2025 Readings 23

 Lately I've been thinking about cutting myself off from all-things Amazon, as part of a larger process of eliminating aspects of my life that are either distracting or downright harmful. I guess this stretches back a couple years, when I first dropped off of Facebook and Instagram and Twitter - and I'm getting ready to take the same approach with YouTube. Like way too many Americans, I default to Amazon simply because it's so easy, although in my heart of hearts I know the harm it does to local businesses. That alone should have been enough to make me dump Amazon, or at least as much as I can do so. However, it wasn't until Bezos climbed in bed with Trump as part of the Oligarch Guild of Calamitous Intent that I decided enough was enough. Truthfully, if I were a better person I would have made this decision earlier - apparently simply destroying local towns and businesses wasn't enough to move my internal moral scale to outrage (which means I have a long way to go on the path to being a better person). I mainly use Amazon to order books, and I tend to not choose books that are on the shelves of my local bookstore. However, and here's why I need to call my own hypocrisy and laziness out for a public flogging, any local bookstore could order exactly the same books for me - I would just have to wait until the next day to call the bookstore and drop in on the way through town. All of this is my way of saying that I'm going to try and follow up on that resolution. It reminds me of a conversation that Janet and I had in Evora, Portugal a couple years ago. We had stopped in their branch of Livraria Bertrand, our favorite bookstore from Lisbon (which is the oldest bookstore in the world). We were talking to the nice gentleman who was helping us, and we ended up talking about our love of Portugal and bookstores and our frustration with the US. He told us, proudly, that Portugal didn't let Amazon into the country, for the reasons stated above. We were charmed by this fact, and it made us love Portugal all the more. However, it's actually only partially true, although it's true in all the ways that it could be true, if that makes any sense. There is no Amazon warehouse in Portugal, and the Portuguese don't want their to be, but it doesn't mean that you can't order from Amazon if you're living in Portugal. Apparently you'd order from one of their warehouses in a nearby European country, with your best/worst option being Spain, and it would still be delivered. So, I think Portugal is making the right decision, but I don't think they cold actually stop an Amazon delivery, so I don't think they could do more than that. How would you feasibly or legally stop a delivery? I'm still impressed by their rejection of Amazon. I remember when I lived in the UAE I ordered a copy of Murakami's 1Q84, back when it was just coming out, and, yes, they pulled it off, and my goal is to always take that approach and avoid the all too easy temptation to simply click on my Amazon app. 

However, this also made me think about those other aspects of the Evil Bezos Universe, such as Audible. With an hour drive each way to Burlington I live off books on tape and Great Courses, and I somehow don't begrudge the universe the drive if I'm learning something on the way. Now, if I'm going to be true to the better angel of my nature, I should just go ahead and dump Audible as well, right? Yes, I probably should. Our local library has books on tape, so, once again, there are other options that do not benefit the Super Rich and Evil, so I should just get over myself and go ahead and do it.

This is all a long and meandering way of introducing my latest "read," in this case a "reread", or more accurately a "relisten", to Martyn Oliver's wonderful Great Courses lectures on "Introduction to the Qur'an." I listen to them as part of my study every Ramadan. Like reading the Qur'an itself, I feel that I get something new every time. For instance, just yesterday it struck me a point that Professor Oliver was making about the use of metaphor in the Qur'an. I've always known, or at least have known since I began to study the Qur'an in more detail, that the book has more metaphor than people realize. For instance, one of the reasons why Surah 18 is one of my favorite chapters is simply because of the strong and sustained metaphoric underpinning. However, he makes the obvious point that every time the Qur'an references the face of God or the hand of God or the throne of God, God or Gabriel or Muhammad is clearly and routinely making use of metaphor. It just speaks to the complexity of the balancing act between the Qur'an as a literal or a metaphoric document, and how trying to separate out one section as metaphoric and another section as literal is more than a bit of a fool's errand, and says more about the person doing the arbitrary separating than it does about the document. And also, going back to one of my consistent points, you need to view it all as one larger whole and focus on several essential concepts, and not cherry pick specific points, especially if they're considered "literal," to back up your personal believes (and, sadly, biases).