By Maria Popova (brainpickings.org)

To be alive is to marvel — at least occasionally, at least with glimmers of some deep intuitive wonderment — at the Rube Goldberg machine of chance and choice that makes us who we are as we half-stride, half-stumble down the improbable paths that lead us back to ourselves. My own life was shaped by one largely impulsive choice at age thirteen, and most of us can identify points at which we could’ve pivoted into a wholly different direction — to move across the continent or build a home here, to leave the tempestuous lover or to stay, to wait for another promotion or quit the corporate day job and make art. Even the seemingly trivial choices can butterfly enormous ripples of which we may remain wholly unwitting — we’ll never know the exact misfortunes we’ve avoided by going down this street and not that, nor the exact magnitude of our unbidden graces.

Perhaps our most acute awareness of the lacuna between the one life we do have and all the lives we could have had comes in the grips of our fear of missing out — those sudden and disorienting illuminations in which we recognize that parallel possibilities exists alongside our present choices. “Our lived lives might become a protracted mourning for, or an endless tantrum about, the lives we were unable to live,” wrote the psychoanalyst Adam Phillips in his elegant case for the value of our unlived lives. “But the exemptions we suffer, whether forced or chosen, make us who we are.”

The garland of those exemptions strews our sense of self — our constellating experience of personal identity which, as the poet and philosopher John O’Donohue so incisively observed, “is not merely an empirical process of appropriating or digesting blocks of life.”

No one has captured that ultimate existential awareness more beautifully, nor with greater nuance, than the trailblazing French existentialist philosopher and feminist Simone de Beauvoir (January 9, 1908–April 14, 1986) in her autobiography, All Said and Done (public library).

Simone de Beauvoir, 1946 (Photograph: Henri Cartier-Bresson)

From the fortunate rostrum of her own long life, Beauvoir reflects on this constellation of chance and choice:

Every morning, even before I open my eyes, I know I am in my bedroom and my bed. But if I go to sleep after lunch in the room where I work, sometimes I wake up with a feeling of childish amazement — why am I myself? What astonishes me, just as it astonishes a child when he becomes aware of his own identity, is the fact of finding myself here, and at this moment, deep in this life and not in any other. What stroke of chance has brought this about?

With an eye to the element of chance and its myriad manifestations, she adds:

The penetration of that particular ovum by that particular spermatozoon, with its implications of the meeting of my parents and before that of their birth and the births of all their forebears, had not one chance in hundreds of millions of coming about. And it was chance, a chance quite unpredictable in the present state of science, that caused me to be born a woman. From that point on, it seems to me that a thousand different futures might have stemmed from every single movement of my past: I might have fallen ill and broken off my studies; I might not have met Sartre; anything at all might have happened.

But the most curious part of this perplexity, Beauvoir notes, is that despite the larger cosmic accident of all life and the chance nature of our particular lives within it, we experience ourselves and our existence as non-accidental — a disconnect that fringes on the free will paradox. She writes:

Tossed into the world, I have been subjected to its laws and its contingencies, ruled by wills other than my own, by circumstance and by history: it is therefore reasonable for me to feel that I am myself contingent. What staggers me is that at the same time I am not contingent. If I had not been born no question would have arisen: I have to take the fact that I do exist as my starting point. To be sure, the future of the woman I have been may turn me into someone other than myself. But in that case it would be this other woman who would be asking herself who she was. For the person who says “Here am I” there is no other coexisting possibility. Yet this necessary coincidence of the subject and his history is not enough to do away with my perplexity. My life: it is both intimately known and remote; it defines me and yet I stand outside it.

Considering the precise nature of this “curious object,” Beauvoir draws on the physics that revolutionized the human understanding of life and reality in her lifetime, and writes:

Like Einstein’s universe, it is both boundless and finite. Boundless: it runs back through time and space to the very beginnings of the world and to its utmost limits. In my being I sum up the earthly inheritance and the state of the world at this moment.

[…]

And yet life is also a finite reality. It possesses an inner heart, a centre of interiorization, a me which asserts that it is always the same throughout the whole course. A life is set within a given space of time; it has a beginning and an end; it evolves in given places, always retaining the same roots and spinning itself an unchangeable past whose opening toward the future is limited. It is impossible to grasp and define a life as one can grasp and define a thing, since a life is “an unsummed whole,” as Sartre puts it, a detotalized totality, and therefore it has no being. But one can ask certain questions about it.

Of course, as De Beauvoir’s American peer and contemporary Susanne Langer has memorably pointed out, our questions invariably shape our answers. But to this central question of whether and to what degree we are contingent upon chance, De Beauvoir offers an answer that radiates the ultimate antidote to regret:

Chance … has a distinct meaning for me. I do not know where I might have been led by the paths that, as I look back, I think I might have taken but that in fact I did not take. What is certain is that I am satisfied with my fate and that I should not want it changed in any way at all. So I look upon these factors that helped me to fulfill it as so many fortunate strokes of chance.

Simone de Beauvoir, 1952 (Photograph: Gisèle Freund)

Complement this particular fragment of the wholly magnificent All Said and Done with philosopher Rebecca Goldstein on what makes you and your childhood self the same person despite a lifetime of change, then revisit Beauvoir on freedom, busyness, and why happiness is our moral obligation, vitality and the measure of intelligence, and her daily routine.

Memory loss: how to recharge your brain.

By Candy Sagon

March 22, 2021 (aarpethel.com)

My husband says he’s going to the kitchen to get a glass of water. Minutes later, he’s back without a glass of water. “Where’s the water?” I ask.  He sighs. “I walked into the kitchen and couldn’t remember what I was there for.”

A friend and I are discussing our recent favorite books. I mention one I just finished, but for the life of me, I cannot remember the author’s name. “Oh, don’t worry,” my friend consoles me. “You’re just having a senior moment.”

We are both in our mid-60s. Another friend of a certain age worries that her husband has become increasingly forgetful. He recently complimented her on a long, flowing skirt she was wearing, asking, “Is that new?” even though she’s worn it weekly since they began dating in 1985. He also goes blank on the names of friends they have known for decades.

“Do you think I need to get him tested?” she asks me.

As we inch beyond our 50s, these kinds of memory lapses become more common, and so do our mounting fears that they could signal the first step toward dementia. Forgetting a word, not remembering where you stashed the keys — these incidents can seem ominous. Even rigorous sex or other physical activity can trigger a sudden episode of memory loss. (Don’t ask me how I personally know this.) The temporary condition is called transient global amnesia and it’s rare but more likely in people ages 50 to 70. 

Then again, maybe the reason we’re so worried about our memory slips is that we’re constantly hearing the message that age equals mental decline. Ageist terms like “senior moment” (as if people in their 20s and 30s never forget anything) and the preponderance of negative stereotypes in the media about older adults can undermine our mental health. It may even undermine our memory skills, according to psychologist Sarah Barber.

“Forgetfulness can happen at any age, but we interpret why it happens differently,” says Barber, an assistant professor of psychology at Georgia State University who studies ageism’s effect on memory. “When younger people forget something, we often assume that it’s due to a lack of effort or being distracted. When older people forget something, we assume it’s due to their lack of memory ability.”

Barber adds that her research shows that “people who internalize negative attitudes about aging actually have worse [memory] outcomes as they get older.”

Frankly, I’d like to blame all my brain blips on ageism, but there are a variety of other reasons for our lack of recall as we get older. The main culprit is a slowdown in mental processing speed — meaning the time it takes us to react to or retrieve information, or to complete a mental task.

Mental processing slows with age, no matter how experienced or skillful we are. That’s why, as studies show, older chess players, regardless of their skill level, will be slower to select the best move against an opponent than younger players. It’s why the mandatory retirement age for air traffic controllers, who need to be able to react quickly, is 56.

On the other hand, like wine, some things in our brain improve with age — namely our store of knowledge, facts and skills, as well as our ability to detect patterns and make accurate predictions over time.

As neuroscientist Daniel Levitin argues in a recent essay in The New York Times titled, “Everyone Knows Memory Fails as You Age. But Everyone is Wrong”: “If you’re going to get an X-ray, you want a 70-year-old radiologist reading it, not a 30-year-old one.”

Research also indicates that our memory and thinking skills change throughout our life span and may change at different ages for different people. For some, certain abilities may begin declining around the time of their high school graduation, while others don’t peak until their 40s or beyond, as Harvard researchers reported in a 2015 study on the rise and fall of different cognitive abilities in the journal Psychological Science.

We may even be able to grow new brain neurons (the cells that transmit information, well into our 70s or older), as a 2018 study of brain samples, published in the journal Cell Stem Cell, suggests. And the good news for older adults who want to sustain fitness of the brain is the proliferation of lifelong learning and continuing education programs offered by colleges and universities.

Then there are those who seem to stay sharp effortlessly well into their 90s. My father, who just turned 96, took computer and accounting classes when he retired around age 70. He now handles accounts payable and other financial record-keeping for my brother’s advertising firm and calls and reminds me of changes in the tax law that I might want to consider.

Others may not be as fortunate as my dad, due to a range of causes — from medication side effects to vitamin deficiency to hearing loss or depression to more serious conditions like dementia or Alzheimer’s disease. And then, of course, there’s the coronavirus pandemic, resulting in, for many of us, social isolation, loneliness and fear of mortality — all possible risk factors for memory problems. Indeed, the pandemic has contributed to 28 percent of older women reporting increased anxiety or depression, according to a July 2020 Kaiser Family Foundation poll.

So how do we recharge our brain and maybe even our memory skills? The experts have some suggestions below.

Get regular physical activity

Better yet, do it outdoors. A 2019 study of adults ages 55 to 85 found that even a single session of moderate exercise may increase activity in portions of the brain involved in long-term memory. As an added bonus, exercising outside provides mental health benefits, improving our mood and reducing stress.

Adjust your diet

Cutting back on red meat and sugar and increasing plant-based foods may help. The Mediterranean diet, which is rich in fruits, vegetables, grains and beans has been linked to reduced risk of developing memory and thinking problems and some forms of dementia.

Still worried?

If you’re wondering if those memory lapses are normal aging or something more serious to discuss with your doctor, the National Institute on Aging has a helpful online guide called Memory, Forgetfulness and Aging: What’s Normal and What’s Not?”

As for me, I’m spending more time these days picking my dad’s brain about my tax return and less time fretting about the little and not-so-little things that just happen to slip my mind.

(Contributed by Suzanne Deakins, H.W,. M.)

https://tubitv.com/movies/560920/close-encounters-of-the-fifth-kind-contact-has-begun?start=true

Our topic “Our Future is found in this moment Now” 

In this continuing series, you are invited to find insights that awake from in-depth conversations with interesting and piquant guests. Our next meetup is a conversation between  book author,  Business development consultant, and personal coach, Marni Spencer-Devlin and your host Calvin Harris, H.W., M.

Marni, the founder, and president of a thriving, multimillion-dollar marketing company is an international writer, who has survived molestation, rape, heroin addiction, prostitution, homelessness and even prison.

She wrote her autobiography, “Crawling into the Light”, while in steel handcuffs.

Marni’s second book, “The Iceberg Principles” a story of living in the Now, led her to true freedom, deep personal insights  about the universe and our place in it and a sense of renewed energy.

Marni will discuss gems from her life as well as a tidbit about her new book soon to be released called  “The List” – as she discusses what she has used that has proven to be a scientific method for finding the love of your life, and more personal fulfillment.

.This event is free, one hour beginning 11:00 a.m. Pacific time- Sunday, March 28, 2021.

Sunday Meeting on Zoom

Zoom Link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/332275676

homovegetus0 John Cleese Podcast #32 The Scientists John Cleese Podcasts are available at http://www.johncleesepodcast.co.uk

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The anima and animus are described in Carl Jung’s school of analytical psychology as part of his theory of the collective unconscious. Jung described the animus as the unconscious masculine side of a woman, and the anima as the unconscious feminine side of a man, each transcending the personal psyche. Jung’s theory states that the anima and animus are the two primary anthropomorphic archetypes of the unconscious mind, as opposed to the theriomorphic and inferior function of the shadow archetypes. He believed they are the abstract symbol sets that formulate the archetype of the Self.

In Jung’s theory, the anima makes up the totality of the unconscious feminine psychological qualities that a man possesses and the animus the masculine ones possessed by a woman. He did not believe they were an aggregate of father or mother, brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, or teachers, though these aspects of the personal unconscious can influence a person’s anima or animus.

Jung said that “the encounter with the shadow is the ‘apprentice-piece’ in the individual’s development … that with the anima is the ‘masterpiece'”.

–Jung quoted in Anthony Stevens On Jung (London 1990) p. 206

Jung believed a male’s sensitivity is often lesser or repressed, and therefore considered the anima one of the most significant autonomous complexes. Jung believed the anima and animus manifest themselves by appearing in dreams and influence a person’s attitudes and interactions with the opposite sex. A natural understanding of another member of the opposite sex is instilled in individuals that stems from constant subjection to members of the opposite sex. This instilment leads to the development of the anima and animus.^[1] Jung said that “the encounter with the shadow is the ‘apprentice-piece’ in the individual’s development … that with the anima is the ‘masterpiece'”.^[2] Jung viewed the anima process as being one of the sources of creative ability. In his book The Invisible Partners, John A. Sanford said that the key to controlling one’s anima/animus is to recognize it when it manifests and exercise our ability to discern the anima/animus from reality.^[3]

More at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anima_and_animus#cite_note-2

Anima mundi

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The world soul (Greek: ψυχὴ κόσμου psychè kósmou; Latin: anima mundi) is, according to several systems of thought, an intrinsic connection between all living things on the planet, which relates to the world in much the same way as the soul is connected to the human body. Plato adhered to this idea and it was an important component of most Neoplatonic systems:

Therefore, we may consequently state that: this world is indeed a living being endowed with a soul and intelligence … a single visible living entity containing all other living entities, which by their nature are all related.^[1]

The Stoics believed it to be the only vital force in the universe. Similar concepts also hold in systems of eastern philosophy in the Brahman–Atman of Hinduism, the Buddha-Nature in Mahayana Buddhism,^{[citation needed]} and in the School of Yin-Yang, Taoism, and Neo-Confucianism as qi.

Other resemblances can be found in the thoughts of hermetic philosophers like Paracelsus, and by Baruch Spinoza, Gottfried Leibniz, Immanuel Kant, Friedrich Schelling and in Hegel‘s Geist (“Spirit”/”Mind”).

In Jewish mysticism, a parallel concept is that of “Chokhmah Ila’ah,” the all-encompassing “Supernal Wisdom” that transcends, orders and vitalizes all of creation. Rabbi Nachman of Breslov states that this sublime wisdom may be apprehended (or perhaps “channeled”) by a perfect tzaddik (holy man).^[2] Thus, the tzaddik attains “cosmic consciousness” and thus is empowered to mitigate all division and conflict within creation.

More at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anima_mundi

Rupert Sheldrake It’s clear that our world is profoundly shaped by machines, from motor cars to mobile phones. But what impact do they have upon our awareness? In the latest Sheldrake-Vernon dialogue, Rupert Sheldrake and Mark Vernon discuss a fascinating new book, In The Shadow of The Machine by Jeremy Naydler. It’s a prehistory of the computer, tracking the way human consciousness evolved in order to conceive of a mechanised world. Sheldrake and Vernon ask what’s been gained and what’s been lost in this process, the ways in which our perception of life and consciousness has been moulded, and how human consciousness might evolve further as the machine metaphor itself “runs out of steam”. Dr Rupert Sheldrake, PhD, is a biologist and author best known for his hypothesis of morphic resonance. At Cambridge University he worked in developmental biology as a Fellow of Clare College. He was Principal Plant Physiologist at the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics and From 2005 to 2010 was Director of the Perrott-Warrick project, Cambridge. https://www.sheldrake.org​ Mark Vernon is a psychotherapist, writer and scholar of ancient philosophy. He’s contributed through radio and print with the BBC, The Guardian, Church Times, and elsewhere. He teaches at The Idler Academy and The School of Life and also leads workshops and groups on the dynamics of transformation and inner life. http://www.markvernon.com

A Room of One’s Own

by Virginia Woolf 

A Room of One’s Own is an extended essay by Virginia Woolf. First published on the 24th of October, 1929, the essay was based on a series of lectures she delivered at Newnham College and Girton College, two women’s colleges at Cambridge University in October 1928. While this extended essay in fact employs a fictional narrator and narrative to explore women both as writers and characters in fiction, the manuscript for the delivery of the series of lectures, titled Women and Fiction, and hence the essay, are considered nonfiction. The essay is seen as a feminist text, and is noted in its argument for both a literal and figural space for women writers within a literary tradition dominated by patriarchy.

(Goodreads.com)

MARCH 23, 2021 AT 7:00 AM BY ROB BREZSNY

“Cloud Study (Early Evening),” Simon Denis/courtesy The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

ARIES (March 21-April 19): In the novel “House of Leaves,” the hero Johnny Truant describes his friend Lude as wanting “more money, better parties, and prettier girls.” But Johnny wants something different. What is it? He says, “I’m not even sure what to call it except I know it feels roomy and it’s drenched in sunlight and it’s weightless and I know it’s not cheap.” In my opinion, that declaration is far too imprecise! He’ll never get what he wants until he gets clearer about it. But his fantasy is a good start. It shows that he knows what the fulfillment of his yearning feels like. I suggest you get inspired by Johnny Truant’s approximation to conjure up one of your own. Gaze ahead a few years, and see if you can imagine what your best possible future feels like. Then describe it to yourself as precisely as possible.

TAURUS (April 20-May 20): How distraught I was when I discovered that one of my favorite poets, Pablo Neruda, was an admirer of the murderous dictator Joseph Stalin. It broke my heart to know I could never again read his tender, lyrical poetry with unconditional appreciation. But that’s life: Some of our heroes and teachers disappoint us, and then it’s healthy to re-evaluate our relationships with them. Or maybe our own maturation leads us to realize that once-nurturing influences are no longer nurturing. I recommend that sometime soon, you take a personal inventory with these thoughts in mind. I suspect there may be new sources of inspiration headed your way. Get ready for them.

GEMINI (May 21-June 20): Self-help author Steve Maraboli has useful advice for you to consider in the coming weeks. I hope you’ll meditate on what he says and take decisive action. He writes, “Incredible change happens in your life when you decide to take control of what you do have power over instead of craving control over what you don’t.” To get started, Gemini, make a list of three things you do have power over and three things you wish you did but don’t have power over.

CANCER (June 21-July 22): While he was alive, Cancerian author Franz Kafka burned ninety percent of everything he wrote. In a note to a friend before he died, he gave instructions to burn all the writing he would leave behind. Luckily, his friend disobeyed, and that’s why today we can read Kafka’s last three novels and a lot more of his stuff. Was his attitude toward his creations caused by the self-doubt that so many of us Cancerians are shadowed by? Was he, like a lot of us Crabs, excessively shy about sharing personal details from his life? In accordance with astrological omens, I urge you to at least temporarily transcend any Kafka-like tendencies you have. It’s time to shine brightly and boldly as you summon your full powers of self-expression.

LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): To create your horoscope, I’ve borrowed ideas from Leo-born author Cassiano Ricardo. He speaks of a longing “for all that is tall like pine trees, and all that is long like rivers, and all that is purple like dusk.” I think yearnings like those will be healthy and wise for you to cultivate in the coming weeks. According to my reading of the astrological omens, you need expansive influences that stretch your imagination and push you beyond your limitations. You will benefit from meditations and experiences that inspire you to outgrow overly small expectations.

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): Virgo actor and director Jean-Louis Barrault (1910–1994) aspired to “wake up a virgin each morning.” He wanted “to feel hungry for life,” as if he had been reborn once again. In order to encourage that constant renewal, he regarded going to sleep every night as “a small death.” I recommend his approach to you during the coming weeks. In my astrological opinion, the cosmic rhythms will be conspiring to regularly renew your desires: to render them pure, clean, raw and strong. Cooperate with those cosmic rhythms!

LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): Is there anything more gratifying than being listened to, understood, and seen for who you really are? I urge you to seek out that pleasure in abundance during the coming weeks. My reading of the astrological omens tells me you need the nurturing jolt that will come from being received and appreciated with extra potency. I hope you have allies who can provide that for you. If you don’t, search for allies who can. And in the meantime, consider engaging the services of a skillful psychotherapist or life coach or some other professional listener.

SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): “Blobs, spots, specks, smudges, cracks, defects, mistakes, accidents, exceptions and irregularities are the windows to other worlds,” writes author Bob Miller. I would add that all those things, along with related phenomena like fissures, blemishes, stains, scars, blotches, muck, smears, dents and imperfections, are often windows to very interesting parts of this seemingly regular old ordinary world—parts that might remain closed off from us without the help of those blobs and defects. I suggest you take full advantage of the opportunities they bring your way in the coming weeks.

SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): Innovative psychologist Carl Jung had a nuanced understanding of the energies at work in our deep psyche. He said our unconscious minds are “not only dark but also light; not only bestial, semi-human, and demonic, but also superhuman, spiritual, and, in the classical sense of the word, ‘divine.’” I bring this to your attention, Sagittarius, because now is a favorable time to get better acquainted with and more appreciative of your unconscious mind. For best results, you must not judge it for being so paradoxical. Don’t be annoyed that it’s so unruly and non-rational. Have fun with its fertility and playfulness and weirdness.

CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): The fantasy drama “Game of Thrones” appeared on TVs all over the world. But the audience that watched it in China got cheated out of a lot of essential action. Government censorship deleted many scenes that featured nudity and sex, fighting and violence, and appearances by dragons, which play a starring role in the story. As you can imagine, Chinese viewers had trouble following some of the plot points. Telling you about this, Capricorn, is my way of nudging you to make sure you don’t miss any of the developments going on in your own personal drama. Some may be hidden, as in China’s version of “Game of Thrones.” Others might be subtle or disguised or underestimated. Make it your crusade to know about everything.

AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): “Words are, of course, the most powerful drug used by mankind,” wrote author Rudyard Kipling. Yes, they are. I agree. They change minds, rouse passions, build identities, incite social change, inspire irrationality, and create worlds. This is always true, but it will be especially important for you to keep in mind during the coming weeks. The ways you use language will be key to your health and success. The language that you hear and read will also be key to your health and success. For best results, summon extra creativity and craftsmanship as you express yourself. Cultivate extra discernment as you choose what you absorb.

PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): Piscean linguist Anna Wierzbicka says the Russian expression Dusha naraspashku means “unbuttoned soul.” She continues, “The implication is that it is good, indeed wonderful, if a person’s ‘soul,’ which is the seat of emotions, is flung open in a spontaneous, generous, expansive, impetuous gesture, expressing full trust in other people and an innocent readiness for communion with them.” I wouldn’t recommend that you keep your soul unbuttoned 24/7/365, but in the coming weeks, I hope you’ll allocate more time than usual to keeping it unbuttoned.

Homework: Send ideas for April Fool pranks that fulfill the following prescription: “Comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.” Truthrooster@gmail.com

Detail of Guillaume Budé (c1536), by Jean Clouet. Courtesy the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

23 MARCH 2021 (psyche.co)

Emma Claussenis a British Academy postdoctoral fellow and an affiliated lecturer in French at the University of Cambridge. Her first book is Politics and ‘Politiques’ in Sixteenth-Century France: A Conceptual History (forthcoming, July 2021) and she is working on her next, ‘What Makes Life Worth Living in Early Modern France?’

Edited by Sam Haselby

In the early days of my PhD, whenever I tried to explain to a fellow graduate student or relative that I was working on ‘politics and political actors in 16th-century France’ – pedantically refusing to say ‘politicians’, since politique meant more ‘civic administrator’ in that period, strictly speaking – I would often be interrupted: ‘I’ll tell you what politicians are. They’re self-interested, backstabbing, Machiavellian, hypocrite liars!’ Indeed, that was how ‘political actors’ were often described in the early modern period, when this kind of language began to be used about politicians. France was a key setting for intellectual and polemical investment in the role of the political person: a crucible in the process of politicians becoming more prominent and more problematic in Western culture.

There have always been politicians; many ancient philosophers describe the roles of the ‘statesman’ or ‘political man’ in positive terms. In the Renaissance, politics rose to prominence among the disciplines, with new translations and commentaries of the political theory of classical antiquity such as Aristotle’s Politics, and original works such as Machiavelli’s Prince. However, enacting this difficult expertise was thankless, sometimes explicitly dangerous – and the moral status of the politician was in doubt, especially in the context of Reformation conflict.

In France, civil wars raged from 1562 to 1598, fought partly along religious lines like the English civil wars a century later. Early in the century, the scholar Guillaume Budé, advisor to King François I and the first royal librarian, wrote his own version of a prince’s handbook. Printed posthumously in 1547, it contained the observation that political laws need to be tempered by ‘mixed, ambidextrous men’. Budé was referring to the delicate mixing of different types of law (including civil and ecumenical), in a context of factional divisions and mass conversion to the reformed faith. The idea of a fundamentally mixed person enacting politics – an ‘ambidextrous’ character, balancing ‘Right’ and ‘Left’ centuries before these were political categories – came under intense pressure as religious and social change intensified. Politics was the art of the possible: it also involved attempting to reconcile the irreconcilable. Then as now, this was considered horrifying as well as hopeful.

Political infrastructure was changing in tandem with shifts in thinking about politics. This period saw the development of a class of counsellors, legislators, scholars and ambassadors across Europe grappling with this increasingly dark art. Among the royal portraits produced in European courts, we find figures from this loose political class: Budé’s portrait, attributed to Jean Clouet, is held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York; Hans Holbein painted Thomas Cromwell and his rival Thomas More. These men, politicians avant la lettre, were sometimes objects of public loathing. Nor were they always appreciative themselves of those who practised politics. Not long before his execution, More wrote an irritable pamphlet criticising ‘polytykes’ as ‘pacyfyers’ acting as apologists for heresy in order to maintain public peace.

Political action was associated with flexibility: a willingness to break any promise or moral principle if expedient

In France, religious difference was not only considered heresy, it also challenged the established political identity of the realm, expressed in the axiom ‘one king, one law, one faith’. Although initially French intellectual elites – inspired by Renaissance practices of translation and careful re-readings of ancient texts – had been open to new interpretations of scripture, they didn’t entirely anticipate the radical potential of re-reading. The theologian Jean Calvin attempted to enact that potential. Calvinist missionaries to France were instrumental in the conversion of thousands across the social spectrum. Elements of the already restive nobility also adopted the reformed faith. Budé himself was suspected of having converted. By the middle of the 16th century, when Henri II’s early death left his sickly 15-year-old son on the throne with Catherine de’ Medici as regent, the scene was set for war: the one king was propped up by multiple advisors, and by his mother; the one faith was now at least two; the law was ill-equipped to handle the consequences.

Calvin, a trained lawyer, wrestled with the relationship between ‘spiritual’ and ‘political’ jurisdictions, the issue at the heart of the French conflict. Early in the wars, people began referring to a type of person, the politique, who prioritised social order over spiritual unity, just as More had described ‘polytykes’ doing in the English context. After thousands of French Protestants were massacred in 1572, poems celebrating the killings dismissed politiques who preferred peaceful coexistence to violent purges. Protestant writers, meanwhile, characterised Machiavelli as the amoral inspiration for the monarchy’s betrayal of its Calvinist subjects: it is to them that we owe the Florentine’s sulphurous reputation. In all these cases, political action was associated with flexibility: either toleration of difference, or a willingness to break any promise or moral principle if expedient. ‘Ambidextrous’ mixing became, in some quarters, moral abjection.

The last phase of the civil wars was fought by the ‘Catholic League’, known as the ‘Holy Union’, against a combination of Huguenot and royalist forces whose supporters in the courts and parliaments were known as politiques. Pamphleteers and preachers wishing to restore the ‘holy union’ of French Catholicism condemned their opponents as an unholy union, representing politiques as an extravagant blend of mythological creature, animal and human to exemplify the point. One broadsheet offering a portrait of a politique described this figure as a ‘monster’, with an illustration of the politician as a mermaid: half-woman, with the head of Medusa, and half-fish with a double tail – another version of ambidexterity.

The civil war portrait of a politique as a monstrous amalgam seems antithetical to the sober, scholarly image of Budé by Clouet. It might then seem that the mixed politique of the radical Catholic polemic emerges entirely in response to the fractious ‘mixing’ of Catholics and Protestants – and is a corruption of Budé’s ‘mixed’ corrector of political laws. But the politique monster is also a composite of various Classical myths (note the reference to Medusa). In that respect, it symbolises a key intellectual and literary technique of the age: the compilation of classical narratives and figures, in order to create new, hybridised forms. Writers were anxious about the consequences of unbridled creative variation, even as they prized its aesthetic effects. Gendered anxiety also tracks across many texts of the period: bad politicians were described as ‘effeminate’, or represented as monstrous women, like the Medusa-Mermaid. This vision of dangerous, ambivalent femaleness sits alongside the ‘motherland’ (and later Marianne, the symbol of the Republic) in French political imagination. The early modern invention of the mixed ‘political monster’, forged in Reformation conflict, also betrayed the tensions inherent to Renaissance creative and intellectual practice, and the fragile masculinity of the practitioners.

By the time I’d finished my PhD and begun turning it into a book, politicians were held, if it were possible, in even lower regard, and unions of all kinds were in jeopardy – not only in Europe. French secularist policy (laïcité), nominally developed as an antidote to ‘one law, one faith’, was held to be in crisis, or to do more harm than good. A female member of the UK parliament, Jo Cox – whose first parliamentary speech argued that ‘we have far more in common than that which divides us’ – had been assassinated. Britain had voted to leave the EU. Populations across the world had elected nationalist ‘strong’ men who exploited anti-politician sentiment. The battle between political monster and ‘holy’ union continues.

The composite political monster of Renaissance France stands in contrast to fantasies of uncomplicated unity; it is also a fantastical vision of the coalition that ended the conflict. After the wars, French leaders established an official policy of ‘forgetting’ the fighting that had torn towns and families apart. But the politique monster is worth remembering. It was intended as a slander, a warning as to the monstrous, amoral purpose of politics – that is, to suffer compromise and betray ideals. Still, this vision of the political person is also of somebody who uneasily embodies coexistence. It’s not a facile fiction of unity, but one that acknowledges the discomfort in cohesion. There could be worse monsters.