Moby Dick or The Whale by Herman Melville – another attempt at making some sense of it is at http://realini.blogspot.com/2017/01/note-2-and-final-on-moby-dick-by-herman.html Ahab and Don Quixote – are they members of the same club, obsessive-compulsive men, chasing myths, explained in The Myths of Happiness by Sonja Lyubomirsky and Stumbling On Happiness by Daniel Gilbert? - 7 out of 10 in my view, but a chef d’oeuvre for most readers

 

Moby Dick or The Whale by Herman Melville – another attempt at making some sense of it is at http://realini.blogspot.com/2017/01/note-2-and-final-on-moby-dick-by-herman.html

Ahab and Don Quixote – are they members of the same club, obsessive-compulsive men, chasing myths, explained in The Myths of Happiness by Sonja Lyubomirsky and Stumbling On Happiness by Daniel Gilbert?

7 out of 10 in my view, but a chef d’oeuvre for most readers

 

 

Moby Dick is not the only magnum opus that I did not get access to, with my feeble accoutrements, in that I did not get why everyone – with few exceptions, perhaps the daughter of The Whale aka Oscar winner Brendan Fraser, would be one, her essay on Herman Melville’s work seemed to be quite critical, albeit maybe I did not even have that right – is so enthralled, enraptured by this strange novel.

 

Instead of a spoiler alert – not the case, for I do not even know how this ends, and even worse, I do not give a damn if the obsessed captain Ahab gets his Whale, although let me just put down that I do see some of the symbols and merits of this, I may not be so dumb after all, and in fact I wish he does not, for one of the reasons why I (and you for that matter) reject this story is because it is about killing an intelligent, impressive beast…yes, yes, it is all a metaphor and there is so much that a sophisticated, erudite mind could extract, if only he, she, they take the trouble and see that this has to do with our obsessive compulsive disorders, the wrong goals we choose and pursue with fervor…

‘Happiness Activity No 10: Committing to Your Goals-picking one, two or three significant goals that are meaningful to you and devoting time and effort to pursue them…’ this is from the life changing The How of Happiness by majestic Sonja Lyubomirsky http://realini.blogspot.com/2014/07/the-how-of-happiness-by-sonja.html a marvel from which we learn that Goals, the meaningful one, are essential for our wellbeing, and Captain Ahab, could be taken as the ‘The How Not To’ example, or at least it looked like this to me.

 

There is something to say in favor of the famous or infamous character, who has been mauled, disabled by the White Whale and then maybe he tries to redress the balance – in the scheme of Character Strengths there is a chapter for bravery, and under it you have Perseverance, surely Ahab has that aplenty, or in the view of Aristotle, he has too much…Aristotle argued in favor of the Golden Mean, with the view that virtue is in the middle, you could be reckless or a coward, but in between, you find bravery

There is also the Justice section of Character Strengths http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/07/character-strengths-and-weaknesses.html and in there we find fairness, which is how we could see the captain, being fair in that he tries to balance out, and determines that he and the crew have to get the White Whale, no matter what, at the cost of missing all other creatures – there is a need to emphasize here that at the time, humans saw whales as a source of oil and revenue, just like today, billions, actually most of the nine billion that live on earth, eat and torture (if not directly) poultry, cattle and billions of other beasts to eat them, and future generations, if there is an earth for them, will look at us and think what Inglorious Bastards, monstrous creatures we have been for doing all this – just to pay back and animal that was fighting for its life…

 

http://realini.blogspot.com/2015/02/the-myths-of-happiness-by-sonja.html Sonja Lyubomirsky has this other mesmerizing book, The Myths of Happiness, where we could find some explanation for the Ahab obsession, and perhaps an interpretation of Moby Dick – we are talking of a Myth here, poor Ahab is vainly searching for the White Whale – which is the metaphor that can remind us of Don Quixote, another fellow that is chasing a dream, fighting wind mills, as he thinks these are awful monsters…

alas, Don Quixote is yet another great work (masterpiece as rated by others, luminaries interviewed by the Norwegian Book Club have in fact chosen this to be The Greatest Book Ever Written, no less) that I have failed to enjoy (this is really an indication of obtusity, I mean you must be crazy to keep reading what such a dope has to say, an eejit) http://realini.blogspot.com/2016/11/don-quixote-by-miguel-de-cervantes.html and Don Quixote is indeed part of the same club with Ahab and other ghost chasing lunatics

 

Richard III is a more interesting figure, indeed, we have recently found that, talking of myths, this is yet another one – we have been fed the story that this was a ghoul, sometimes shown as a crippled, hunchback, as in The Goodbye Girl – but we find in the Hideous Kinky detective novel (maybe the best one, rated high on both the British and American Writers Guild top 100) The Daughter of Time by Josephine Fey http://realini.blogspot.com/2020/10/the-daughter-of-time-by-josephine-fey.html that the king was in fact a benign royalty, and Shakespeare and others have done him injustice with their portrayal…

http://realini.blogspot.com/2013/06/stumbling-on-happiness-by-david-gilbert.html from The Myths of Happiness and Stumbling on Happiness by august Harvard Professor Daniel Gilbert we get that much of what we think will make us happy, in reality does not – and I am again connecting Ahab, Moby Dick with chasing chimeras, and the Hedonic Adaptation Effect – it is assumed that ‘if only we were to do this, or move to that place, then we would be happy’, but research has looked at what happens when people enter that matrix, say they move to California (oh, I would be so happy there, I used to think, only now I have read those magic books and I know better) and what happens is not the Magic Joy descended…

 

instead, we get used to the new circumstances, the good aspects, palm trees, ocean, and then see the negative, the traffic jams, pollution, wild fires and the like, this is called Hedonic Adaptation, and we stop noticing almost anything (we find it much harder, sometimes impossible to adapt to the loss of a dear one, unemployment, very loud noise) and the upside of this is that we can also go through very hard times (paraplegics, people going through debilitating events return to the base level of happiness after some months, on the whole) money is not the panacea that we assume it to be, as the lottery winners research has demonstrated…this could work though, and you could call be for coaching and special cut rate offers:

http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/02/unique-in-world.html?q=unique+in+the+world