I recently saw again the film The Shawshank Redemption (1994), after not having seen it for a few years. It’s always interesting to revisit certain classics (book, film, or work of art) as the years go by, and observe how your perceptions change. I had a chance to read a little bit more about how the director, Frank Darabont, got the film made, and how it was not an immediate success.
The obvious failure of conventional infantry tactics in the early years of the First World War led to agonized soul-searching in the leadership elements of the belligerent nations. How could the stalemate be broken? How could ground forces move forward, and restore some sort of war of maneuver?
A reader doesn’t like how his girlfriend is behaving. She’s pulling away from him, and not responding in the way he would like. He feels like he’s not being valued. He wants to know if he can do anything to “make her appreciate him” more.
It was touted as the “most secure prison in Western Europe.” It was supposed to be a place for the “safekeeping” of IRA (Irish Republican Army) paramilitaries arrested in Northern Ireland. It was Her Majesty’s Prison Maze, or more commonly known as “The Maze.”
And it became the scene of one of the most daring, well-executed prison escapes in twentieth century history.
It is a pleasant thing to discover pearls of wisdom buried in the tomes of forgotten writers. We are reminded of the persistence of human wisdom, and its ability to persist down the arches of the years in all conditions and environments, whether favorable and unfavorable.
Many years ago I read a book called The Next Ten Thousand Years. The author, Adrian Berry, argued that no matter what happened to mankind–good or bad–he would survive, prosper, and go on literally to reshape the solar system and explore the galaxy.
Injustices thrive in atmospheres of fear and intolerance. I came across one story recently that illustrates this point. It could just as easily have come from Stalinist Russia, or modern-day North Korea. The tale is found in Giuseppe Riciotti’s Age of Martyrs, and concerns the accidental martyrdom of a man named Silenus, who lived during the emperor Diocletian’s vigorous persecution of Christians in the last years of fourth century. Riciotti does not mention the original source, but it must have come from one of the ecclesiastical historians of the period.
In 1999, two colonels in the Chinese Army, Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui, published a treatise that would heavily influence Chinese military planning for the following decades. The book was called Unrestricted Warfare. Its central theses were these:
A reader writes that he is beginning to doubt some of the tenets of the religion he grew up with. He is dealing with doubt, and is not sure how to handle it. He wonders of masculist doctrines can serve as a substitute for religion.
Some statements of philosophers are so transcendent, and so soaring in imaginative power, that they require little or no comment. I found one such passage today in a book that in recent years has come to be one of my favorites: Pascal’s Pensées. I love Pascal because I can open his book at random, any time I feel the need, and feel his spiritual fingers gripping my throat with every sentence. He is not only a philosopher, but a saint.
Quintus Curtius 
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