Dream Log: WW II Soldier in Italy

I dreamed I was an American Army private on a ship just off the coast of south-western Italy in January 1944, part of the force which was going to invade Anzio.

In real life, when the Allies came ashore on Anzio's beach on January 22, under the command of Major General John Lucas,  they spent days building up their position on the beach, unloading men and equipment, instead of taking advantage of weak German defenses and attempting to seize territory and expand their beachhead. The result of this was to allow German troops to rush in and surround the beach from high ground on all sides. The Allies didn't break out from their position on the beach until May, after having suffered tens of thousands of casualties. 

In my dream, Lucas had been replaced by General George Patton, who was popular with his troops because he had a reputation for getting relatively few of them killed. In my dream I was in one of the first waves of troops to hit the beach, and by the time we got there some were already far ahead, marching on the road to Rome, and we were ordered to catch up to them double-quick. A while later American tanks caught up with us, and took on as many of us foot soldiers as they could carry. I was on of the soldiers riding on the outside of a tank.

After less resistance along the way than we had expected, we arrived in great numbers in Rome on the 24th of January, to find that the Germans had evacuated the city and taken up positions to the north and west. While most of the invading force had little time to recuperate before pushing on beyond the city, I was stationed there more permanently. 

I was promoted from private to sergeant first class, and then a while later to second lieutenant. As soon as I became an officer, my lifestyle changed completely. My quarters changed from a warehouse, which I had already considered to be quite nice because it had been dry and clean and even fairly warm, to an upper-middle-class mansion which just a handful of us had all to ourselves. I spent my days in palaces, working mostly as an interpreter and translator, hobnobbing with international aristocracy and famous artists. 

All of this was definitely preferable to slogging through mud for days at a time, beaten eaten alive by fleas and mosquitoes while being shot at.

 

A crooked Major was stealing just as much fine art as was able to load onto trucks, using my name so that he could attempt to frame me if his business went south. It did, I was arrested, but soon exonerated. The Major had picked a fall-guy who was friends with way too many artists.

A beautiful young Italian princess fell head-over-heels in love with me. To my astonishment, her family approved of me. (Speaking privately to me, her father, the Prince, shared some remarkably enlightened concerns about aristocratic inbreeding and a too-narrow gene pool.) After we finished trouncing the Axis -- sooner than irl because Anzio and some other things had gone better than in real life -- I retired from the Army and married her, adding the new title of viscount to my Army rank of captain. In addition to our always being much more than welcome in the family's numerous homes, we were presented with a lovely little (compared to some. Huge compared to most) house of our own near Tivoli as a wedding present. Well, la-dee-da.

Up until then the dream had been fairly realistic apart from telescoping time. Now, however, things took a decidedly abstract-dreamlike turn, as the beautiful Princess and I -- the shimmering luxury of her long black hair! Her dark eyes smoldering with passion! Her ivory skin! Her form like that of a goddess! -- spent time in an activity in which we were ourselves, life-size humans, and simultaneously each of us a polished wooden tile about two inches long by three tall with a portrait of her or me or someone else done somewhat in the manner of the portraits on playing cards, and we would take ourselves and other people -- that is, we would take these little wooden tiles -- and arrange them in patterns which were symbolic and powerful and endlessly fascinating. Somewhat like tarot, somewhat like the Glass Bead Game. Unlike tarot, instead of interpreting the world, this activity shaped it, changed it. This went on for quite a while before I woke up.

Edward Gibbon and Anselm's Ontological Argument

People continue to accuse Gibbon of being unfair to Christians, a charge which from one point of view is about as true or false as it's ever been. After 15 years of New Atheism, one might be inclined to chime in and say that Gibbon is just annoying already -- if you forget that Gibbon was writing in the eighteenth century, and fighting for freedoms of expression which people by 2004 had started taking for granted.

Freedoms somewhat less in evidence in Anselm's day. I find it very difficult to believe that his ontological argument (Google anselm ontological argument, cause I just can't get into the details right now without endangering the serenity for which I am so famous) would not have been about as savagely criticized as it is today, had Anselm's contemporaries been as free to speak and write about it as we are. About as difficult as it it is for me to believe that he had a horror of every worldly advancement, this Archbishop of Canterbury.

I had already encountered Aquinas' fivefold proof of God's existence, and rolled my eyes aplenty at it. Still, I felt quite positively disposed toward Aquinas as I heard about his attack on Anselm's proof, even cheered him on a little bit. Did Aquinas develop his fivefold proof because Anselm's ontological argument seemed embarrassingly flimsy to him? Was there no more to it than that?

I find it quite hard to conceive of anyone who doesn't already believe in God having their mind changed by Aquinas, and much more difficult still to imagine them having their mind changed by Anselm. I find it quite easy to imagine people rolling their eyes back when Anselm and Aquinas were alive, and holding their tongues because it wasn't worth being tortured and then burned alive.

A few days ago, I was made aware of the title of Richard Dawkins' latest book, by walking past it in a bookstore: Outgrowing God: A Beginner's Guide. And I felt quite embarrassed, as an atheist. As with Aquinas and even more so with Anselm, but in reverse, I thought about Dawkins' lack of appeal with non-atheists. Even a lot of us who are atheists find Dawkins thoroughly obnoxious. Is a believer going to see a book with a title like Outgrowing God and feel any way except personally insulted and less well-disposed toward atheists than they were a moment before?

It's hard for me to imagine.

And Dawkins doesn't have the excuse which embarrassed defenders of Anselm or Aquinas -- if any of them ever do feel embarrassed. I can't think of any such at the moment, but than again I haven't subjected myself to many of their fans -- always have at hand: that Anselm and Aquinas rarely came into contact with someone who is allowed to say that they think differently.

Anselm with his argument and Aquinas with his proofs, were they answering Lucretius? Or their own subconscious minds? That's one thing which still puzzles me: to whom were they talking? Were they actually trying to change anyone's mind, beyond some purely imaginary mind of some non-believer who was not ever at hand? Is this the Glass Bead Game I've wondered about my whole life, the one they played (and still play) just because they loved the game so much, with no further point to it at all?