The Wisdom & Advice of Maurice Ashley, the First African-American Chess Grandmaster

in Games, TED Talks | February 4th, 2016

I don’t know about you, but when I’ve thought of chess grand­mas­ters, I’ve often thought of Rus­sians, north­ern Euro­peans, the occa­sion­al Amer­i­can, the guy on the Chess­mas­ter box — pure­ly by stereo­type, in oth­er words. I’ve nev­er thought of any­one from, say, Jamaica, the coun­try of birth of Mau­rice Ash­ley, not just a chess grand­mas­ter but a chess com­men­ta­tor, writer, app and puz­zle design­er, speak­er and Fel­low at the Media Lab at MIT. Since we’ve only just entered Feb­ru­ary, known in the Unit­ed States as Black His­to­ry Month, why not high­light the Brook­lyn-raised (and Brook­lyn-park trained) Ash­ley’s sta­tus as, in the words of his offi­cial web site, “the first African-Amer­i­can Inter­na­tion­al Grand­mas­ter in the annals of the game”?

Giv­en the impres­sive­ness of his achieve­ments, we might also ask what we can learn from him, whether or not we play chess our­selves. You can learn a bit more about Ash­ley, the work he does, and the work his stu­dents have gone on to do, in The World Is a Chess Board, the five-minute Mash­able doc­u­men­tary at the top of the post. Even in that short run­time, he has much to say about how the game (which, he clar­i­fies, “we con­sid­er an art form”) not only reflects life, and reflects the per­son­al­i­ties of its play­ers, but teach­es those play­ers — espe­cial­ly the young ones who may come from less-than-ide­al begin­nings — all about focus, deter­mi­na­tion, choice, and con­se­quence. Per­haps the most impor­tant les­son? “You’ve got to be ready to lose.”

Ash­ley expounds upon the val­ue of chess as a tool to hone the mind in “Work­ing Back­ward to Solve Prob­lems,” a clip from his TED Ed les­son just above. He begins by wav­ing off the mis­per­cep­tion, com­mon among non-chess-play­ers, that grand­mas­ters “see ahead” ten, twen­ty, or thir­ty moves into the game, then goes on to explain that the sharpest play­ers do it not by look­ing for­ward, but by look­ing back­ward. He pro­vides a few exam­ples of how using this sort of “ret­ro­grade analy­sis,” com­bined with pat­tern recog­ni­tion, applies to prob­lems in a range of sit­u­a­tions from proof­read­ing to biol­o­gy to law enforce­ment to card tricks. If you ever have a chance to enter into a bet with this man, don’t.

That’s my advice, any­way. As far as Ash­ley’s advice goes, if we endorse any par­tic­u­lar take­away from what he says here, we endorse the first step of his chess-learn­ing strat­e­gy for absolute begin­ners, which works equal­ly well as the first step of a learn­ing strat­e­gy for absolute begin­ners in any­thing: “The best advice I could give a young per­son today is, go online and watch some videos.” Stick with us, and we’ll keep you in all the videos you need.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Mar­cel Duchamp, Chess Enthu­si­ast, Cre­at­ed an Art Deco Chess Set That’s Now Avail­able via 3D Print­er

Kas­parov Talks Chess, Tech­nol­o­gy and a Lit­tle Life at Google

Free App Lets You Play Chess With 23-Year-Old Nor­we­gian World Cham­pi­on Mag­nus Carlsen

Watch Bill Gates Lose a Chess Match in 79 Sec­onds to the New World Chess Cham­pi­on Mag­nus Carlsen

A Famous Chess Match from 1910 Reen­act­ed with Clay­ma­tion

Chess Rivals Bob­by Fis­ch­er and Boris Spassky Meet in the ‘Match of the Cen­tu­ry’

Vladimir Nabokov’s Hand-Drawn Sketch­es of Mind-Bend­ing Chess Prob­lems

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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AC/DC Plays a Short Gig at CBGB in 1977: Hear Metal Being Played on Punk’s Hallowed Grounds

in Music | February 4th, 2016

Punk rock and heavy met­al were two gen­res that evolved over the ‘70s, but seemed to run par­al­lel to each oth­er, despite shar­ing com­mon fash­ion, sounds, and atti­tudes. But then there are moments in his­to­ry, where every­body plays togeth­er in the same sand­box. For exam­ple, the above audio, which cap­tures the Aus­tralian band AC/DC on their first Amer­i­can tour, play­ing New York’s CBGB, syn­ony­mous now with punk and new wave music.

The date is August 24, 1977, and AC/DC were on a cross-coun­try trip that had tak­en in both club dates and are­nas, where they supported—yes, hard to believe, I know—REO Speed­wag­on. Their album Let There Be Rock had just dropped in June. The band would be in the States until the win­ter.

This CBGB gig finds them on the same bill as Talk­ing Heads and the Dead Boys, accord­ing to a poster from the time. And while there’s no video for this show, there are plen­ty of tasty pho­tos over at Dan­ger­ous Minds, show­ing lead singer Bon Scott work­ing the crowd and Angus Young—at the sprite­ly age of 22—being car­ried through the crowd on the shoul­ders of Scott him­self. You can feel the mug­gy New York sum­mer in these pho­tos, but also the excite­ment of an unfor­get­table gig.

At 15 min­utes, the set is short, but still three min­utes longer than the Ramones’ first set at the same club three years ear­li­er. That’s pret­ty met­al, man.

via Dan­ger­ous Minds

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

1980s Met­al­head Kids Are All Right: New Study Sug­gests They Became Well-Adjust­ed Adults

Punk & Heavy Met­al Music Makes Lis­ten­ers Hap­py and Calm, Not Aggres­sive, Accord­ing to New Aus­tralian Study

Heavy Met­al: BBC Film Explores the Music, Per­son­al­i­ties & Great Cloth­ing That Hit the Stage in the 1980s

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the FunkZone Pod­cast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

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Hear the Experimental Music of the Dada Movement: Avant-Garde Sounds from a Century Ago

in Art, Music | February 4th, 2016

dadamusic2

When we think of Dada, we think of an art movement—or anti-art movement—that embraced chance oper­a­tions, futur­ism, and exper­i­men­ta­tion and reject­ed all of the pre­vi­ous doc­trines of the for­mal art world as mori­bund and fraud­u­lent. As Dada artist and the­o­rist Tris­tan Tzara wrote in his 1918 man­i­festo, the aims of the estab­lish­ment art world had been “to make mon­ey and cajole the nice nice bour­geois.” This new breed would have none of it. In their attack on bour­geois artis­tic and polit­i­cal val­ues, artists like Tzara, Mar­cel Duchamp, Man Ray, Hans Richter, Kurt Schwit­ters and oth­ers will­ful­ly tres­passed for­mal bound­aries, using any means or medi­um they hap­pened to find of inter­est in the moment. We have Dada paint­ing, sculp­ture, typog­ra­phy, and film; Dada poet­ry, the­ater, dance, and even Dadaist pol­i­tics, so well rep­re­sent­ed by Tzara’s man­i­festo.

One medi­um we don’t often asso­ciate with Dada, how­ev­er, is music. And yet, those same artists who waged war on the estab­lish­ment with ready­made uri­nals and ram­bling man­i­festos also did so with musi­cal com­po­si­tions that were as influ­en­tial as the paint­ing, film, and poet­ry.

Dada, and its imme­di­ate suc­ces­sor, sur­re­al­ism, “exert­ed a per­va­sive influ­ence on 20th-cen­tu­ry music,” writes Matthew Green­baum at New Music Box, but “the pres­ence of Dada and sur­re­al­ism is gen­er­al­ly unrec­og­nized or for­got­ten” in dis­cus­sions of “mid-cen­tu­ry avant-garde com­posers” in New York, like Ste­fan Wolpe, Mor­ton Feld­man, and John Cage. And yet, the repet­i­tive, machine-like qual­i­ties we asso­ciate with mid-cen­tu­ry min­i­mal­ism come more or less direct­ly from the Dadaists, as does the high con­cept exper­i­men­ta­tion.

Dada artists, adds Green­baum, “paid close atten­tion to advanced and devel­op­ing tech­nol­o­gy, and the repet­i­tive beau­ty of machines was a ubiq­ui­tous image.” Works like Mar­cel Duchamp’s con­cep­tu­al musi­cal “assem­blages cun­ning­ly obscure the bound­aries of text, music, rep­re­sen­ta­tion, and nota­tion a half-cen­tu­ry before John Cage’s exper­i­ments in inde­ter­mi­na­cy.” Greenbaum’s essay makes a strong case for this lin­eage, but the most direct way to trace the steps from Duchamp, et al., to Cage is to lis­ten to the Dada artists’ exper­i­ments with music first­hand, and you can hear a selec­tion of them here, excerpt­ed from the 1985 com­pi­la­tion Dada For Now and brought to us cour­tesy of Ubuweb, who host the full album. Many of these com­po­si­tions are exper­i­ments with lan­guage, the­atri­cal per­for­mance, and text (the album is shelved in the “Spo­ken Word” cat­e­go­ry), though none of the com­posers would have drawn any lines between word and music.

At the top of the post, hear Anto­nio Russolo’s 1921 com­po­si­tion “Corale and Ser­e­na­ta,” which sounds like a rather tra­di­tion­al march, but for the omi­nous roar­ing that shad­ows the orches­tra­tion and occa­sion­al­ly breaks in to dis­rupt it entire­ly, sound­ing like the rush of tires on a high­way or work­ings of a huge, indus­tri­al machine. Next is Hugo Ball’s 1916 com­po­si­tion “Karawane,” in which a trio of vocalists—Trio Exvoco—grows loud­er and more gut­tur­al as they chant in uni­son, their only accom­pa­ni­ment what sounds like a trol­ley bell. Fur­ther down, in Tris­tan Tzara and oth­ers’ “L’amiral cherche une mai­son a louer,” also from 1916, that same trio per­forms some sort of exu­ber­ant com­e­dy, with accom­pa­ny­ing whiz-bang sound effects that one would hear in radio plays of the suc­ceed­ing decades. And just above, in Kurt Schwit­ters’ 1919 “Simul­tangedicht kaa gee dee,” Trio Exvo­co begins a chant that soon devolves into stac­ca­to vocal­iza­tions and gib­ber­ish.

A few of these pieces, like the Rus­so­lo at the top, are orig­i­nal record­ings. The rest are recon­struc­tions. All of them are strange, as is to be expect­ed, but it’s impos­si­ble to hear just how strange—and how taste­less and absurd, perhaps—they would have sound­ed to audi­ences one hun­dred years ago. As Green­baum argues, what was once rev­o­lu­tion­ary in Dada became nor­ma­tive as it was inte­grat­ed into the Amer­i­can art estab­lish­ment in the lat­er 20th cen­tu­ry. But to hear it with fresh ears is to recap­ture how Dadaist art sound­ed as rad­i­cal as it looked.

Hear more Dadaist music over at Ubu.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The ABCs of Dada Explains the Anar­chic, Irra­tional “Anti-Art” Move­ment of Dadaism

Three Essen­tial Dadaist Films: Ground­break­ing Works by Hans Richter, Man Ray & Mar­cel Duchamp

Exten­sive Archive of Avant-Garde & Mod­ernist Mag­a­zines (1890–1939) Now Avail­able Online

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Animated Interview: Sally Ride Tells Gloria Steinem About the Challenge of Being the First American Women in Space (1983)

in Animation, Life, Science | February 3rd, 2016

Blank on Blank returned this week with the lat­est episode in “The Exper­i­menters,” a minis­eries high­light­ing the icons of STEM. This new ani­ma­tion brings to life a 1983 inter­view fea­tur­ing one trail­blaz­er, Glo­ria Steinem, talk­ing with anoth­er, Sal­ly Ride, a physi­cist who became the first Amer­i­can woman in space, and endured a lot of gen­der stereo­typ­ing along the way. Oth­er episodes in “The Exper­i­menters” series have focused on Buck­min­ster Fuller, Richard Feyn­man, and Jane Goodall.

Note: Glo­ria Steinem recent­ly pub­lished a new mem­oir called My Life on the Road. You can down­load it as a free audio­book if you head over to Audible.com and reg­is­ter for a 30-day free tri­al. The tri­al lets you down­load two audio­books for free. Then, when the tri­al is over, you can con­tin­ue your sub­scrip­tion, or can­cel it, and still keep the audio books. The choice is yours. Get more info here.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch an Ani­mat­ed Buck­min­ster Fuller Tell Studs Terkel All About “the Geo­des­ic Life”

What Ignit­ed Richard Feynman’s Love of Sci­ence Revealed in an Ani­mat­ed Vide

Ani­mat­ed: The Inspi­ra­tional Sto­ry of Jane Goodall, and Why She Believes in Big­foot

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How Stanley Kubrick Became Stanley Kubrick: A Short Documentary Narrated by the Filmmaker

in Film | February 3rd, 2016

Stan­ley Kubrick, the direc­tor of such beloved films as Dr. Strangelove, 2001: A Space Odyssey, and The Shin­ing, a man whose name remains, more than fif­teen years after his death, almost a byword for the cin­e­mat­ic auteur, got into film­mak­ing because of a mis­un­der­stand­ing. While work­ing as a pho­to­jour­nal­ist in his ear­ly twen­ties, he befriend­ed an even younger fel­low named Alex Singer, who would go on to become a well-known direc­tor of film and tele­vi­sion him­self, but back then he held a low­ly posi­tion in the office of The March of Time news­reels. Singer hap­pened to men­tion that each news­reel cost the com­pa­ny some­thing like $40,000 to pro­duce, which got Kubrick research­ing the price of film and cam­era rentals, then think­ing: could­n’t I make a doc­u­men­tary of my own for less?

Indeed; he and Singer put togeth­er $1,500 and col­lab­o­rat­ed on the box­ing short-sub­ject Day of the Fight, which played in the­aters in 1951. But it did­n’t turn a prof­it, since no dis­tri­b­u­tion com­pa­ny offered the $40,000 he expect­ed — nor had they ever offered The March of Time, whose news­reel busi­ness went under before long, enough to cov­er their own exor­bi­tant costs. So Kubrick did­n’t make mon­ey on his first film, but he did make a career, going on to do two more doc­u­men­taries, then the low-bud­get fea­tures Fear and Desire, Killer’s Kiss, and The Killing. Then came the crit­i­cal­ly acclaimed Paths of Glo­ry star­ring Kirk Dou­glas, which even­tu­al­ly brought about an offer to Kubrick from the icon­ic actor to take the direc­to­r­i­al reins on Spar­ta­cus. Next came Loli­ta, Dr. Strangelove, 2001, and the rest is cin­e­ma his­to­ry.

Of course, Kubrick did­n’t know the full extent of the cin­e­ma his­to­ry he would make back in 1966, on the set of 2001, when he sat down with physi­cist-writer Jere­my Bern­stein, doing research for a New York­er pro­file. The film­mak­er brought out one of his tape recorders (devices he adopt­ed ear­ly and used to write scripts) and record­ed 77 min­utes of his and Bern­stein’s con­ver­sa­tions, almost a half hour of which Jim Casey uses as the nar­ra­tion of the short doc­u­men­tary Stan­ley Kubrick: The Lost Tapes. Only recent­ly redis­cov­ered, these record­ings fea­ture Kubrick­’s first-hand sto­ries of grow­ing up indif­fer­ent to all things aca­d­e­m­ic and lit­er­ary, hon­ing his “gen­er­al prob­lem-solv­ing method” as a pho­tog­ra­ph­er, get­ting into movies as a result of the afore­men­tioned mis­con­cep­tion, and build­ing the career that film fans and schol­ars scru­ti­nize to this day. It does make you won­der: what glo­ri­ous work have we missed the chance to cre­ate because we ran the num­bers a lit­tle too rig­or­ous­ly?

via Devour

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Dis­cov­er the Life & Work of Stan­ley Kubrick in a Sweep­ing Three-Hour Video Essay

1966 Film Explores the Mak­ing of Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (and Our High-Tech Future)

What’s the Dif­fer­ence Between Stan­ley Kubrick’s & Arthur C. Clarke’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (A Side-by-Side Com­par­i­son)

The Let­ter Between Stan­ley Kubrick & Arthur C. Clarke That Sparked the Great­est Sci-Fi Film Ever Made (1964)

Inside Dr. Strangelove: Doc­u­men­tary Reveals How a Cold War Sto­ry Became a Kubrick Clas­sic

Vladimir Nabokov’s Script for Stan­ley Kubrick’s Loli­ta: See Pages from His Orig­i­nal Draft

Fear and Desire: Stan­ley Kubrick’s First and Least-Seen Fea­ture Film (1953)

Killer’s Kiss: Where Stan­ley Kubrick’s Film­mak­ing Career Real­ly Begins

Lost Kubrick: A Short Doc­u­men­tary on Stan­ley Kubrick’s Unfin­ished Films

Stan­ley Kubrick’s Daugh­ter Shares Pho­tos of Her­self Grow­ing Up on Her Father’s Film Sets

Stan­ley Kubrick’s Jazz Pho­tog­ra­phy and The Film He Almost Made About Jazz Under Nazi Rule

Stan­ley Kubrick’s Rare 1965 Inter­view with the New York­er

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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Hunter S. Thompson Talks with Keith Richards in a Very Memorable and Mumble-Filled Interview (1993)

in Music, Television | February 3rd, 2016

Here’s a vari­a­tion on the par­lor game ques­tion, “what famous per­son would you most like to have din­ner with, and why?” What two famous peo­ple would you like to stick in a room togeth­er for ten min­utes, and why? I imag­ine a fair num­ber of read­ers might think of Hunter S. Thomp­son and Kei­th Richards, and the why is pret­ty obvi­ous. Both impress us, writes Fla­vor­wire, for “hav­ing remained alive” for oh so many years “after all those drugs” and crazed exploits. If Thomp­son was gonzo, Thomp­son plus Richards equals “dou­ble gonzo.”

Well, your wish is grant­ed, in the almost ten-minute video above, in which Thomp­son and Richards have a mum­ble-off, dis­cussing such sub­jects as J. Edgar Hoover’s rein­car­na­tion (he would return as “a fart,” Kei­th says), the Hel­l’s Angels, The Bea­t­les, drugs, blood trans­fu­sions, and that Alta­mont inci­dent.

In the first minute of tape, we have a ram­bling solo intro­duc­tion from Thomp­son, and he assures us that he and Kei­th “have a sense of his­to­ry you don’t.” Hav­ing put the view­er in their place (or the cameraman—more on that anon), Thomp­son prompt­ly segues to the inter­view, which took place at the Ritz Car­leton in Aspen.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, no one has thought to add sub­ti­tles to this bizarre exchange, which has cir­cu­lat­ed on Youtube for some time now. That was where the man who shot the inter­view, Wayne Ewing, first saw the grainy video of footage he shot for a 1993 ABC series called “In Con­cert.” The project was fraught from the begin­ning. The orig­i­nal plan was to have the two meet in New York, then have MTV shoot the inter­view and Ewing shoot the whole scene with a third cam­era “while Kei­th and Hunter emp­tied the mini-bar and chat­ted.” Instead, Thomp­son “came down with a vir­u­lent flu,” and the pro­duc­ers had to lat­er lure Richards to Col­orado.

So remem­bers Ewing in a 2009 intro­duc­tion to notes he took down the day after the March 15th shoot. The jour­nal reveals Thomp­son’s agi­tat­ed state of mind in the week lead­ing up to the shoot, as he lashed out at his staff, at Ewing, and at “col­lege sopho­mores on ski vaca­tions demand­ing auto­graphs… hold­ing out soiled nap­kins with pens for a record of their momen­tary brush with fame.” He’s clear­ly ner­vous about Richards’ arrival, obsess­ing over the state of the local shoot­ing range, and when Ewing sug­gest­ed “goofy ideas for the video with Kei­th,” Thomp­son growled, “it’s not your movie! It’s Kei­th’s!” Ewing’s notes are both amus­ing and a lit­tle dis­tress­ing, giv­en the posi­tion of Thomp­son’s belea­guered assis­tants.

Both of these fig­ures rep­re­sent the epit­o­me of our ten­den­cy to roman­ti­cize writer/­mu­si­cian-addicts, but the effects on those around them don’t gen­er­al­ly make for great sto­ries (just ask their kids). And in Thomp­son’s case espe­cial­ly here, we can see the toll his drink­ing had tak­en on him at this stage in his life. But Richards is sur­pris­ing­ly lucid, as he con­tin­ues to often­times be, remem­ber­ing spe­cif­ic dates and details, and the whole inter­view is an inter­est­ing exer­cise in fol­low­ing the free-asso­cia­tive log­ic of two addled, but still bril­liant and always enter­tain­ing per­son­al­i­ties. No need to say more. Watch the tape.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hunter S. Thomp­son Gets Con­front­ed by The Hell’s Angels (1967)

Hunter S. Thompson’s Har­row­ing, Chem­i­cal-Filled Dai­ly Rou­tine

Chuck Berry Takes Kei­th Richards to School, Shows Him How to Rock (1987)

Hear Demos of Kei­th Richards Singing Lead Vocals on Rolling Stones Clas­sics: “Gimme Shel­ter,” “Wild Hors­es” & More

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Gandhi Writes Letters to Hitler: “We Have Found in Non-Violence a Force Which Can Match the Most Violent Forces in the World” (1939/40)

in History, Letters | February 3rd, 2016

Gandhi Hitler

It must come up in every sin­gle argu­ment, from sophis­ti­cat­ed to sopho­moric, about the prac­ti­ca­bil­i­ty of non-vio­lent paci­fism. “Look what Gand­hi and Mar­tin Luther King, Jr. were able to achieve!” “Yes, but what about Hitler? What do you do about the Nazis?” The rebut­tal implies future Nazi-like enti­ties loom­ing on the hori­zon, and though this reduc­tio ad Hitlerum gen­er­al­ly has the effect of nul­li­fy­ing any con­tin­ued ratio­nal dis­cus­sion, it’s dif­fi­cult to imag­ine a sat­is­fy­ing paci­fist answer to the prob­lem of naked, implaca­ble hatred and aggres­sion on such a scale as that of the Third Reich. Even Gand­hi’s own pro­pos­al sounds like a joke: in 1940, Adolph Hitler aban­dons his plans to claim Leben­sraum for the Ger­man peo­ple and to dis­place, enslave, or erad­i­cate Ger­many’s neigh­bors and unde­sir­able cit­i­zens. He adopts a pos­ture of non-vio­lence and “uni­ver­sal friend­ship,” and Ger­man forces with­draw from Czecho­slo­va­kia, Poland, Den­mark, France, agree­ing to resolve dif­fer­ences through inter­na­tion­al con­fer­ence and com­mit­tee.

Hitler may have been a veg­e­tar­i­an, but that’s like­ly where any sym­pa­thy between him and Gand­hi began and end­ed.  And yet, the above is pre­cise­ly what Mahat­ma Gand­hi asked of the Fuhrer, in a let­ter dat­ed Decem­ber 24, 1940. Engaged ful­ly in the strug­gle for Indi­an inde­pen­dence, Gand­hi found him­self torn by the entry of Britain into the war against Ger­many. On the one hand, Gand­hi ini­tial­ly pledged “non­vi­o­lent moral sup­port” for the war, sens­ing an enemy–Germany–even more threat­en­ing to world peace and sta­bil­i­ty. (That stance would change in short order as the Indi­an Nation­al Con­gress revolt­ed and resigned en masse rather than par­tic­i­pate in the war). On the oth­er hand, Gand­hi did not see the British Empire as cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly dif­fer­ent from the Nazis. As he put it in his let­ter to Hitler, whom he address­es as “Friend” (this is “no for­mal­i­ty,” he writes, “I own no foes”): “If there is a dif­fer­ence, it is in degree. One-fifth of the human race has been brought under the British heel by means that will not bear scruti­ny.”

Gand­hi acknowl­edges the absur­di­ty of his request: “I am aware,” he writes, “that your view of life regards such spo­li­a­tions as vir­tu­ous acts.” And yet, he mar­shals a for­mi­da­ble argu­ment for non­vi­o­lence as a force of pow­er, not weak­ness, show­ing how it had weak­ened British rule: “The move­ment of inde­pen­dence has been nev­er so strong as now,” he writes, through “the right means to com­bat the most orga­nized vio­lence in the world which the British pow­er rep­re­sents”:

It remains to be seen which is the bet­ter orga­nized, the Ger­man or the British. We know what the British heel means for us and the non-Euro­pean races of the world. But we would nev­er wish to end the British rule with Ger­man aid. We have found in non-vio­lence a force which, if orga­nized, can with­out doubt match itself against a com­bi­na­tion of all the most vio­lent forces in the world. In non-vio­lent tech­nique, as I have said, there is no such thing as defeat. It is all ‘do or die’ with­out killing or hurt­ing. It can be used prac­ti­cal­ly with­out mon­ey and obvi­ous­ly with­out the aid of sci­ence of destruc­tion which you have brought to such per­fec­tion. It is a mar­vel to me that you do not see that it is nobody’s monop­oly. If not the British, some oth­er pow­er will cer­tain­ly improve upon your method and beat you with your own weapon. You are leav­ing no lega­cy to your peo­ple of which they would feel proud. They can­not take pride in a recital of cru­el deed, how­ev­er skill­ful­ly planned. I, there­fore, appeal to you in the name of human­i­ty to stop the war.

As an alter­na­tive to war, Gand­hi pro­pos­es an “inter­na­tion­al tri­bunal of your joint choice” to deter­mine “which par­ty was in the right.” His let­ter, Gand­hi writes, should be tak­en as “a joint appeal to you and Sign­or Mus­soli­ni…. I hope that he will take this as addressed to him also with the nec­es­sary changes.”

Gand­hi also ref­er­ences an appeal he made “to every Briton to accept my method of non-vio­lent resis­tance.” That appeal took the form of an open let­ter he pub­lished that July, “To Every Briton,” in which he wrote:

You will invite Herr Hitler and Sign­or Mus­soli­ni to take what they want of the coun­tries you call your pos­ses­sions. Let them take pos­ses­sion of your beau­ti­ful island, with your many beau­ti­ful build­ings. You will give all these, but nei­ther your souls, nor your minds. If these gen­tle­men choose to occu­py your homes, you will vacate them. If they do not give you free pas­sage out, you will allow your­self, man, woman and child, to be slaugh­tered, but you will refuse to owe alle­giance to them.

When Gand­hi vis­it­ed Eng­land that year, he found the viceroy of colo­nial India “dumb­struck” by these requests, writes Stan­ley Wolpert in his biog­ra­phy of the Indi­an leader, “unable to utter a word in response, refus­ing even to call for his car to take the now more deeply despon­dent Gand­hi home.”

Gand­hi’s 1940 let­ter to Hitler was actu­al­ly his sec­ond addressed to the Nazi leader. The first, a very short mis­sive writ­ten in 1939, one month before the ill-fat­ed Sovi­et Non-Aggres­sion Pact, strikes a con­cil­ia­to­ry tone. Gand­hi writes that he resist­ed requests from friends to pen the let­ter “because of the feel­ing that any let­ter from me would be an imper­ti­nence,” and though he calls on Hitler to “pre­vent a war which may reduce human­i­ty to a sav­age state,” he ends with, “I antic­i­pate your for­give­ness, If I have erred in writ­ing to you.” But again, in this very brief let­ter, Gand­hi appeals to the “con­sid­er­able suc­cess” of his non­vi­o­lent meth­ods. “There is no evi­dence,” The Chris­t­ian Sci­ence Mon­i­tor remarks, “to sug­gest Hitler ever respond­ed to either of Gand­hi’s let­ters.”

As the war unavoid­ably raged, Gand­hi redou­bled his efforts at Indi­an inde­pen­dence, launch­ing the  “Quit India” move­ment in 1942, which—writes Open Uni­ver­si­ty—“more than any­thing, unit­ed the Indi­an peo­ple against British rule” and has­tened its even­tu­al end in 1947. Non-vio­lence suc­ceed­ed, improb­a­bly, against the British Empire, though cer­tain oth­er for­mer colonies won inde­pen­dence through more tra­di­tion­al­ly war­like meth­ods. And yet, though Gand­hi believed non-vio­lent resis­tance could avert the hor­rors of World War II, those of us with­out his lev­el of total com­mit­ment to the prin­ci­ple may find it dif­fi­cult to imag­ine how it might have suc­ceed­ed against the Nazis, or how it could have appealed to their total­iz­ing ide­ol­o­gy of dom­i­na­tion.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Tol­stoy and Gand­hi Exchange Let­ters: Two Thinkers’ Quest for Gen­tle­ness, Humil­i­ty & Love (1909)

Hear Gandhi’s Famous Speech on the Exis­tence of God (1931)

Watch Gand­hi Talk in His First Filmed Inter­view (1947)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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Watch the Destruction of Pompeii by Mount Vesuvius, Re-Created with Computer Animation (79 AD)

in Animation, History | February 2nd, 2016

A good dis­as­ter sto­ry nev­er fails to fas­ci­nate — and, giv­en that it actu­al­ly hap­pened, the sto­ry of Pom­peii espe­cial­ly so. Buried and thus frozen in time by the erup­tion of Mount Vesu­vius in 79 AD, the ancient Roman town of 11,000 has pro­vid­ed an object of great his­tor­i­cal inter­est ever since its redis­cov­ery in 1599. Baths, hous­es, tools and oth­er pos­ses­sions (includ­ing plen­ty of wine bot­tles), fres­coes, graf­fi­ti, an amp­ithe­ater, an aque­duct, the “Vil­la of the Mys­ter­ies”: Pom­peii has it all, as far as the stuff of first-cen­tu­ry Roman life goes.

The ash-pre­served ruins of Pom­peii, more than any oth­er source, have pro­vid­ed his­to­ri­ans with a win­dow into just what life in that time and place was like. A Day in Pom­peii, an exhi­bi­tion held at the Mel­bourne Muse­um in 2009, gave its more than 330,000 vis­i­tors a chance to expe­ri­ence Pom­pei­i’s life even more vivid­ly. The exhi­bi­tion includ­ed a 3D the­ater instal­la­tion that fea­tured the ani­ma­tion above. Watch it, and you can see Pom­peii brought back to life with com­put­er-gen­er­at­ed imagery — and then, in snap­shots over the course of 48 hours, entombed by Vesu­vius again.

As inher­ent­ly com­pelling as we find the sto­ry of Pom­peii, mod­ern dra­ma has strug­gled to cap­ture the pow­er of the dis­as­ter that defines it. The late-1960s BBC show Up Pom­peii! offered a comedic ren­der­ing of life in the city before the explo­sion, but more seri­ous inter­pre­ta­tions, like the 2014 Hol­ly­wood movie Pom­peii, met with only luke­warm crit­i­cal recep­tion. Best, it seems, to stick to the words of Pliny the Younger, wit­ness to the destruc­tion and still its most evoca­tive describer:

You could hear the shrieks of women, the wail­ing of infants, and the shout­ing of men; some were call­ing their par­ents, oth­ers their chil­dren or their wives, try­ing to rec­og­nize them by their voic­es. Peo­ple bewailed their own fate or that of their rel­a­tives, and there were some who prayed for death in their ter­ror of dying. Many besought the aid of the gods, but still more imag­ined there were no gods left, and that the uni­verse was plunged into eter­nal dark­ness for ever­more.

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via Metafliter

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Vis­it Pom­peii (also Stone­henge & Ver­sailles) with Google Street View

Rome Reborn: Take a Vir­tu­al Tour Through Ancient Rome, 320 C.E.

The His­to­ry of Rome in 179 Pod­casts

How to Bake Ancient Roman Bread Dat­ing Back to 79 AD: A Video Primer

Ten Dis­cov­er­ies That Rewrote His­to­ry

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

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