays than Plautus does. Shakespeare was writing for an audience whose minds weren’t restricted to house and home, but looked toward the greater world beyond and the role that they might play in that world. Another difference between the audiences of Shakespeare and Plautus is that Shakespeare’s audience was Christian. At the end of Shakespeare’s Comedy of Errors, the world of the play is returned to normal when a Christian abbess interferes with the feuding. Plautus’ Menaechmi, on the other hand, is almost completely lacking in a supernatural dimension. A character in Plautus’ play would never blame an inconvenient situation on witchcraft—something that is quite common in Shakespeare.

Shakespeare also uses the same kind of opening monologue so common in Plautus’s plays, even using a “villain” in The Comedy of Errors of the same type as the one in Menaechmi, switching the character from a doctor to a teacher but keeping the character a shrewd, educated man. Such elements appear in many of his works, such as Twelfth Night or A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and had a deep impact on Shakespeare’s writing. Another important echo of Plautus is the stock character of the parasite. Shakespeare’s best example of this is Falstaff, the portly and cowardly knight who shares many characteristics with Plautus’ parasite Artotrogus from Miles Gloriosus (The Boastful Soldier). Both characters seem fixated on food and where their next meal is coming from and rely on flattery in order to gain these gifts, willing to bury their patrons in empty praise.

TERENCE—ADAPTER AND TRANSMITTER OF NEW COMEDY

Terence—From Roman Slave to Roman Playwright

The Roman comedic playwright Terence (185–159 BC) was a playwright of the Roman Republic of North African descent. A Roman senator, brought Terence to Rome as a slave, educated him and later on, impressed by his abilities freed him. He became quite popular for his comedies, often like Shakespeare, adapted into new forms from earlier models, in particular Menander. Thus in Terence’s Andria were combined Menander’s The Woman from Andros and The Woman from Perinthos, in the Eunuchus, Menander’s The Eunuch and The Flatterer, while the Adelphi was compiled partly from Menander and partly from Diphilus

One famous quotation by Terence from his play Heuton Timorumenos reads: “Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto.” or “I am a human being, I consider nothing that is human alien to me” a thought later echoed in the motto of Montaigne’s Essays: “Nihil humanum alienum est” or “nothing human is alien to me.”

SENECA (4 BC – AD 65)—STOIC TRAGEDIAN OF IMPERIAL ROME

The Death of Seneca

Seneca’s plays were widely read in medieval and Renaissance European universities and strongly influenced tragic drama in that time, including Elizabethan England’s Shakespeare and Jonson, France’s Corneille and Racine, and the Netherlands’ Joost van den Vondel. He is regarded as the source and inspiration for what is known as “Revenge Tragedy,” starting with Thomas Kyd’s ‘The Spanish Tragedy,’ Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” and continuing well into the Jacobean Period.

Originally born in Cordoba, Spain he was tutor and later advisor to Emperor Nero and was later forced to commit suicide for alleged complicity in a conspiracy to assassinate him. Even earlier he lived a dangerous existence at the Imperial court, allegedly incurring the wrath of the Emperor Caligula by having an affair with the emperor’s sister Julia, who was also suspected to have had incestuous relations with her brother. After Caligula’s death he was banished into exile by the next emperor, Claudius because of the same sexual relationship. Seneca was, however, a survivor with the ability to bounce back from adversity in the Imperial court, governed as it was by arguably history’s most dysfunctional family, the Julian-Claudian Dynasty in which sexual and homicidal psychopaths were “the new normal.” Emperor Claudius’s fourth wife, Agrippina, had him recalled from exile to be the principal tutor of her young son and the next Emperor Nero. When Nero first became emperor he leaned heavily on Seneca for advice and was considered a competent ruler for a young man. Later, as Nero in the family tradition degenerated into various degrees of psychopathology Seneca lost influence and then was perceived as an opponent to the Emperor’s whims, incurring suspicion and wrath.

In one of history’s ironies, in spite of his early philandering he obtained a reputation based on his Stoic philosophy in the face of “the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune” related in his Consolations and other works and his sang froid in the face of death and forced suicide, that endeared him to later Christians and conservative scholars. Medieval writers without evidence believed Seneca had been converted to the Christian faith by Saint Paul and regarded his fatal bath in which he opened his veins in the Roman tradition as a kind of disguised baptism. Dante, however, placed Seneca in the First Circle of Hell, or Limbo.

His plays are mostly based on the Greek classical tradition, though with the Roman influence of Vergil and Ovid and include such works as Hercules Furens (The Madness of Hercules), Troades (The Trojan Women), Phaedra, Hercules Oetaeus (Hercules on Oeta) and Oedipus, which usually convey a stoical ethos of detachment from a disappointing world and irrational passions.

CLASSICAL ASIAN DRAMA

Kalidasa’s Classic of Sanskrit Drama Shakuntala

THE CLASSICAL SANSKRIT THEATER OF INDIA, KALIDASA & THE NATYASASTRA (TREATISE ON INDIAN THEATER)

Drama is regarded as the highest achievement of Sanskrit literature. Like the standard repertoire of Greek New Comedy it utilized stock characters, such as the hero (nayaka), heroine (nayika), or clown (vidusaka). Actors may have specialized in a particular type. Kālidāsa in the 3rd-4th century AD, is generally regarded as ancient India’s greatest Sanskrit dramatist. The three most celebrated romantic plays written by Kālidāsa are the Mālavikāgnimitram (Mālavikā and Agnimitra), Vikramorvashiiyam (Pertaining to Vikrama and Urvashi), and Abhijñānaśākuntalam (The Recognition of Shakuntala). The last was inspired by a story in the Mahabharata and is the most famous. It was the first to be translated into English and German. Śakuntalā ( Shakuntala) influenced Goethe’s Faust, and he was so taken by it that he wrote:

Goethe: The Father of World Literature and a Fan of Kalidasa’s Shakuntala

“Wouldst thou the young year’s blossoms and the fruits of its decline

And all by which the soul is charmed, enraptured, feasted, fed,

Wouldst thou the earth and heaven itself in one sole name combine?

I name thee, O Shakuntala! and all at once is said. “

The next greatest Indian dramatist was Bhavabhuti (c. 7th century AD). He is said to have written the following three plays: Malati-Madhava, Mahaviracharita and Uttar Ramacharita. Among these three, the last two cover between them the entire epic of Ramayana. The powerful Indian emperor Harsha (606–648) is credited with having written three plays: the comedy Ratnavali, Priyadarsika, and the Buddhist drama Nagananda. Other famous Sanskrit dramatists include Śhudraka, Bhasa, and Asvaghosa. Though numerous plays written by these playwrights still survive, little is known about the authors themselves.

Drama itself had a checkered history in Indian culture. The ancient Vedas (hymns from between 1500 to 1000 BC that are among the earliest examples of literature in the world) contain no hint of it (although a small number are composed in a form of dialogue) and the rituals of the Vedic period do not appear to have developed into theatre, nor is there any archeological evidence of the existence of early theater. The earliest-surviving fragments of Sanskrit drama date from the 1st century AD and its development came relatively late, perhaps in response to the incursions of Greek cultural influence following the invasion of Alexander the Great into India (ca. 323 BC). Nonetheless, Sankskrit developed a powerful tradition maturing in the time of Kalidasa in the 3^rd-4^th Centuries AD. The Islamic incursion into India from the Sultanate of Delhi through the Mughul Empire stifled the development of theater however, which it discouraged or banned. Under the British Raj theater revived and flourished with additional patronage from such court patrons as Wajid Ali Shah of Oud, contributing in turn to the flourishing of Urdu and Parsi theater and later Bollywood cinema in which, ironically, many Muslim stars became prominent.

THE NATYASASTRA (TREATISE ON SANSKRIT THEATER)

The Natya Shastra (नाट्य शास्त्र, Nāṭyaśāstra) is an ancient Indian treatise on the performing arts encompassing not just theater but also music, dance, costume, makeup, stagecraft and set design. It was written during the period between 200 BCE and 200 CE in classical India and is traditionally attributed to the Sage Bharata.

The Natya Shastra is immensely wide in its scope and its comprehensive detail makes it the foremost compendium on Ancient theater arts, not only in India but the world as a whole. While it primarily deals with stagecraft, it has come to influence music, classical Indian dance and literature as well. It covers stage design, music, dance, makeup, and virtually every other aspect of stagecraft. It is very important to the history of Indian classical music because it is the only text which gives such detail about the music and instruments of the period. Thus, an argument can be made that the Natya Shastra is the foundation of the fine arts as a whole in India. The most authoritative commentary on the Natya Shastra is Abhinavabharati by Abhinavagupta.

KALIDASA—THE SANSKRIT SHAKESPEARE

Kālidāsa (“servant of Kali: कालिदास) was a Classical Sanskrit writer, widely regarded as the greatest poet and dramatist in the Sanskrit language. His floruit (plays)cannot be dated with precision, but most likely falls within the 5th century AD. His plays and poetry are primarily based on the Hindu Puranas and Hindu philosophy.

Kālidāsa’s greatest play is generally agreed to be Shakuntala, much admired by Goethe. Shakuntala (Abhijñānaśākuntalam or “Of Shakuntala recognized by a token”) tells the story of King Dushyanta who, while on a hunting trip, meets Shakuntalā, the adopted daughter of a sage, and marries her. A mishap befalls them when he is summoned back to court: Shakuntala, pregnant with their child, inadvertently offends a visiting sage and incurs a curse, by which Dushyanta will forget her completely until he sees the ring he has left with her. On her trip to Dushyanta’s court in an advanced state of pregnancy, she loses the ring, and has to come away unrecognized. The ring is found by a fisherman who recognizes the royal seal and returns it to Dushyanta, who regains his memory of Shakuntala and sets out to find her. After more travails, they are finally reunited.

EAST ASIAN CLASSICAL THEATER—CHINA AND JAPAN, PEKING OPERA, NOH DRAMA, BUNRAKU AND KABUKI THEATER

THEATER IN CLASSICAL CHINA

Chinese Peking Opera Player in Traditional Mask and Costume

Theatre in China has a long and complex history. Today it is often called Chinese Opera or Peking or related Opera as the dramatic tradition was traditionally a mixed form integrating music, song and dance along with narrative story, rather than pure stageplays. In the Tang Dynasty (618 – 907 AD), sometimes known as “The Age of 1000 Entertainments,” Ming Huang formed an acting school known as “The Pear Garden” to produce a form of drama that was primarily musical. In addition, as in many cultures such as Islamic, Persian and Japanese traditions drama also developed as a serious art form in the puppet theater. Public storytelling before audiences also flourished in the Yuan Dynasty, often accompanied by quasi-dramatization of the tales by the storytellers in front of their public. Tales evolving through Puppet Theater and public storytellers were often later novelized by more mature authors as in the case of Wu Cheng En’s Xi You Ji, or “Journey to the West.” A similar phenomenon also occurred in the West, as in the case of the Faust saga which was first performed in puppet theaters and later rendered in larger works by masters such as Jonson and Goethe.

CHINESE YUAN DYNASTY DRAMA—“ZAJU,” BRECHT & VOLTAIRE

Zaju (杂剧; literally meaning “variety show” ) was a form of Chinese drama ascendant in the Mongol Yuan Dynasty (1206–1368) or Chinese opera which provided entertainment through a synthesis of recitations of prose and poetry, dance, singing, and mime, with a certain emphasis on comedy (or, happy endings). Zaju is a genre of dramas that had its origins in the Song Dynastybut has particularly been associated with the time of the Yuan Dynasty and remains important in terms of the historical study of the theater arts as well as Classical Chinese literature and poetry.

The Yuan zaju were poetic music dramas comprising four acts, with the “act” defined as a set of songs following and completing a certain musical modal progression. Occasionally one or two “wedges,” or short interludes in the form of an aria performed by another character might be added to either support or enhance the plot. Within the acts, lyrics were written to accompany existing tunes or set-rhythmic patterns; and, the major singing roles were restricted to one star per act. The zaju theater, as did Greek and Roman New Comedy, featured particular specialized roles or type characters for performers, such as Dan (旦, dàn, female), Sheng (生, shēng, male), Hua (花, huā, painted-face) and Chou (丑, chŏu, clown).

Berthold Brecht–Adapted Yuan Dynasty Play “The Chalk Circle”

Famous playwrights (that is, authors of zaju) include Guan Hanqing, author of The Injustice to Dou E, and the author Bo Renfu, who wrote three existing plays, plus a lost work on Tang Minghuang and the lady Yang Guifei. Wang Shifu wrote the popular play The Story of the Western Wing which became a classic. Li Qianfu wrote Circle of Chalk, which was used by Berthold Brecht in shaping his “Augsberger Kreidekreis” and later play “Kaukasische Kreidekreis” or Caucasian Chalk Circle, a modern readaptation of the “Judgment of Solomon” theme of two women fighting over a child.

Voltaire: Adapted and Praised the Yuan Dynasty Drama "The Orphan Zhao" by Li Hanqing

Voltaire: Adapted and Praised the Yuan Dynasty Drama “The Orphan Zhao” by Ji Junxian

The Orphan of Zhao (趙氏孤兒, Zhaoshi guer) is another Chinese play from the Yuan era, attributed to the thirteenth-century dramatist Ji Junxian, which depicts the theme of familial revenge, which is placed in the context of Confucian morality and social hierarchical structure. The Orphan of Zhao was the first Chinese play to have been translated into any European language, and was later adapted by Voltaire in his L’Orphelin de la Chine. About his adapted play, Voltaire’s thesis was that of a story exemplifying rational morality, that is as he explained, that genius and reason has a natural superiority over blind force and barbarism. Voltaire praised the Confucian morality of The Orphan of Zhao, remarking that it was a “valuable monument of antiquity, and gives us more insight into the manners of China than all the histories which ever were, or ever will be written of that vast empire”

CLASSICAL THEATER IN JAPAN—NOH, BUNRAKU & KABUKI

Masked Actor in Japanese Noh Drama

NOH & KYOGEN THEATER

Japan’s traditional performing arts of Noh and Kyogen developed together in the 14th century during the Muromachi period (1333－1573). Today, they are thought of together as the art of Nogaku, or as Noh & Kyogen.

Noh is a kind of symbolic drama colored with the graceful aesthetic effect of quiet elegance that is expressed through the word yugen (“elegant, refined, and elusive beauty”). Its subjects are taken from history or classical literature, and it is structured around song and dance. Its most obvious characteristic is that the main actor performs while wearing a mask of exceptional beauty. Its themes are more concerned with human destiny than with mundane events, and it developed into a highly stylized and refined performing art that takes place upon a very simple stage. The play known as The Well-Curb is often used as typical of the vision-like Noh plays of its dramatic world. When audiences experience Noh, they are touched with a feeling different from that evoked by other theatrical forms.

Kyogen is a kind of spoken drama that is based upon laughter and comedy. In contrast to Noh, it uses the everyday life of the common people in feudal society or folk tales as its subject, and realistically depicts a kind of “Everyman” figure. This dynamic art―whose typical main character is a servant named Taro Kaja―evokes a gentle and entertaining humor. Thus, Kyogen fulfills a role similar to that of Classical Greek Comedy, providing relief and relaxation between the tragedies at Greek festivals.

Noh plays can be roughly divided into two types: genzai no (Realistic Noh) and mugen no (Fantasy Noh). In realistic Noh, the main character is someone actually living in this world, and the story proceeds according to real time. The main theme is the depiction of the inner feelings of a character placed in a dramatic situation, and the drama develops through a basically spoken dialogue. In contrast, the main character of a fantasy Noh is a god, demon, or ghost―someone who transcends this ordinary world. Most Noh of this type have two acts: act one, in which the main character appears in some disguise to the waki or foil supporting character, who has come to visit some spot famous in history or literature or legend; and act two, in which the character re-appears in its true form, and usually performs a dance. It is because act two is fundamentally established as taking place within a dream or vision of the waki that this type is called mugen (lit., “dream and vision,” or “fantasy”) Noh.

BUNRAKU—JAPANESE PUPPET THEATER—CHIKAMATSU MONZAEMON’S “LOVE SUICIDES AT AMIJIMA”

Japanese Bunraku Theater Puppet

The Bunraku puppet theater emerged in the 17^th Century in Osaka, Japan and flourished thereafter not only as a popular entertainment for the new urban middle classes, but as a high art form rivaling other dramatic traditions in its depth, beauty and subtlety. The puppet theater consists of three closely coordinated elements: the puppets, the music—primarily a banjo-like shamisen, and the chanting, performed by a chanter who sits to the side of the stage and speaks or sings all of the roles of the puppets and any third-person narration. Unlike Western puppet theater, the puppet masters who operate the puppets make no attempt to conceal themselves but rather appear with the puppets on the stage, the lesser puppeteers in black hooded costume and the master puppeteer who appears with his face exposed.

Bunraku Puppet Theater Performance with Master Puppeteer Onstage
Manipulating the Puppet

The stories often present the lives of ordinary middle-class persons, often in the tragic circumstances of their empty and mundane lives. The most famous Bunraku playwright was Chikamatsu Monzaemon, whose masterpiece “The Love Suicides at Amijima” presents the life story of a struggling paper merchant with a wife and young children, Jihei, on the verge of bankruptcy who becomes enmeshed in a tragic love for a courtesan prostitute, Koharu. The love of Jihei and Koharu proves to be utterly hopeless as both are trapped in inescapable fetters, Jihei without the money to buy Koharu out of her life of prostitution and Koharu forced to seek out richer clients to pay her debts. Informed with the Buddhist ethos of Samsara, or recognition of the transient, meaningless and illusory nature of this world, they resolve to commit suicide together and unite their souls and their loves in heaven or the next life. The play itself is the inexorable working out of this inalterable fate and destiny, which no practical solutions can alter and which can only temporalized and delayed until the inevitable end.

KABUKI THEATER IN JAPAN—A TALE OF TWO+ GENDERS

Japanese Kabuki Theater Actor—The Male Actor Impersonates the Female Character in Kabuki

The history of Kabuki began in 1603 when Izumo no Okuni, a woman, began performing a new style of dance drama in the dry riverbeds of Kyoto. It originated in the 17th century. Japan was under the control of the Tokugawa shogunate, enforced by Tokugawa Ieyasu. The name of the Edo period derives from the relocation of the Tokugawa regime from its former capital in Kyoto to the city of Edo, present-day Tokyo. Female performers played both men and women in comic playlets about ordinary life. The style was immediately popular, and Okuni was asked to perform before the Imperial Court. In the wake of such success, rival troupes quickly formed, and kabuki was born as ensemble dance and drama performed by women—a form very different from its modern incarnation.

The new Kabuki theater, however, soon developed hostility and censure from the Tokugawa authorities in spite of, or because of its success. The all-woman Kabuki drew criticism firstly because the actresses were also available at the theater as prostitutes. The aristocratic Tokugawa Shogunate also came to object to the theater as a place of the undesired mixing of classes with upper-class samurai and nobles rubbing shoulders, as well as body parts more than sensitive than shoulders, with both the middle-class audiences who came to the theater as the site of fashion and the place to see and be seen, as well as and lumpen-class prostitutes, pimps, playboys, pseudo-intellectuals and parasites surrounding the world of the stage. Laws were then thought up to curb the menace.

The first legal reform of the Kabuki was to reverse its gender. Since the women actresses were notorious as prostitutes an initial answer was suggested that only boys could play the parts. However the situation, as do many government initiatives, went from bad to worse as the cure proved worse than the disease. It seems that with the all-boy Kabuki ensemble, including young boys playing all the female roles, an epidemic of homosexual prostitution broke out, proving to the authorities that whatever measures were taken to assure public morality, boys will be boys—or rather girls. The bureaucrats facing up to their failure, then passed a law that young boys could not perform but only men of age could play both male and female roles. This did not solve the problems the shogunate objected to but made them manageable enough to constitute a modus vivendi for some time. The puritan and repressive impulse was neither extinguished nor exhausted of its stratagems for plotting the demise of Kabuki, however. The Kabuki theaters were largely of wood and from time to time would burn down. During one large fire, which destroyed the entire red-light and entertainment district of which the Kabuki theater was a part, the conservatives adopted the stratagem of refusing to grant the theater a new rebuilding permit, calling it a fire-trap. This forced the Kabuki to relocate into the northern suburbs of Asakusa outside the city limits, along with many of the tea houses and brothels that inhabited the entertainment district. This was a fate shared, incidentally, by such illustrious theaters as Shakespeare’s Globe, which relocated outside the city limit of London to avoid harassing regulation. Far from accomplishing the puritan objective of abandonment of dissolute sexual behavior, and instituting a new ethos of moral probity, however, the new Asakusa district took advantage of open space and cheap land and laxer supervision to build the entertainment district to expanded size and scope, flourishing as never before.

There was considerable cross-fertilization between the various theater genres. For instance Chikamatzu Monzaemon, the master playwright of the Bunraku puppet theater, adapted his puppet plays, “The Love Suicides at Sonezaki” and “The Love Suicides at Amijima” into Kabuki scripts and they enjoyed a great popularity in the live theater as well. So popular were the Love Suicide plays that there was an epidemic of copycat love suicides across Japan, just as there was a wave of romantic suicides following the publication of Goethe’s “Sorrows of Young Werther.” The Shogun government, however, was sure it had the answer: it banned love suicide plays. Nonetheless, Japan even to the present time has one of the highest suicide rates, including joint suicides, in the world, but is comforted that the diligent government continues to take firm action.

THE CLASSICAL DRAMA TRADITION DOWN TO EARLY MODERN TIMES: SHAKESPEARE, CALDERON, RACINE AND MOLIERE

Shakespeare

SHAKESPEARE—IMMORTAL ICON OF WORLD THEATER AND DRAMA

The classical traditions of drama are alive and with us, and the past continues to be both present and alive into the future. As we have seen, such Renaissance masters as Shakespeare borrowed heavily from the classical models, utilizing the insights of Plautus and Terence in shaping comedies such as “A Comedy of Errors” and “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” and utilizing Seneca and Kyd’s “Revenge Plays” to shape the structure of masterpieces such as “Hamlet. These in turn continue to inform and instruct playwrights down to the present day, though he has also drawn criticism over history from the Neoclassicists for failure to observe the classical “unities” of time, place and action set forth by Aristotle in his Poetics.

William Shakespeare (1564 – 1616) was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world’s pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England’s national poet and the “Bard of Avon.” His works consist of 38 plays, 154 sonnets, two long narrative poems and miscellaneous verse. His plays are roughly classifiable into three categories: comedies, tragedies and histories, with some overlap. His plays have been translated into every major living language and are performed more often than those of any other playwright, making him the foremost icon of World Literature, World Theater and World Drama.

His most famous and ifluential plays include immortal classics of all the genres, including the tragedies Hamlet, Macbeth, King Lear, Othello, Julius Caesar, and Romeo and Juliet, comedies including Much Ado About Nothing, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, A Comedy of Errors and Twelfth Night, and histories including Henry IV, Richard III and Henry V.

Shakespeare’s work has made a lasting impression on later theatre and literature. In particular, he expanded the dramatic potential of characterisation, plot, language, and genre. Until Romeo and Juliet, for example, romance had not been viewed as a worthy topic for tragedy. Soliloquies had been used mainly to convey information about characters or events; but Shakespeare used them to explore and portray characters’ minds. His work heavily influenced later poetry. The Romantic poets attempted to revive Shakespearean verse drama, though with little success.

Shakespeare influenced novelists such as Thomas Hardy, William Faulkner, and Charles Dickens. The American novelist Herman Melville’s soliloquies owe much to Shakespeare; his Captain Ahab in Moby-Dick is a classic tragic hero, inspired by King Lear Scholars have identified 20,000 pieces of music linked to Shakespeare’s works. These include two operas by Giuseppe Verdi, Otello and Falstaff, whose critical standing compares with that of the source plays. Shakespeare has also inspired many painters, including the Romantics and the Pre-Raphaelites. The psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud drew on Shakespearean psychology, in particular that of Hamlet, for his theories of human nature.^[156]

In Shakespeare’s day, English grammar, spelling and pronunciation were less standardised than they are now, and his use of language helped shape modern English.Samuel Johnson quoted him more often than any other author in his A Dictionary of the English Language, the first serious work of its type. Expressions such as “with bated breath” (Merchant of Venice) and “a foregone conclusion” (Othello) have found their way into everyday English speech.

The classical tradition, including the theorization of dramatic and tragic dynamics in Aristotle’s Poetics, also shaped the conventions of the genre outside the English canon into the Early Modern Era, most significantly in the plays of Racine and Moliere in France and in the plays of Calderon and Lope de Vega in Spain, among countless others.

RACINE—NEOCLASSICAL MASTER OF TRAGEDY

Racine

Jean Racine (1639 –1699), was a French dramatist and master tragedian,one of the three great playwrights of 17th-century France alongside Moliere and Cornielle., and an important literary figure in the Western tradition. Racine was primarily a writer of tragedies, producing such “examples of Neoclassical perfection” Phèdre, Andromache, and Athalie. Racine’s plays displayed his mastery of the alexandrine meter and his writing is renowned for elegance, purity, speed, and fury, and for what Robert Lowell described as a “diamond-edge”, and the “glory of its hard, electric rage.” Racine’s dramaturgy is marked by his deep psychological insight, the prevailing and unbridled passion of his characters, and the nakedness of both the plot and stage.

Racine is both celebrated and lamented for his strict observance of Aristotle’s “unities” and fulfillment of the Neoclassical ideals of rational control and structure. The number of characters, all of them royal, is kept down to the barest minimum. Action on stage is all but eliminated, and even his diction was reputed to be limited to 4000 words, avoiding colloquialism.

For Racine, tragedy shows how men fall from prosperity to disaster and the higher the position from which the hero falls, the greater, in a sense, is the tragedy. Thus Racine’s tragedy is an aristocratic tragedy in which Racine describes the fate of kings, queens, princes and princesses, liberated from the constricting pressures of everyday life and able to speak and act without inhibition.

Greek tragedy, from which Racine borrowed so plentifully, tended to assume that humanity was under the control of gods indifferent to its sufferings and aspirations. In the Oedipus Tyrranus, Sophocles’ hero becomes gradually aware of the terrible fact that, however hard his family have tried to avert the oracular prophecy, he has nevertheless killed his father and married his mother and must now pay the penalty for these unwitting crimes. The same awareness of a cruel fate driven by uncontrollable passions, that leads unwary men and women into sin and demands retribution pervades such works of Racine as La Thébaïde, Phèdre and Mithridate.

MOLIÈRE—NEOCLASSICAL MASTER OF COMEDY

Moliere–Master of French Comedy

Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, known by his stage name Molière, (1622 –1673) was a French playwright and actor who is considered to be one of the greatest masters of comedy in Western literature. Among Molière’s best-known works are Le Misanthrope (The Misanthrope), L’École des Femmes (The School for Wives), Tartuffe ou L’Imposteur (Tartuffe or the Hypocrite), L’Avare (The Miser), Le Malade Imaginaire (The Imaginary Invalid/The Hypochondriac), and Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme (The Bourgeois Gentleman). Though he received the adulation of the court and Parisians, Molière’s satires attracted criticisms from moralists and the Roman Catholic Church. Tartuffe ou L’Imposteur (Tartuffe or the Hypocrite) and its attack on religious hypocrisy roundly received condemnations from the Church, while Don Juan was banned from performance.

In his comedy Molière satirizes and lampoons many social and psychological types emerging from the urban bourgeois society emerging in his day. In this he combines some of the features of Aristophanes Old Comedy, with its targeting of particular persons, celebrities or local events, along with the focus of the New Comedy of Menander and Plautus, focused on more universal social or individual characterological types.

CALDERON—MASTER OF THE SPANISH GOLDEN AGE OF THEATER

Calderon

Pedro Calderón de la Barca (1600 – 1681), was a dramatist, poet and writer of the Spanish Golden Age. During certain periods of his life he was also a soldier and a Roman Catholic priest. Born when the Spanish Golden Age theatre was being defined by Lope de Vega, he developed it further, his work being regarded as the culmination of the Spanish Baroque theatre. As such, he is regarded as one of Spain’s foremost dramatists and one of the finest playwrights of world literature.

Calderón maintained that any play was but fiction, and that the structure of the baroque play was entirely artificial. He therefore sometimes makes use of meta-theatrical techniques often associated with Post-Modernism, such as making his characters read in a jocose manner the clichés the author is using, and they are thus forced to follow. Some of the most common themes of his plays were heavily influenced by his Jesuit education. For example, as a reader of Saint Thomas Aquinas, he liked to pit reason against the passions, intellect against instinct, or understanding against will. In common with many writers from the Spanish Golden Age of Theater his plays usually show his vital pessimism, that is only softened by his rationalism and his faith in God, a theme which echoes the Stoicism of Seneca, the pessimism of the mature Euripides and the melancholy of the Shakespeare of “the sound and fury.” The anguish and distress usually found his oeuvre is best exemplified in one of his most famous plays, La Vida es sueño, or Life is a Dream in which Segismundo claims:

¿Qué es la vida? Un frenesí.

¿Qué es la vida? Una ilusión,
una sombra, una ficción,
y el mayor bien es pequeño.
¡Que toda la vida es sueño,
y los sueños, sueños son!
What is life? A frenzy.
What is life? An illusion,
A shadow, a fiction,
And the greatest good is small;
For all of life is a dream,
And dreams, are only dreams.

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“ASK ROBERT SHEPPARD” AUTHOR INTERVIEW AND Q & A SITE NOW AVAILABLE ON GOODREADS!—PUSHCART PRIZE NOMINATED SPIRITUS MUNDI IS NOW ON WATTPAD!—READ AUTHOR ROBERT SHEPPARD’S INTERVIEWS BY GLENDA FRALIN AND MORGEN BAILEY NOW!

Posted on December 9, 2013 by robertalexandersheppard

Pushcart Prize Nominated Author Robert Sheppard Delivering Pubic Address on the Creation of a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly at People’s University, Beijing, China.

Responding to popular demand, Pushcart Prize nominated author Robert Sheppard has made himself available for Open Questions & Answers and Interviews on the new “Ask Robert Sheppard–Author of Spiritus Mundi” website on Goodreads. The site features both text and audio past interviews by the author discussing all things literary, writing and his Pushcart Prize nominated novel Spiritus Mundi. You can pose thought-provoking questions or open ended discussions to which the author will respond, and on certain scheduled times, real-time chat sessions will be arranged. To access the site anytime to to the Goodreads Group Page for “Ask Robert Sheppard–Author of Spiritus Mundi:”

https://www.goodreads.com/group/show/120348-ask-robert-sheppard–author-of-spiritus-mundi

or follow the Group Search button on Goodreads and join the Group!

SPIRITUS MUNDI NOW ON WATTPAD!

Spiritus Mundi is also now available on Wattpad, the premiere Online Writing & Sharing site for the Mobile Internet. To access the Wattpad Spiritus Mundi site go to:

http://www.wattpad.com/user/robertsheppard

and enjoy featured selections on your iPad, Mobile Phone or other Mobile Internet platform.

Pushcart Prize Nominated Author Robert Sheppard at Seminar on Creation of a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly at People’s University, Beijing, China.

FEATURED INTERVIEWS OF ROBERT SHEPPARD WITH GLENDA FRALIN AND MORGEN BAILEY—READ NOW HERE!

You can access the full Interviews below at their home sites:

Wordsprings with Glenda Fralin: http://wordsprings.blogspot.com/

Morgen Bailey Interviews: http://morgensauthorinterviews.wordpress.com/2013/02/08/author-interview-with-non-fiction-science-fiction-and-fantasy-writer-and-poet-robert-sheppard/

Sunday, April 28, 2013

Interview with International Author and Educator Robert Sheppard

Interview with International Author and Educator Robert Sheppard

Author Robert Sheppard

It is difficult for me to describe Robert as one man. He is so multi-faceted that description takes on a new meaning. Dr. Robert Sheppard literally took on the world with his latest achievement; Spiritus Mundi. The novel, in two parts, spans political, philosophical, and cultural differences throughout the world. Through it the reader travels deep into the not so touristy elements of countries such as the U.S., Britain, China and Israel. Spiritus Mundi is currently slotted for a film version.

Renown Literary Interviewr Glenda Fralin

I’ve known Robert as an author for many years. He’s mentored me through poetry, and some short stories. We’ve not always agreed, but that’s a lot of the fun and learning process. If anything, Robert has encouraged me and found a way to help me develop as a writer even when we have not shared a forum.

Robert’s expertise spans international law, literature, multiple languages, and much more. In other words, Robert may hold no punches, but he does know from where his opinions come and how to promote them. He’s an activist for change in the United Nations, pushing for a parliamentary style of leadership and exchange patterned after the European Parliament.

Dr. Sheppard lives between California and China. In China, through an exchange program, Robert teaches International Law and Literature. His expertise in international law, civil rights and the world’s political systems allow him to work with government leaders of China to build important international relationships.

There is much about Robert, but this is an interview of him; not a dialogue about him.

Glenda: Robert, you realize you are making my day in a good way, sorry for goofy rhyme and cliché. You are a surprise for me. When I asked for the interview, I only knew you as Robert my literary friend who wrote an impressive novel, confused me with his particular style of poetry over the years, and has a great sense of humor about it. Now, I have a good deal more understanding how this Kansas/Nebraska farm kid wouldn’t understand your world expressed in poetry. I looked at your credentials and Spiritus Mundi and must say I’m glad I knew you before. I write in awe of my dear friend Robert an international ambassador of education and change.

My first question now is how and from whom did you become interested in such a demanding but fascinating mission?

Robert: Thank you so much for inviting me to interview with you, Glenda, and it is my honor and pleasure to be here with you. Thanks also for your warm friendship over the years. In terms of “missions,” yes, you could say that Spiritus Mundi, in addition to aspiring to constitute a rich and enjoyable work of literature in and of itself, takes on at least two special “missions.” The first is the promotion of the concept of a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly for global democracy, and the second the promotion of the concept of “World Literature” as an emerging cultural institution in the age of the Global Village transcending the national literatures which it has outgrown.

In terms of my personal background, both missions grew out of my professional life as well as personal interests as they developed over the years. I studied and practiced law and then taught International Law at Peking University and also worked for UNIDO, the United Nations Industrial Development Organization in China, during which time I wrote some influential papers around the year 2000 for the civil society component of the Millennium Forum of the United Nations, focused on the evolution of the United Nations in the new century. These papers were rooted in the successful development of the European Parliament, the first democratic international institution, and essentially proposed the extension of that proven concept from the European Union to a global scale as a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly. In the next decade I discovered that many others were working in the same direction, and joined with them in the Committee for a Democratic United Nations and the Campaign for a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly, headquartered in Germany, and whose most visible leader has been former United Nations Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali.

At the same time, I had long had a “double” profession, in addition to having studied law, having also studied Comparative Literature in the Ph.D. program at the University of California, Berkeley. You could say that while I enjoyed law, literature was always the “first love of my life.” I had always felt that writing as an author was the “first calling” of my life, and that in a sense the other involvements were a preparation and support for that calling. I had written poetry and short stories all my life, but about three or four years ago I felt it was time to move to a higher plane and write a full-length novel. Out of these disparate interests grew Spiritus Mundi, which was designed to challenge my writing skills and capacity to a higher level, along with the tangential goals of promoting the concept of a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly along with the emerging cultural institution of World Literature, which grew out of my prior work in Comparative Literature.

Glenda: Spiritus Mundi is a novel encompassing the life of your main character Robert Sartorius that takes on much of your own background and mission. In Part 2 The Romance, Robert’s son Jack goes to Israel to work on organizing the fundraising telethon to support his father’s mission with the U.N. I think of authors who try to bring their mission into fiction and end up over stating to the point of losing their story. How did you avoid such pitfalls?

Robert: I’m keeping my fingers crossed on that one! Knock on wood! A work of art treads a fine line when it becomes involved in a social mission or crusade for a particular political or religious undertaking. A work of fiction must create a living world with living characters within it, and if it degenerates into a mere tract of “propaganda,” even for admirable purposes, it runs the danger of being de-natured as a work of art. Oscar Wilde and the Parnassians are remembered for “l’art pour l’art” or “art for art’s sake,” and I would concur that art must have its own intrinsic integrity and not be prostituted for mere didactic or narrowly political ends to live as art. But on the other hand, I have always rejected this point of view when taken to an extreme, as whatever art is it is also a part of life and the human world, and therefore cannot and should not avoid a dimension of “social engagement.” I feel that writers and artists have a social responsibility of some element of leadership in shaping the values and worldviews of the wider community, with the proviso, as mentioned before that their work must retain its integrity as art while doing so. Writers and artists, as Shelly observed, can serve as the “unacknowledged legislators” of humanity, but not in the sense of advocating specific political programs, but rather in shaping the underlying vision and values by which humanity comprehends itself at particular points in time and history.

The way in which I attempted to avoid the pitfall of falling into didacticism or propaganda was to try to let the characters within the novel live for themselves, and to let their world live for itself. Sartorius, one of the principal characters, semi-autobiographical, is written as a relatively weak character, not imposing his will on the world and the other characters, but relatively afloat and adrift within it. In this I learned from the work of Scott in the Waverly novels. Waverly in Scott’s novels is a relatively weak and passive young man, a character adrift, rather than a Napoleon imposing his will on history. But this is actually a strength in a historical novel, in that a weak character adrift can serve as a marker for the larger historical currents that sweep him along, and his drift can thus paint a larger portrait of the society and historical forces at work around him. Sartorius is a rather weak and ineffective intellectual, verging on failure and contemplating suicide as he turns fifty, but as such he is ripe to be “swept away” by the hurricane of forces of our modern world, including globalization of every aspect of human existence, and by being so, chart, as a “weather balloon” adrift, the dominant currents of our globalized social atmospherics. As such a “balloon” he also undergoes the constraints and contradictions of Henry James’ “balloon of experience.” in negotiating the transitions from realism to the realm of the freer imagination, embodied in Book II, “Spiritus Mundi: The Romance,” romance in the Hawthornian sense, that is.

Glenda: I’m a writer who loves to research. However; such an undertaking as Spiritus Mundi makes my head spin thinking about searching out parliaments and cultures so as to maintain factual integrity. For instance, your main character determines to promote an English style Parliament. You must have done an immense amount of research on such a style of governance. The main character’s goal is to bring such a style of governance and encourage democracy in the United Nations.

Can you give us an outline of your research methods for so such complex entities? Did you get to set in on sessions of Parliament?

Robert: Well, in terms of models, the closer model for the concept of a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly would be that of the European Parliament of the European Union, rather than the British Parliament, though the British parliament has long been perceived as the mother of all modern legislatures and parliaments. Working as a professor of International Law in Beijing and also with UNIDO, I naturally had to do an immense amount of research and reading on the working of both the United Nations and the European Union. I also studied at the University of Heidelberg in Germany for two years and during that time learned a great deal about the European Union. So you could say that I was already a “Good European” by the time I approached the wider problem of Globalization in my work in International Law in China. The European Parliament has in turn inspired many regional incarnations, such as the Pan-African Parliament of the African Union, the Parlatino, or Latin-American Parliament and the Arab Parliament of the Arab League. These are already working realities in the various regions of the world, so it was only a matter of time before more and more people would recognize the logic of extending the concept of representative democracy to the global level of the United Nations system as a whole.

So, yes, an immense amount of research would be necessary to embrace this dimension of Spiritus Mundi, but I had done it in my professional life as a Professor of International Law a decade before writing the novel. An equal, or greater amount of research was required for the World Literature dimension of Spiritus Mundi, but luckily I inherited a great deal of this from my Ph.D. studies in Comparative Literature at U.C. Berkeley and its follow-on.

But in the practical sense of the novelist writing a novel, I can tell you that it takes an immense amount of very concrete research to bring to life the concrete details of the world in which the characters must live and move. I had to do a great deal of research on things like the streets, building, parks and milieu of the dozens of cities and nations across the world in which the action of Spiritus Mundi takes place, from Beijing to New York, to London, Moscow, Africa, Jerusalem, Iran—the novel is rooted in a tenacious realism, though it later blossoms beyond it. In that I can say I have become a child of our age in harnessing the power of the Internet to craft the concrete details and dimensions of environments around the world. “Googling” and the Wikipedia have been invaluable in being comprehensive and instantaneously available as I composed on my laptop, so I think the modern writer has resources for practical research available that would awe the most erudite of our forbearers. True, the Internet has the defect of perhaps being “a million miles wide and an inch thick” at its surface, but it also has developed far deeper resources if you learn how to find them and have a good education going into it.

Glenda: I cannot leave out that Spiritus Mundi carries a romantic and even sexual component. You related to me in one conversation that the romance is a natural, human component of your story. There is also a conflict with Sartorius’ son Jack. For other writers, can you relate the importance you found in presenting this side of your main character into the mix of political and international intrigue?

Robert: Well, I grew up as a writer very much in the tradition of D.H. Lawrence and James Joyce, both of whom embraced the central importance of sexuality in human consciousness and existence in their works and worldviews. We are all living intellectually in the wake of the Freudian and Darwinian revolutions, and the “sexual revolution” in popular culture since the Sixties. Our sexuality is the life blood of our lives and of our consciousness, not to mention our unconsciousness, collective or individual. In my view of sexuality, common with D. H. Lawrence and C.G. Jung, sexuality is intimately connected with the spiritual dimension of human existence as well—sexuality can alternatively lead to dehumanization and animalization of our beings but sexuality can also lead just as naturally in the direction of the humanization of our natural and biological impulses, their civilizing, and even to their spiritualization, as Jung observed.

In regards to sexuality I take as a starting point that it is a natural part of our lives and should be positively embraced in all dimensions of our existence—that it is a necessary and wholesome part of our individual and collective mental health. That is not to deny that it has its chaotic, selfish, destructive and socially disruptive side as well, which society has difficulty managing, which it always must, but it is important that it should not be irrationally repressed in the individual or the society at large, as Freud and Jung have taught us.

Thus, as the saying goes, “War is too important to be left to the Generals,” we can also observe that sexuality is too important to be left to doctors, psychologists, biologists or “sexologists.” It is the living root of our individual selves and of our spirituality as well. As such the sexual lives of the characters in fiction are a vital dimension of their beings, and a vital dimension for judging the viability, mental health and value of the worldviews of their authors. Hollywood and Washington have long judged their projects asking the question “Will it play in Peoria?” and writers similarly have tested their worldviews by asking “Will it play between the sheets?” In Spiritus Mundi sexuality is linked to the spiritual lives of the characters, but also to the “life force” which drives human evolution and the collective unconscious of the human race, necessary to its survival. The progressive humanization, civilization and spiritualization of our most primal sexual animal impulses in the forms of love, family, community and communion is the story of the progress of our individual lives in microcosm and of our civilizational lives in macrocosm.

Glenda: Finally, can you give us a look inside the man Robert Sheppard?

Robert: Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!—as I recall one your fellow Kansans once sagely remarked on a certain occasion. Or I can have my doctor send you my latest X-ray if you like! ……I don’t know how to answer such a question exactly—-“the man Robert Sheppard” continues to be, like his writing “a work in progress” with many contradictions, frustrations, inadequacies, irrationalities and inscrutable impulses coexisting with and ever evolving beside and within the socially and literarily observable persona. The ancient Greeks had to cut into stone in their temples the admonition “Know Thyself” precisely because it was so hard, perhaps impossible to accomplish—we knowing ourselves ever “but in a glass darkly.” Perhaps sometime in the future I will meet and get to know that man behind the curtain, “the man Robert Sheppard”—–it is likely we may become friends—–it would be natural—–after all we have a lot in common, and I may even learn a lot from him if we can somehow learn to rub along and tolerate each other—- we may even, at the end of our little dramatic offering, ascend in a homeward-bound balloon together, or as in the ending another film, as in Bogie’s Cassablanca stroll off into the mist-filled night arm-in-arm together, with one or the other observing “You know, this could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship!”

Oh, how I wish that I could have had this interview on a public stage with Robert, shaking hands with my dear friend and getting to know him “through the glass (a bit less) darkly.” That is one of the downfalls of written interviews, I ask the question, he answers the questions I ask, and I would love to ask so much more about the answers. This is true of all authors I interview, but it also leaves my readers with a chance to desire more knowledge of the interviewee. Reading Spiritus Mundi by Robert Sheppard reveals the intricate workings of a very philosophical mind. As he said there is a fine line that an author must walk when writing fiction with a mission in the story. I’m reminded of Plato’s dialogues which are today left for us often to understand through someone else interpretation. The thing is that Plato did write dialogues which today we might call short stories. That does not mean that we cannot come to some understanding of Plato’s way of reasoning. Perhaps he didn’t think he knew himself any better than Robert or me for that matter.

This form allows me to introduce Robert Sheppard, his book Spiritus Mundi, and a glimpse of his passions. I hope you enjoyed reading this ‘dialogue’. Then you can come to your conclusions by reading Robert’s book Spiritus Mundi.

Please find links to Robert’s website and to his book below.

Spiritus Mundi Book I, The Novel: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/303856

Spiritus Mundi Book II: The Romance: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/303798

Amazon Author Page: http://www.amazon.com/author/robertsheppard

http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B00CGSDN5I
Spiritus Mundi Book I: The Novel on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00CIGJFGO Spiritus Mundi Book II: The Romance on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00CGM8BZG

Author interview with non-fiction, science-fiction and fantasy writer and poet Robert Sheppard

Celebrated Literary Interviewer Morgen Bailey

Morgen Bailey

Welcome to my blog interviews with novelists, poets, short story authors, scriptwriters, biographers, agents, publishers and more. Today’s is with non-fiction, science-fiction and fantasy author and poet Robert Sheppard. A list of interviewees (blogged and scheduled) can be found here. If you like what you read, please do go and investigate further.

Morgen: Hello, Robert. Please tell us something about yourself and how you came to be a writer. What inspired you to write your first book?

Robert: Writing has always been my personal calling. I have done many other things such as law, business, teaching and political activism, but I have usually regarded them as secondary to my primary mission in life of writing and being a citizen of the republic of letters. I began by reading the great authors, secondarily in terms of academic study, but primarily in terms of personal communion with the great minds of our human civilization. The inspiration for writing Spiritus Mundi was threefold: First, the culmination of a lifetime of reading and self-exploration; Second, a desire to make a contribution to World Literature in an era of literary and social globalization by sharing beauty and my personal vision and insight with others; Third, Spiritus Mundi was written with the practical goal of popularizing a specific global social reform, the furtherance of global democracy through the creation of a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly, a movement I had been involved with for the last ten years.

Morgen: Given the introduction, you write so many genres. Is there one that you generally write and have you considered other genres?

Robert: I began writing poetry that was my first and longest involvement in writing. Spiritus Mundi, my modern epic novel contains a large body of embedded poetry, as in many books such as Dr. Zhivago. I have also written short stories and taken a stab at a screenplay. I enjoy the broad canvas of the novel, and it has been the dominant genre of out times for reaching the broader public as well as the community of letters, particularly when adapted to film. I aim aspects of my novels at both audiences, the illiterati as well as the literati!

Morgen: Is there a message in your novel that you want readers to grasp?

Robert: A great novel is never reducible to a paraphraseable message. The ultimate “message” is to enjoy the energy and beauty of life, including its enhancement through art and the engaged experience of reading. That said, however, my novel encourages the reader’s development as a whole person, rational and irrational, by bringing to life myth, spirituality and cultural tradition. Spiritus Mundi, nonetheless, is a peculiar book in having a particular social message and program for our era of globalization, namely overcoming our “clash of civilizations” by actively collaborating in the construction of a common world culture, including a newly emerging World Literature to complement national literatures, and the further democratic evolution of our system of global governance through the establishment of a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly, a kind of globalized advisory version of the EU European Parliament. But a novel should be first and foremost a work of art and beauty, and only secondarily a medium for the transmission of extrinsic messages, ideological or otherwise.

Morgen: What have you had published to-date?

Robert: I have published dozens of professional works as a professor of International Law and of World and Comparative Literature, as well as dozens of poems. Spiritus Mundi, which is actually two books, Book One, Spiritus Mundi the Novel, and Book Two, Spiritus Mundi, the Romance, with a greater tendency towards myth, fantasy, science-fiction and so-called “Magical Realism” is my first great prose effort.

Morgen: Do you have any advice for other writers?

Robert: I would advise writers generally to engage deeply with life and explore its problems, joys, beauties, conundrums, humor and pains in their works. Shakespeare’s advice, “To thine own self be true” is ever a good starting point, but “Which One?” and “For What and For Whom?” remain part of the question. I would advise those who aspire to great art to engage with their own literary tradition, hopefully without drowning in it, and in this era of globalization to take a wider perspective engaging with the multiple traditions of our wider world. This may even be good marketing advice, in addition to being good humanist and artistic advice, in the emerging era of the globally marketable e-Book and film.

Morgen: Why should a reader buy your book?

Robert: For the sheer pleasure of it!——first and foremost for the enjoyment of reading it. Second, hopefully for some insight into life and the world that may make your life richer and fuller. Also to understand the forces shaping the modern world and how we may work together to make it better and avoid catastrophe.

Morgen: How much of the marketing do you do for your published works or indeed for yourself as a ‘brand’?

Robert: Far too much! I would really rather be writing works of importance, but without the marketing machine of a major publisher or established reputation behind me I am doomed to try to become known and appreciated by my own efforts and promotion. For a lesser-known writer this seems to be a necessary evil. Though writing is a solitary profession, we are still nonetheless social animals and we writers need to be known in order to be read and appreciated. “Work without Hope” of any recognition or appreciation quickly turns to despair. The new writer has to bear this doleful burden until one has a readership.

Morgen: Have you won or been shortlisted in any competitions and do you think they help with a writer’s success?

Robert: Not yet. Prizes and awards are definitely valuable in gaining reputation and readership and may well make a writer’s career in the narrow sense. At the same time it would be healthy to realize that many of the prizes, including the Nobel, are highly imperfect and are distorted by political, commercial and reputational interests, or other arbitrary factors not related to intrinsic literary or artistic excellence.

Morgen: Is there a special place that you prefer when you write?

Robert: I write mostly at home in a peaceful room alone, preferably with a couch on which to lie while giving my imagination free run when away from the keyboard. Once I am into a work I am mostly oblivious to my surroundings and just need to be left alone.

Morgen: Do you write under a pseudonym? If so why and do you think it makes a difference?

Robert: I never used one. I think my egotism draws me in the direction of seeking reknown and recognition in my own self. A Mark Twain or George Eliot may do me better by creating a public persona in their real life as well as on paper.

Morgen: Do you have an agent? Do you think they’re vital to an author’s success?

Robert: Not at present. They can be very useful by freeing the writer from the business and promotional end of publishing and letting him write. Too often they are just another gatekeeper looking to collect his toll fee by reason of selling access to the traditional publisher who absurdly will not deal with the author directly in the closed system that has existed. The e-Book Revolution is breaking down these dominant positions of control and requiring greater actual service and added-value.

Morgen: What are you working on at the moment / next?

Robert: I have a sequel to Spiritus Mundi underway taking many of the old characters in new directions.

Morgen: Do you manage to write every day?

Robert: Normally, if extrinsic work or travel doesn’t take all my time or energy away. Some days you reach a stopping place and do something else, like reading or other work instead. I don’t need to force it, but it will come around if I set myself down to try.

Morgen: What is your opinion of writer’s block? Do you ever suffer from it? If so, how do you ‘cure’ it?

Robert: It has not been a major problem for me since I have had ongoing projects underway. If it comes up you just recharge your batteries and try again later. As a deeper psychological problem it hasn’t hit me seriously yet.

Morgen: Do you plot your stories or do you just get an idea and off you are with it?

Robert: Usually I don’t begin with a master plot but start with a general idea or improvisation. Then as things develop I may come up with a strategic plan to move thing forward.

Morgen: Do you have a method for creating your characters, their names and what do you think makes them believable?

Robert: Anything and everything. I don’t have any one method—-sometimes the inspirational seeds for the characters are based on personal friends or acquaintances, sometimes on public figures in the news, sometimes drawn from the great classical works of fiction or out of thin air. Then the characters evolve and take life under your pen as the plot and situations evolve.

Morgen: Who is your first reader – who do you first show your work to?

Robert: My first readers would normally be literary friends. Normally I don’t share or discuss the work while it is in progress as I keep my energy flowing onto the page and feel I would lose it if diverted into explaining the work to others. When the work is relatively complete I will value the impressions of persons of good and cultivated judgment.

Morgen: Do you do a lot of editing or do you find that as time goes on your writing is more fully-formed?

Robert: I do a lot of editing and rewriting, or writing over. Often the first attempt is crude and needs to be refined and reshaped. Also, one’s ideas will evolve as one writes, requiring reformulation and re-editing of what went before. New things are constantly added to the old.

Morgen: Do you write on paper or do you prefer a computer?

Robert: Nowadays, of course all writing must be digital in preparation for publication. When I first started writing I disliked typewriters and computers, preferred to write poems in longhand and prose in notebooks. Now, of practical necessity I write and compose all prose on the computer. I still write almost all poems by hand, however, and even many prose passages will begin as longhand entries in notebooks when the moment of inspiration hits me, later to be transcribed and revised on the computer.

Morgen: What point of view do you find most to your liking: first person or third person? Have you ever tried second person?

Robert: Third Person, omniscient or restricted is, of course the natural first recourse. In Spiritus Mundi I used all of the points of view by interspersing third person narrative with extensive “Blog Journals” in which multiple characters told the story in their own voice and person, recorded in their blogs.

In Spiritus Mundi’s Chapter 28, The Volcano’s Underworld (Mexico City)–Theatro Magico (The Magic Theater) I experimented with telling the story in the Second Person, addressed to the reader, where the protagonist Sartorius undergoes three mescaline-inducedd hallucinatory experiences in a “Magic Theater” and in which I wanted to impel the reader into undergoing the immediacy of direct and uncanny surreal experience.

Morgen: What do you like to read?

Robert: Anything and everything good. I spent most of my life reading the great classics of world literature—Tolstoy, Kafka, Thomas Mann, Yeats, Eliot, Homer, he Bible, Dante, etc. As a Professor of Comparative and World Literature I also read the non-Western classics, the Ramayana, Tale of Genji, Dream of the Red Chamber, Thousand and One Nights, etc. More recently I have tried to become more contemporary, current and popular in my reading, trying to read bestsellers as well as “the Greats,” Jodi Picoult as well as Pushkin!

Morgen: What do you do when you’re not writing? Any hobbies or party tricks?

Robert: Of course when I am not writing I do an almost equal amount of reading, and of course the necessity of working, which as a professor takes you back again to reading and writing, as well as speaking. I have travelled all over the world, another escape that leads back to writing. For health I do a lot of swimming, weight lifting and some tennis. I love music, films and the theater. And of course friendship, family, love and, yes, sex.

Morgen: Where can we find out about you and your work?

Robert: You can follow these links to the Spiritus Mundi websites and blogs:

Introducing Spiritus Mundi, a Novel by Robert Sheppard
Author’s E-mail: rsheppard99_2000@yahoo.com
Related Links and Websites: Spiritus Mundi, Novel by Robert Sheppard
For Introduction and Overview of the Novel:https://spiritusmundinovel.wordpress.com/
For Updates on the Upcoming Movie Version of the Novel, Spiritus Mundi & Casting of Actors and Actresses for Leading Roles See: https://robertalexandersheppard.wordpress.com/
For Author’s Blog: https://robertalexandersheppard.wordpress.com//
To Read Abut the Occupy Wall Street Movement in Spiritus Mundi: http://occupywallstreetnovel.wordpress.com/
To Read a Sample Chapter from Spiritus Mundi:https://spiritusmundisamplechapters.wordpress.com/
To Read Fantasy, Myth and Magical Realism Excerpts from Spiritus Mundi: https://spiritusmundifantasymythandmagicalrealism.wordpress.com/
To Read Sexual Excerpts fromSpiritus Mundi: The Varieties of Sexul Experience: https://spiritusmundivarietiesofsexualexperience.wordpress.com/
To Read Spy, Espionage and Counter-terrorism Thriller Excerpts from Spiritus Mundi: http://spiritusmundispyespionagecounterterrorism.wordpress.com
To Read Geopolitical and World War Three Excerpts from Spiritus Mundi: https://spiritusmundigeopoliticalworldwar3.wordpress.com
To Read Spiritual and Religious Excerpts from Spiritus Mundi: https://spiritusmundionspiritualityandreligion.wordpress.com
To Read about the Global Campaign for a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly in Spiritus Mundi: https://spiritusmundiunitednationsparliamentaryassembly.wordpress.com
To Read Poetry from Spiritus Mundi：https://spiritusmundipoetry.wordpress.com
For Discussions on World Literature and Literary Criticism in Spiritus Mundi: http://worldliteratureandliterarycriticism.wordpress.com/
For Discussions of World History and World Civilization in Spiritus Mundi: https://worldhistoryandcivilizationspiritusmundi.wordpress.com/
To Read the Blog of Eva Strong from Spiritus Mundi: https://evasblogfromspiritusmundi.wordpress.com
To Read the Blog of Andreas Sarkozy from Spiritus Mundi: http://andreasblogfromspiritusmundi.wordpress.com
To Read the Blog of Yoriko Oe from Spiritus Mundi: http://yorikosblogfromspiritusmundi.wordpress.com
To Read the Blog of Robert Sartorius from Spiritus Mundi: http://sartoriusblogfromspiritusmundi.wordpress.com
CyberStationUSA.com’s interview: https://www.cyberstationlive.com
BlogTalkRadio Interviews: http://www.blogtalkradio.com/chuckmorsespeaks/2013/02/07/chuck-morse-speaks, http://www.blogtalkradio.com/icdrrose/2012/12/07/robert-sheppard–spiritus-mundi-a-novel, and http://www.blogtalkradio.com/icdrrose/2012/08/01/robert-sheppard–spiritus-mundi-a-novel.

Morgen: Is there anything else you’d like to mention?

Robert: I would also encourage everyone to support the effort to create a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly, a globalized version of the EU European Parliament formed as a new elected organ of the UN to supplement the existing Security Council and General Assembly. This will serve to bring the democratic process to global governance and international affairs. See: http://en.unpacampaign.org/index.php

Morgen: Thank you, Robert.

I then invited Robert to include an extract of his writing and this is from ‘Publication With Interview’…

After an hour, Terry invited Sartorius to the “Green Room” backstage, a kind of private room where the performers, their boyfriends and girlfriends, the musicians, groupies and hangers on would get together, talk, laugh and entertain themselves away from the public eye. They rambled on, talking at random and becoming better friends, and Teresa introduced him to many of the other performers, with whom they joked and shared Tequila, Mescal and the occasional snort of cocaine or drag of marijuana. Terry leafed from time to time through the pages of an old French quarto, the title of which Sartorius leaned over to take in: “La Vie Militaire, politique, et privée de Chevalier d’Eon.” Then they were joined by Oskarnello, the midget drummer, who sat across from them and lit up a hand-rolled brownish cigarillo, inhaling and exhaling, his face soon shrouded in an unmistakable cloud of misty hashish.

“Your piece was fabulous! Really magic!” blurted Sartorius to Tiresias, everyone bubbling over with narcotic giggles.

“You don’t know the half of it!” pronounced Oskarnello from within his cloud of mist, “……………Terry and I also do a magic act together, laced with gender-bender levitations and transformations behind black velvet!”

“Really?……….I really must see it!” effused Sartorius.

“Watch this,” intoned Tiresias as he held up his crystal glass of wine over the table, “Oskar….you’re on!” Then Oskar let out a high shriek that whined into the inaudible register and the glass began to vibrate, then shake, and finally burst and shattered, showering its contents across the table.

“Bravo!” shouted everyone, along with Sartorius, who added “……….when can we see the act?”

“Well, we really haven’t done it for a couple of years—maybe we’ll do a revival, eh Oskarovich?…….” he replied.

“The sots don’t really appreciate us, you see………..” explained Oskarnello, “…………..those who sneer at us, and sneer at themselves, for paying to let us fool them, what they never see is the yearning. If it were a religious yearning, a yearning after God, a higher prestidigitation in a sacred place—-well no one would dream of disrespecting that. But us, no—our kind of a show, our show is a yearning—–Yes!—–a yearning of the same deepest stuff—– Yes!……..but they see it as only after a miracle, only to contradict the given world—that, they hold it in contempt……..they are looking just for the trick you see, and are sure they will find it just beyond their fingertips……… if we angle for awe——–for the true miracle we live in——– they refuse us………worth a horselaugh…….. followed by a sneer———a sneer in the mirror, put paid with the price of a ticket.”

“Yes, tragically all too true…..” lamented Tiresias, “…………..we are to our own chagrin disciples, incarnations if you will, of the Greatest Magician…………………now when He created the universe he didn’t say ‘Now for my first trick I’m gonna make light’…………..He said ‘Let there be light!’ and the Big Bang unleashed itself, allowed light into what had been Nothing and Nothingness, and the light congealed itself into matter and anti-matter, infinite hadrons, and leptons and quarks and worlds—suns and galaxies effusing out into a Virgin Time rushing forward to inflate a timeless void. But when we minor Magicians try to bring our bit of the miracle back into that Something, that Everything He created—renewing contact with its original stuff, we get the sneers and not awe. You notice that in the act we work in the dark, and under a spotlight, and we only allow the light, like the sun on the earth, to light up one hemisphere of the real at a time, either the male or the female remains in the dark. And it is only at the dénouement, the orgasmo-climax, that the flash-bulb of apocalypse and revelation uncovers that they are the two halves are of the one sphere. Like God, you always have to work with the light—-make it do only what you want it to do………It’s all about the light—–you control the light and you control the effect—-a magician’s perfect mirror must send everything back to the eye, and a magician’s perfect black velvet must send nothing back—-the big bang of revelation set off against the black hole of mystery.”

Then they rambled on in this vein, more and more incoherent as the evening dragged onwards, talking at random and halting to introduce new friends as they incessantly came and left, making their entrances and exits, and with whom they joked and shared additional Tequila, Mescal and the occasional snort of cocaine or drag of marijuana. Then they made their way back to the open dance floor and enjoyed themselves.

Towards four in the morning, Sartorius was oozing Mescal and alcohol from every pore and had danced with Maria and Teresa alternately for hours. Teresa pressed her body close to his and stroked his ear, whispering into it: “Roberto!—-I think you are ready for something special! I don’t take everybody there—it is a special place only for special people. You have to be the right kind of person at the right time——and be ready for something new—it is a private club and you need a pass to be admitted. Here—-this is your pass—I have signed you in as my special guest—let’s get Maria and Oskar and grab a taxi.” –He handed Sartorius a card with the drawing of a magician in top-hat and tails levitating a beautiful girl over whom he passed a hoop, upon it. The name of the club was printed on the top: Teatro Magico: For Madmen Only!—-(Private Club: Admission by Membership or Personal Invitation Only).

And a synopsis from… Spiritus Mundi, consisting of Spiritus Mundi, the Novel—Book I, and Spiritus Mundi, the Romance—Book II.

Book I’s espionage-terror-political-religious thriller-action criss-crosses the globe from Beijing to London to Washington, Mexico City and Jerusalem presenting a vast panorama of the contemporary international world, including compelling action, deep and realistic characters and surreal adventures, while Book II dialates the setting and scope into a fantasy (though still rooted in the real) adventure where the protagonists embark on a quest to the realms of Middle Earth and its Crystal Bead Game and through a wormhole to the Council of the Immortals in the Amphitheater in the center of the Milky Way Galaxy in search of the crucial Silmaril Crystal, and to plead for the continuance of the human race in the face of threatened extinction from a nuclear World War III, all followed by a triple-somersault thriller ending in which a common garden-variety terrorist attack is first uncovered by MI6 and the CIA as the opening gambit a Greatpower Game of States threatening World War III and then, incredibly, as the nexus of a Time Travel conspiracy involving an attempt by fascist forces of the 23rd Century to alter a benign World History by a time-travelling raid on their past and our present to provoke that World War III, foiled by the heroic efforts of the democratic 23rd Century world government, the Senate of the United States of Earth, to hunt down the fascist interlopers before their history is irrevocably altered for evil.

When activist Robert Sartorius, leading a global campaign to create a European Parliament-style world-wide United Nations Parliamentary Assembly presses the proposal in New York on his old friend the UN Secretary-General and is rebuffed due to the hostile pressure of the conservative American administration, his Committee resolves to fight back by launching a celebrity-driven Bono-Geldof-Band Aid/Live 8-style “People Power” media campaign and telethon spearheaded by rock superstars Isis and Osiris and former UN Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali to mobilize global public support and pressure in alliance with the Occupy Wall Street Movements worldwide. The Blogs of Sartorius, activist Eva Strong and Committee Chairman Andreas Sarkozy reveal the campaign’s working struggle, their tangled love affairs, a loss of faith, attempted suicide, reconciliation of father and son after divorce, and recovery of personal love and faith.

Rock Superstar Osiris meanwhile, after undertaking a narcissistic Messianic mission in the wake of the Jerusalem atomic blast is dramatically assassinated on live world-wide television on Jerusalem’s Via Dolorosa by a disillusioned follower. His wife and rock-star partner Isis then leads a spiritual movement to reconcile and unite the clashing religions and catalyze a common global spiritual Renaissance through a Global Progressive Spiritual Alliance which seeks to construct an Inter-faith Temple on the ruins of the atomic blast in Jerusalem. In counter-reaction to the cataclysmic events the world finally implements Sartorius’ crusade for a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly, but not before Sartorius has himself has died, Moses-like of a heart attack while helping to foil a metaconspiracy mediated by Time Travel in which a fascist agent from the 23rd Century who has time-transited back to our time to alter a benign history by causing WWIII and thus preventing the evolution of a democratic world government, the United States of Earth, which follows him through time and nabs him just in the “nick of time” to prevent Armageddon. The book ends with the opening ceremony of the UN Parliamentary Assembly which is attended in Sartorius’ name by his widow Eva Strong, whom Sartorius had fallen in love with and married in the course of the novel, and by their son Euphy, newborn after Sartorius’ death. They are joined in cinematic climax at the ceremony by newly chosen UN Secretary-General Clinton, President Osama and UN Parliamentary Assembly Committee Chairman Andreas Sarkozy who have just received the Nobel Peace Prize for their work in creation of the world’s first world parliamentary assembly within the United Nations, bringing together the representative voices of the peoples of the world in face-to-face assembly and dialogue for the first time in world history.

Robert Sheppard is the author of the acclaimed dual novel Spiritus Mundi,in two parts, Spiritus Mundi the Novel, Book I and Spiritus Mundi the Romance, Book II. The acclaimed “global novel” features espionage-terror-political-religious thriller-action criss-crossing the globe involving MI6. the CIA and Chinese MSS Intelligence as well as a “People Power” campaign to establish a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly on the model of the European Parliament, with action moving from Beijing to London to Washington, Mexico City and Jerusalem while presenting a vast panorama of the contemporary international world, including compelling action and surreal adventures. It also contains the unfolding sexual, romantic and family relationships of many of its principal and secondary characters, and a significant dimension of spiritual searching through “The Varieties of Religious Experience.” It contains also significant discussions of World Literature, including Chinese, Indian, Western and American literature, and like Joyce’s Ulysses, it incorporates a vast array of stylistic approaches as the story unfolds. Book II, Spiritus Mundi the Romance, dilates the setting, scope and continuing action as a Romance of fantasy adventure where the protagonists, still following the original action of Book I, embark on a quest to the realms of Middle Earth and its Crystal Bead Game in search of the Silmaril Missing Seed Crystal and thence through a wormhole to a “Council of the Immortals” in an Amphitheater in the center of the Milky Way Galaxy to plead for the continuance of the human race in the face of threatened extinction from a nuclear World War III involving the confrontation and military showdown between NATO, China, Russia and Iran unfolded from the espionage events of Book I. The contemporary epic culminates with the first convening of the United Nations Parliamentary Assembly, a world-scale version of the European Parliament installed as a new organ of the United Nations.

Dr. Sheppard presently serves as a Professor of International Law and World Literature at Peking University, Northeastern University and the State Intellectual Property Office (SIPO) of China, and has previously served as a Professor of International Law and MBA professor at Tsinghua University, Renmin People’s University, the China University of Politics and Law and at the Law Institute of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS) in Beijing, China. Having studied Law, Comparative Literature and politics at the University of California, Berkeley (Ph. D.) Program in Comparative Literature), Northridge, Tübingen, Heidelberg, the People’s College and San Francisco, (BA, MA, JD), he additionally has been active as professor of International Trade, Private International Law, and Public International Law from 1993 to 1998 at Xiamen University, Beijing Foreign Studies University, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences Graduate School (CASS), and the China University of Political Science and Law in Beijing. Since 2000 he has served as a Senior Consultant to the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) in Beijing and has authored numerous papers on the democratic reform of the United Nations system.

***

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GIVE THE PERFECT GIFT OF THE CHRISTMAS SPIRIT (FREE)—SPIRITUS MUNDI BY ROBERT SHEPPARD NOMINATED FOR THE PRESTIGIOUS PUSHCART PRIZE 2014 AWARD– FREE TO YOU TO GIVE OR KEEP DURING THE PUSHCART PRIZE GIVEAWAY CELEBRATION FROM THANKSGIVING TO CHRISTMAS!

Posted on December 8, 2013 by robertalexandersheppard

GIVE THE PERFECT GIFT OF THE CHRISTMAS SPIRIT (FREE)—SPIRITUS MUNDI BY ROBERT SHEPPARD NOMINATED FOR THE PRESTIGIOUS PUSHCART PRIZE 2014 AWARD– FREE TO YOU TO GIVE OR KEEP DURING THE PUSHCART PRIZE GIVEAWAY CELEBRATION FROM THANKSGIVING TO CHRISTMAS!

—NOT ONLY THE PERFECT SPIRITUAL GIFT OF CHRISTMAS, BRINGING THE WORLD TOGETHER IN SPIRIT AND COMMON COMMUNITY, BUT PERFECTLY FREE!

In celebration of the Pushcart Prize Nomination you are invited to take advantage of the Pushcart Prize Free Giveaway Celebration will be scheduled from the Week of Dec 1 in which Spiritus Mundi, Book I will be made available free on Amazon and Smashwords outlets, including Barnes & Noble and many others.

Spiritus Mundi is the modern futurist epic built on the theme of the spiritual community of all mankind epitomized in its thriller storyling of overcoming the threat of World War III to bring the world together in a new United Nations Parliamentary Assembly for global democracy—a saga of spiritual renewal and tolerance across the globe, aand beacon of hope pointing towards a better world struggling against all odds to be born.

TO GET YOUR FREE COPIES OF SPIRITUS MUNDI BOOK I NOW JUST CLICK ON THIS SMASHWORDS LINK AND DOWNLOAD IMMEDIATELY:

Book I (5.0 Stars on Smashwords) https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/303856

Spiritus Mundi Book I is also discounted on Amazon during the Pushcart Prize Giveaway Celebration period, and Spiritus Mundi Book II, The Romance is discounted $1.00 off the retail price to $3.99 on Smashwords and Amazon.

Among the writers who previously received early recognition in Pushcart Prize anthologies were: Kathy Acker, Steven Barthelme, Rick Bass, Charles Baxter, Bruce Boston, Raymond Carver, Joshua Clover, Ju�� dDiaz, Andre Dubus, William H. Gass, Seán Mac Falls, William Monahan, Paul Muldoon, Joyce Carol Oates, Tim O’Brien, Lance Olsen,Peter Orner, Kevin Prufer, Kay Ryan, Mona Simpson, Ana Menéndez, and Wells Tower.

https://robertalexandersheppard.wordpress.com/2013/04/11/poetry-pacific-3-poems-by-robert-sheppard/

INTRODUCING PUSHCART PRIZE NOMINEE ROBERT SHEPPARD’S EPIC NOVEL SPIRITUS MUNDI

Author’s E-mail: rsheppard99_2000@yahoo.com

ON SPIRITUS MUNDI

Robert McDowell, Editor, Writer, Marketer, Editorial Cra, The Nature of Words

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Raymond P. Keen, School Psychologist, Department of Defense Dependents Schools (DODDS)

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Nicole Breanne, Content Coordinator, Ranker.com _____________________________________________________

Alina Mu Liu, Official Interpreter, Editor & Translator, HM Courts & Tribunal Service, London UK & the United Nations

Jaime Martinez-Tolentino, Writer” November 19, 2012

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Lara Biyuts, Reviewer and Blogger at Goodreads.com and Revue Blanche

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Doug Draime Writer, Freelance

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Jim Rogers, Owner and Director, AXL

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“Robert Sheppard is an exceptional thinker! His work should be read and made the subject of critical study.”May 26, 2012

Georgia Banks-Martin, Editor, New Mirage Journal

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Carl Macki, Owner, Carl Macki Social Media

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Glenda Fralin, Author, Organization NWG

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Dr. Robert Rose, Radio Show Host, http://www.blogtalkradio.com/icdrrose

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Related Links and Websites: Spiritus Mundi, Novel by Robert Sheppard

For Introduction and Overview of the Novel: https://spiritusmundinovel.wordpress.com/

For Updates on the Upcoming Movie Version of the Novel, Spiritus Mundi & Casting of Actors and Actresses for Leading Roles See: https://robertalexandersheppard.wordpress.com/

To Read Abut the Occupy Wall Street Movement in Spiritus Mundi: http://occupywallstreetnovel.wordpress.com/

For Author’s Blog: https://robertalexandersheppard.wordpress.com/

To Read a Sample Chapter from Spiritus Mundi: https://spiritusmundisamplechapters.wordpress.com/

To Read Fantasy, Myth and Magical Realism Excerpts from Spiritus Mundi: https://spiritusmundifantasymythandmagicalrealism.wordpress.com/

To Read Sexual Excerpts from Spiritus Mundi: The Varieties of Sexul Experience: https://spiritusmundivarietiesofsexualexperience.wordpress.com/

To Read Spy, Espionage and Counter-terrorism Thriller Excerpts from Spiritus Mundi: http://spiritusmundispyespionagecounterterrorism.wordpress.com/

To Read Geopolitical and World War Three Excerpts from Spiritus Mundi: https://spiritusmundigeopoliticalworldwar3.wordpress.com/

To Read Spiritual and Religious Excerpts from Spiritus Mundi: https://spiritusmundionspiritualityandreligion.wordpress.com/

To Read about the Global Campaign for a United Nations Parliamentary Assembly in Spiritus Mundi: https://spiritusmundiunitednationsparliamentaryassembly.wordpress.com/

To Read Poetry from Spiritus Mundi：https://spiritusmundipoetry.wordpress.com/

For Discussions on World Literature and Literary Criticism in Spiritus Mundi: http://worldliteratureandliterarycriticism.wordpress.com/

For Discussions of World History and World Civilization in Spiritus Mundi: https://worldhistoryandcivilizationspiritusmundi.wordpress.com/

To Read the Blog of Eva Strong from Spiritus Mundi: https://evasblogfromspiritusmundi.wordpress.com/

To Read the Blog of Andreas Sarkozy from Spiritus Mundi: http://andreasblogfromspiritusmundi.wordpress.com/

To Read the Blog of Yoriko Oe from Spiritus Mundi: http://yorikosblogfromspiritusmundi.wordpress.com/

To Read the Blog of Robert Sartorius from Spiritus Mundi: http://sartoriusblogfromspiritusmundi.wordpress.com/

Highlights:

All the Highlights of the novel cannot be contained in such a short Introduction, but a few of them would include:

1. Spiritus Mundi is the first novel in world history to portray the creation of a United Nations Parliamentary Assemblyon the working model, inter alia, of the European Parliament;

4. Spiritus Mundi is a Spellbinding Terrorism/Counterterrorism novel involving a global plot to conceal an atomic bomb in a Chinese Teracotta Warrior to be detonated in Jerusalem;

6. Establishes and grounds the new genre of the Global Novel written in Global English, the international language of the world,

12. Features the cross-cultural experiences and search for roots, sexual and spiritual fulfillment and authenticity of Asian-American character Jennie Zheng, and Pari Kasiwar of India;

15. Is a fantastic read on a roller-coaster ride of high adventure and self-exploration!

NEW BOOK RELEASE: SPIRITUS MUNDI BY ROBERT SHEPPARD NOW AVAILABLE ON AMAZON!

Spiritus Mundi, Book I: The Novel: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00CIGJFGO

Spiritus Mundi, Book II: The Romance http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00CGM8BZG

CHECK OUT SPIRITUS MUNDI’S 5.O-STAR GOODREADS RATING AVERAGE & REVIEWS ON GOODREADS:

Book I (5.0-Stars on Goodreads) http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17857619-spiritus-mundi-book-i

Book II (5.0-Stars on Goodreads) http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17857704-spiritus-mundi-book-ii-the-romance

CHECK OUT A FULL SUMMARY OF SPIRITUS MUNDI ON SHELFARI before purchasing at:

http://www.shelfari.com/books/36123188/Spiritus-Mundi—Book-I-The-Novel http://www.shelfari.com/books/36123187/Spiritus-Mundi—Book-II-The-Romance

Spiritus Mundi is also available on SMASHWORDS in ALL FORMATS:

Book I (5.0 Stars on Smashwords) https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/303856 Book II (5.0 Stars on Smashwords) https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/303798

Spiritus Mundi is also now available at the following sites:

How to Tune In: ============ You can tune in by clicking on the following BlogTalkRadio link:

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/icdrrose/2013/05/17/robert-sheppard-global-consciousness

or you can listen in anytime to the recorded Podcasts of the May 17 Interview, or past Interviews:

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/icdrrose http://www.blogtalkradio.com/icdrrose/2012/08/01/robert-sheppard–spiritus-mundi-a-novel

Spiritus Mundi, Novel by Robert Sheppard: Table of Contents

Spiritus Mundi

Contents

Book One Spiritus Mundi: The Novel Chapters 1-33

Departure (Beijing)
A Failing Quest (New York)
War Council & Counteroffensive (Geneva)
New Beginnings (London)
Republic of Letters (Berlin)
Fathers and Sons (Washington,D.C.)
Ulysses: Blogo Ergo Sum (Beijing)
Frequently Asked Questions (London)
In the Middle Kingdom (Beijing)

10. Past and Present (London-South Africa)

11. Telemachus (Washington, D.C.)

12. The Everlasting Nay (Beijing)

13. My Brother’s Keeper (London)

14. In the Global Village (Beijing-Tokyo)

15. Deceits and Revelations (London)

16. Be Ready for Anything (Beijing)

17. The Obscure Object of Desire (London-Pyongyang)

18. Sufferings (Beijing)

19. Of the Yearnings of the Caged Spirit (London)

20. Cyclops (Washington, D.C.)

21. The Engines of Illusion (Beijing)

22. On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (London)

23. The Temptation of the Sirens (Beijing)

24. Truth or Consequences (London)

25. Lazarus Laughed (Beijing)

26. Neptune’s Fury & The Perils of the Sea (The Maldive Islands)

Naval Diaries and Ship’s Logs of Admiral Sir George Rose Sartorius (1780-1875)

27. Penelope (London)

28. The Volcano’s Underworld (Mexico City)

Teatro Magico

29. The Everlasting Yea (London)

30. Paradise Regained (Little Gidding)

31. To the South of Eden (Kenya-to Midrand-Johannesburg South Africa)

32. In a Glass Darkly (London)

33. Spiritus Mundi

Book Two Spiritus Mundi: The Romance Chapters 1-21

Gerusalemme Liberata & Orlando Furioso (Jerusalem)
In a Glass Darkly (London)
Great Expectations (Jerusalem)
The Parable of the Cave (Qom, Iran)
The Xth Day of the Crisis (London)
The Supreme Leader & The Three Messiahs (Qom)
Going for the Jugular (London)
The Night Journey, Goethe & The Monkey King (Qom)
The Central Sea, The Crystal Bead Game & The Quest

10. The Island of Omphalos & The Mothers

11. The Council of the Immortals & The Trial By Ordeal

12. Nemesis

13. Armageddon (London)

14. The Fever Breaks

15. High Noon & Showdown at the OK Corral (Washington, D.C.)

16. Ecce Homo (Jerusalem)

17. Deliverance (London/Lhasa)

18. For Every Action…. (Moscow/Beijing)

19. The Burial of the Dead (London/Little Gidding)

20. Spiritus Mundi (London/Jerusalem)

21. In My End is My Beginning

—-The Convening of the First Meeting of the

United Nations Parliamentary Assembly (New York)

Appendix 1: A United Nations Parliamentary Assembly: Frequently Asked Questions

Appendix 2: Spiritus Mundi: Index of Principal Characters

In Memoriam, Doris Lessing (22 October 1919 – 17 November 2013)— World Literature Forum, Robert Sheppard, Editor-in-Chief

Posted on December 4, 2013 by robertalexandersheppard

In Memoriam, Doris Lessing (22 October 1919 – 17 November 2013)—-World Literature Forum, Robert Sheppard, Editor-in-Chief

Doris Lessing–Farewell At 94

Doris Lessing (22 October 1919 – 17 November 2013) was a British novelist, poet, playwright, biographer and short story writer. Her novels include The Grass is Singing (1950), the sequence of five novels collectively called Children of Violence (1952–69), The Golden Notebook (1962), The Good Terrorist (1985), and five novels collectively known as Canopus in Argos Archives (1979–1983).

Lessing was awarded the 2007 Nobel Prize in Literature. In awarding the prize, the Academy described her as “that epicist of the female experience, who with scepticism, fire and visionary power has subjected a divided civilisation to scrutiny.” Lessing was the eleventh woman and the oldest person ever to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Most of us remember Doris Lessing for the Golden Notebook, which appeared in 1962 at the beginning of the turbulent era of the 1960’s which began to call into re-examination the nature of society and the state, capitalism and wars of imperialism and the experience of women in modern society. Although she rejected characterization as a “feminist” author, her Golden Notebook was viewed by many young women of the time as an opening of the discussion in literature of women’s liberty and search for an authentic identity as women in a society in which men have been dominant. Lessing characterized the Notebook rather as the experience of a woman’s breakdown and recovery under the pressure of divided and inauthentic selves, some imposed by a hostile society and others of her own making, which through crisis struggled towards a greater wholeness, integration, perspective, spirituality and vital life. The trajectory of her further work after the Notebooks, including themes from Sufism, Science Fiction, dreamscapes and explorations of alternative worlds and possible existences confirms these concerns, stressing the evolution of consciousness and the belief that individual liberation can come about only if people understand the link between their own fates and the fate of society.

A Young Doris Lessing

Doris Lessing was born Doris May Tayler in Persia (now Iran) on October 22, 1919. Both of her parents were British: her father, who had been crippled in World War I, was a clerk in the Imperial Bank of Persia; her mother had been a nurse. In 1925, lured by the promise of getting rich through corn farming, the family moved to the British colony in Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). Doris’s mother adapted to the rough life in the settlement, energetically trying to reproduce what was, in her view, a civilized, Edwardian life in a backward primitive environment; but her father did not, and the thousand-odd acres of bush he had bought failed to yield the promised wealth.

Lessing has described her childhood as an uneven mix of some pleasure and much pain. The natural world of the Rhodesian countryside was one avenue of retreat from an otherwise miserable existence. Her mother, obsessed with raising a proper daughter, enforced a rigid system of rules and decorum at home, then installed Doris in a convent school, where nuns terrified their charges with stories of hell and damnation. Lessing was later sent to an all-girls high school in the capital of Salisbury, from which she soon dropped out. She was thirteen; and it was the end of her formal education.

Like other women writers from southern African who did not graduate from high school such as Olive Schreiner and Nadine Gordimer, and like some other children of the lower ranks of colonial society who could not go on to university such as George Orwell and Rudyard Kipling, Lessing made herself into a self-educated intellectual.

She recently commented that unhappy childhoods seem to produce fiction writers. “Yes, I think that is true. Though it wasn’t apparent to me then. Of course, I wasn’t thinking in terms of being a writer then – I was just thinking about how to escape, all the time.” The parcels of books ordered from London fed her imagination, laying out other worlds to escape into. Lessing’s early reading included Dickens, Scott, Stevenson, Kipling; later she discovered D.H. Lawrence, Stendhal, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky. Doris’s early years were also spent absorbing her fathers bitter memories of World War I, taking them in as a kind of “poison.” “We are all of us made by war,” Lessing has written, “twisted and warped by war, but we seem to forget it.”

In flight from her mother, Lessing left home when she was fifteen and took a job as a nursemaid. Her employer gave her books on politics and sociology to read, while his brother-in-law crept into her bed at night and gave her inept kisses. During that time she was, Lessing has written, “in a fever of erotic longing.” Frustrated by her backward suitor, she indulged in elaborate romantic fantasies. She was also writing stories, and sold two to magazines in South Africa.

She worked as a telephone operator for a year, then at nineteen, she married Frank Wisdom in a lunge for escape into a new life, and had two children. A few years later, feeling trapped in a persona that she feared would destroy her, she left her family, remaining in Salisbury. Soon she was drawn to the like-minded members of the Left Book Club, a group of Communists “who read everything, and who did not think it remarkable to read.” Gottfried Lessing, her second husband, was a central member of the group and a forceful intellectual and socialist; shortly after she joined, they married and had a son.

Lessing’s own life may be seen as in partial contradiction to her professed belief that people ultimately cannot resist the currents of their time, as she struggled against the social and cultural pressures that seemed to ask her to sink without a whisper into marriage and motherhood. “There is a whole generation of women,” she has said, speaking of her mother’s era, “and it was as if their lives came to a stop when they had children. Most of them got pretty neurotic – because, I think, of the contrast between what they were taught at school they were capable of being and what actually happened to them.” Lessing believes that she was freer than most people because she became a writer. For her, writing is a process of “setting at a distance,” taking the “raw, the individual, the uncriticized, the unexamined, into the realm of the general.”

During the postwar years, Lessing, similar to her contemporary George Orwell became increasingly disillusioned with the Communist movement, which she saw as having betrayed the ideals that she continued to cherish, left altogether in 1954. By 1949, Lessing had moved to London with her young son. That year, she also published her first novel, The Grass Is Singing, and began her career as a professional writer.

Much of Lessing’s fiction is deeply autobiographical, much of it emerging out of her experiences in Africa, in the Communist movement and in her life as a middle-aged “free woman” fitting into neither the traditional world of housewives and couples nor the emerging lifestyles of the new class of singles and profession-driven women. Drawing upon her childhood memories and her serious engagement with politics and social concerns, Lessing has written about the clash of cultures, the gross injustices of racial inequality, the struggle among opposing elements within an individuals own personality, and the conflict between the individual conscience and the collective good. Her stories and novellas set in Africa, published during the fifties and early sixties, decry the dispossession of black Africans by white colonials, and expose the sterility of the white culture in southern Africa. The Apartheid government declared her a prohibited alien in both Southern Rhodesia and South Africa.

Over the years, Lessing has attempted to accommodate what she admires in the novels of the nineteenth century —– their “climate of ethical judgement”—- to the demands of twentieth-century ideas about consciousness and time. After writing the Children of Violence series (1951-1959), a formally conventional bildungsroman (novel of education) about the growth in consciousness of her heroine, Martha Quest, Lessing broke new ground with The Golden Notebook (1962), a daring narrative experiment, in which the multiple selves of a contemporary woman are rendered in astonishing depth and detail. Anna Wulf, like Lessing herself, strives for ruthless honesty as she aims to free herself from the chaos, emotional numbness, and hypocrisy afflicting her generation.

In the Golden Notebook the narrator-protagonist Anna Wulf adopted a technique pioneered by her contemporary George Orwell in his Diaries, of keeping parallel journals or notebooks for different and often contradictory dimensions of her life. The book intersperses segments of an apparantly realistic narrative of the lives of Molly and Anna, and their children, ex-husbands and lovers—entitled Free Women—with excerpts from Anna’s four notebooks, coloured Black—-Anna’s experience in Africa, before and during WWII, which inspired her own best-selling novel), Red—her experience as a member of the Communist Party and left-wing intellectual circles in Africa and England, Yellow—an ongoing notebook of a fictional “work-in-progress” being written based on the painful ending of Anna’s own love affair, and Blue (Anna’s personal journal where she records her memories, dreams, and emotional life). Each notebook is returned to four times, interspersed with episodes from Free Women, creating non-chronological, overlapping sections that interact with one another. All four notebooks and the frame narrative testify to the themes of Communist idealism and Stalinism, the Cold War and the threat of nuclear conflagration, and women’s struggles with the conflicts of work, sex, love, maternity, and politics.The fifth notebook, or the “Golden Notebook” of the title follows her last love affair and her search for integration and wholeness following the crisis of breakdown and recovery in her life. This post-modern styling, with its space for “play” engaging the characters and readers, is among the most famous features of the book.

Attacked in the early 60’s for being “unfeminine” in her depiction of female anger and aggression in the Notebook, Lessing responded, “Apparently what many women were thinking, feeling, experiencing came as a great surprise.” As at least one early critic noticed, Anna Wulf “tries to live with the freedom of a man”— a point Lessing seems to confirm: “These attitudes in male writers were taken for granted, accepted as sound philosophical bases, as quite normal, certainly not as woman-hating, aggressive, or neurotic.”

In the 1970s and 1980s, Lessing began to explore more fully the quasi-mystical insight Anna Wulf seems to reach by the end of The Golden Notebook. Her “inner-space fiction” deals with cosmic fantasies (Briefing for a Descent into Hell,1971), dreamscapes and other dimensions (Memoirs of a Survivor, 1974), and science fiction probings of higher planes of existence (Canopus in Argos: Archives, 1979-1983).

In 2007 she was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. Her voice will be sorely missed, not only in bringing to light the struggles of women with the conflicts of work, sex, love, maternity, and politics, but also in her evocation of the universal struggle towards spirituality in the onward evolutionary process of human consciousness, and the quest for individual liberation through the understanding of the links between each individual’s own fate and the fate of their society and humanity as a whole.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Death of Doris Lessing, Doris Lessing, Feminist Literature, George Orwell and Doris Lessing, In Memoriam Doris Lessing, Lessing and Gordimer, Masterpieces of World Literature, Nobel Laureate Doris Lessing In Memoriam, Nobel Prize for Literature, Orwell's Diaries and Lessing's Golden Notebook, Robert Sheppard, Robert Sheppard Editor-in-Chief, Robert Sheppard Pushcart Prize 2014 Nominee, Spiritus Mundi, Spiritus Mundi Novel by Robert Sheppard, The Golden Notebook, Women Writers, Women Writers in World Literature, Women's Literature, World Literature, World Literature Forum | 1 Comment

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PUSHCART PRIZE NOMINEE ROBERT SHEPPARD’S “POEMS FROM SPIRITUS MUNDI” FEATURED ON PYROKINECTION & POETRY PACIFIC

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Three Poems from Robert Sheppard

Monday, 4 March 2013

3 Poems by Robert Sheppard

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Sunday, April 28, 2013

Author interview with non-fiction, science-fiction and fantasy writer and poet Robert Sheppard

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Robert Sheppard, Author of Spiritus Mundi

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