Londinium I

Londinium is the ancient Roman city that we now know as London, where I've been vacationing.
One of the strangest things about London is how tourist-oriented it is. Sure Rome and Paris are big tourist cities, but I think London takes the cake for tourism. There are museums that are tourist-traps, like the Sherlock Holmes museum. Sherlock Holmes is a figment of Sir Arthur Canon Doyle's imagination, along with fairies are other curiosities, and therefore does not exist. Sure, it might be interesting to look at a house situated at 221 Baker Street, just to see the scenery that the author might have been describing. However, the Sherlock Holmes Museum, while called 221 Baker Street, is actually nowhere near the actual location of 221 Baker Street. It's simply a small townhouse on Baker Street, equipped with a violin, cocaine, and some pipes, guarded by a guy dressed as though he came from Scotland Yard, waiting to take you eight pound (16 dollars) tickets. On the other hand, its shop is quite nice, full of interesting collectors' items.

The other tourist trap, which I actually went to, is Madame Tussauds. While it is one of the few places that allows photography and some of the wax figures are very lifelike (in particular, the ones of Brad Pitt and Churchill, glaring at Hitler), it's crammed full of tourists, does not represent London in any way, and is utterly overpriced. After you pass through the galleries of Madame Tussauds, you go on this ride through the history of London, which seems like a bad imitation of a Disneyland ride, crammed into a small building. I liked to call this the heart of Londonland

The only historically important part of the museum is the story if Madame Tussauds herself. Madame Tussauds lived during the French Revolution and she was a friend of the monarchy. As such, she was made ready to be executed and then spared only for her ability to make wax figures. Then, it became her job to make wax heads of the executed, by picking through the area directly adjacent to the guillotine and finding the detached heads. Thus, in the Chamber of Horrors, at the end of the museum tour, we find hanging heads whose casts were made in this time, like the heads of Marie Antoinette and Robiespierre. Also, Madame Tussauds made the death mask of my favourite revolutionary, Jean Paul Marat.

More on Londinium later ...

Divarication

"action or process of spreading apart" Merriam Webster Online

In the beginning, we were all little babies. Then, we grew up and had different interests. Then, after high school, we diverged further into different fields of study or work or perhaps a gap year. But, in short, we found our strengths and followed them. So?

"You know, the thing with my program is that, once you get in, you're just in another world and you don't know anything outside of your program," my old high school acquaintance, with whom I interact amicably with very infrequently, said to me, as she stared confoundedly at a crossword puzzle. The strange thing is that I've heard this particular comment from several people already. Once is an accident, twice is a coincidence, and three times is a conspiracy. Well, "several" is more than three, so this is a downright, underground cabal that's sweeping across universities.

No matter who says it and what programs they're in, be it math or engineering or science or music, it's always the same story. They claim that in their program, there's so much work that they don't have time to be in touch with the rest of the world. The music student claims that any time not spent practicing is wasted. The math student claims that 10 hour assignments are reasons not to know who Condoleeza Rice is. The biology student claims it's perfectly normal for her not to that Dickens and Bronte are classics and that a frog is an aquatic jumper. I could go on, but you get the picture.

So, because we diverged onto our own little paths, we therefore can no longer have grounds for communication? Does divarication into different fields mean that we should burn all bridges to that common place and just bury ourselves in our field of study? What good is all the stuff we'd learn if we can't share it with the rest of the world?

Inventions and advancements in society come when people research something deeply, then they find some link with the real world and try make life better for everyone. A simple example is when some scientists experiment with chemicals and medicine and find that their solution cures small pox. A complex example is when some professors study quantum mechanics, which has nothing do to with algebra, and find some deep underlying pattern that tells us new things about algebra, creating algebraic discoveries like never before seen. Ok, maybe that's a bit of a stretch, but the point is that, for society to advance, divarication has to comes hand-in-hand with communication. What good is your secret formula if you don't know that it cures a disease, because you've been so buried in your little world that you haven't heard of that disease?

And, just because everyone is different, likes different things, has different skills suited for different tasks, and thinks differently - does that mean we should all live on our own islands and not talk to anyone else? Does divarication mean that you drift so far away from everyone else that you can no longer talk to other people without awkwardness?

We divaricate for a reason and we certainly need to talk to people with similar interests once in a while. Sometimes, people are so different and have such different values that we can't relate to them at all. But, there should be some common ground; we are all people and we live on the same planet, there should be something we can talk about. Perhaps it's the depletion of the ozone layer, or politics, or something else that affects everyday people. Or perhaps it's a book or a movie that's accessible to everyone. Is being an expert on German Romantic painters really satisfying if, on order to become such an expert, you alienated yourself from all other types of information, and now cannot carry on an everyday conversation with anyone without boring them with descriptions of Friedrich's brushstrokes in his early painting period because you don't know the weather outside, which was your only other conversation material? I didn't think so.

"Or maybe it's just me," my acquaintance continues, as she wonders where Bosphorus might be.

Yeah, it's just you. This is your world. You're living in it, you breathe it, you walk through it, and you affect it in your own way, be it small or big. It might not hurt to know a little something about this world of yours.

Wergeld

"in early Germanic and Anglo-Saxon law, a price paid by a person who has killed another to the family of the person killed, to atone for the killing and avoid reprisals." Webster's New World College Dictionary

It sounds like "war-gold". It probably means war gold, or gold that prevents a war. As odd and despicable as it may seem that people forgave and forgot for a golden price, it seems that it is a contract developed to avoid wars. The concept of paying wergeld of the same family as paying war taxes or enforcing sanctions; the idea is to pay for an offense action. Does paying wergeld bring peace? Or, does the existence of wergeld justify murder as a financial transaction? What is the significance of wergeld?

In olden times of history, the concept was quite simple. Two men duel, one dies, the other pays wergeld to the other's family to avoid repercussions. End of story. Where things become complicated, where there is more scope for philosophy, is when the payment of wergeld is a transaction between two countries and the reprisal that has been avoided is war. If the wergeld paid was to avoid war, it should cripple the paying party so that they can't go to war anyway, or else the wergeld has accomplished nothing. But, this leaves the receiving party in a position to make war at an advantage. In true Machiavellian politics, after such an amount is paid, it would be the optimal time to start a war. I know Cesare Borgia, the Machiavelli's title prince, certainly would.

Is this where honour and fairness comes out to play? Is wergeld a guarantee of peace? Or, is it a gambit that can be accepted and, more importantly, declined? In acceptance, is the accepting party admitting that human life can be bought? If declined, is it a sufficient cause for war, for both parties? So, if a country is already poised for war, with soldiers at ready, and an offending country kills a man, is it not in their advantage to then refuse all forms of wergeld and go straight to war? Then, clearly, the concept of wergeld prompts war as well as it avoids war. So, after all's said and done, is this peace-implying way of dealing with a fallout just another way to present war?

I thought of wergeld after reading the news on Israel and Lebanon. I thought it would be a appropriate tie-in with this weary old world of weltschmerz.