In the long and arduous process of trying to get anything resolved, I found myself forced to look at the classical history of New Year's Resolutions themselves. I hate to be so two faced in my analysis, but the fact is, the god Janus is heavily implicated in any discussion of New Year's Resolutions:

The tradition of the New Year's Resolutions goes all the way back to 153 B.C. Janus, a mythical king of early Rome was placed at the head of the calendar.

With two faces, Janus could look back on past events and forward to the future. Janus became the ancient symbol for resolutions and many Romans looked for forgiveness from their enemies and also exchanged gifts before the beginning of each year.

The New Year has not always begun on January 1, and it doesn't begin on that date everywhere today. It begins on that date only for cultures that use a 365-day solar calendar. January 1 became the beginning of the New Year in 46 B.C., when Julius Caesar developed a calendar that would more accurately reflect the seasons than previous calendars had.

The Romans named the first month of the year after Janus, the god of beginnings and the guardian of doors and entrances. He was always depicted with two faces, one on the front of his head and one on the back. Thus he could look backward and forward at the same time. At midnight on December 31, the Romans imagined Janus looking back at the old year and forward to the new. The Romans began a tradition of exchanging gifts on New Year's Eve by giving one another branches from sacred trees for good fortune. Later, nuts or coins imprinted with the god Janus became more common New Year's gifts.

In the Middle Ages, Christians changed New Year's Day to December 25, the birth of Jesus. Then they changed it to March 25, a holiday called the Annunciation. In the sixteenth century, Pope Gregory XIII revised the Julian calendar, and the celebration of the New Year was returned to January 1.

During the Middle Ages, the Church remained opposed to celebrating New Years. January 1 has been celebrated as a holiday by Western nations for only about the past 400 years.

NEW YEAR TRADITIONS

Other traditions of the season include the making of New Year's resolutions. That tradition also dates back to the early Babylonians. Popular modern resolutions might include the promise to lose weight or quit smoking. The early Babylonian's most popular resolution was to return borrowed farm equipment.

Does that obligate me to make one? Or any? And if I did make a resolution or resolutions, would that oblige me to disclose them? Aren't we living in a free society in which secret resolutions are freely allowed? Can't I keep my resolutions in the closet? Or does having a blog mean that not even the most personal of things can be kept in the closet?

On top of that, there's the question of living up to one's resolutions. Isn't that a personal thing too? I mean, suppose I had a personal habit I wished to break, like smoking. Suppose further that my smoking was itself in the closet. I mean, what business is it to the readers of this blog whether Eric smokes, drinks, chews tobacco, or eats too much? If I disclosed that, would I then be obligated (or blogligated) to give further reports on my success? What if my insurance carrier read my blog and found out I never told them that my personal lifestyle was not up to, um, snuff? Is this blog about my opinions, or is it about me?

This is one of the problems with morality. When morality becomes political, then one's personal morality becomes fair game. Or does it? I mean, I'm always objecting to ad hominem attacks and the politicization of everything. Why should I help perpetuate a process which furthers the politicization of things I don't think should be politicized?

As is my usual wont, I'm long on questions, but short on answers.

While I'm at it, here's another thing which bothers me: the whole process of New Years is often laden with heavy drinking, which predisposes people to self-reproachful, guilt-based (possibly shame-based) thinking of the type I love to kvetch about in this blog. It's one thing to drink yourself into a regrettable stupor leading to a horrid hangover, but is it really logical to engage in further acts of self degradation (and make public resolutions you'll never keep) because you're feeling guilty or ashamed? Why not wait a day until your emotions recover to normal?

Even right there I'm wondering whether readers will think I'm coming off a two day drunk or something. (It just so happens that I'm not, but the fact that I have to say something about it illustrates the pitfalls of public resolutions.)

So, let's stick with blog resolutions. Via InstaPundit, I see that N.Z. Bear has a resolution which appears to be quite sage advice:

There are many things I'm resolving for the New Year, not all of which are suitable for sharing in the bloggy world. So if you seek introspective, comprehensive lists of resolutions, you'll have to look elsewhere. I'll give you one, though, and I encourage you to take it up as your own:

I resolve to be less of an asshole to those who don't deserve it, and more of one to those that do.

I hate to sound so irresolute about such a resolute topic, but at the risk of being a Buddhist, I'll try to explain by offering an an example by way of an alcohol-soaked theme.

Prohibition.

For all the talk about the Greatest Generation, one of the things that is forgotten about this dying breed of American is that their earlier members have to be called the Prohibition Generation. Some of the wisest people I knew came of age during Prohibition. (It just so happens that I was raised by one of them.) They learned to drink, and many of them learned to make their way in business during an era when people drank even more than they do now, yet the whole business was illegal. A few kooky Elliot Ness types excepted, nearly everyone was corrupted. If you ran a successful restaurant or a bar, paying off the cops was just part of doing business. Life was real. People didn't say much about it. Corruption was just the way it was, a given. Not only did society not fall apart, a sort of realism was produced which has nearly died off. As the Prohibition generation dies off, we're losing the great American spirit of corruption that won World War II -- at least in part because, say, an abu Ghraib scandal (and that's just one example) would have been unimaginable. People knew that wars have casualties. People knew the difference between "Official Morality" and what people did, and they didn't care, or if they did care they did what that generation knew how to do: they looked the other way. To a large extent, Americans were (certainly more then than now) as writer William S. Burroughs put it, Johnsons:

The old hop-smoking rod-riding underworld has a name for it: 'a member of the Johnson family.' Wouldn't rush to the law if he smelled hop in the hall, doesn't care what fags in the back room are doing, stands by his word. Good man to do business with. They are found in all walks of life. The cop who slipped me a joint in a New Orleans jail, for instance. Or when I was pushing junk in New York back in 1948, the hotel clerk who stopped me in the lobby: 'I don't know how to say this, but there is something wrong about the people who come to your room.' (Something wrong is putting it softly; ratty junkies with no socks, dressed in three boosted suits puffing out, carrying radios torn from the living car, trailing wires like entrails. 'This isn't a hock shop!' I scream. 'Get this shit out of here!' Regaining my composure I say severely, 'You are lowering the entire tone of my establishment.) 'So I just wanted to warn you to be careful and tell those people to watch what they way over the phone ... if someone else had been at the switchboard ...'

And a hotel clerk in Tunis; I handed him some money to put in the safe. He put the money away and looked at me: 'You do not need a receipt Monsieur.' I looked at him and saw that he was a Johnson, and knew that I didn't need a receipt.

Yes, this world would be a pretty easy and pleasant place to live in if everybody could just mind his own business and let others do the same. But a wise old black faggot said to me years ago: 'Some people are shits, darling.' I was never able to forget it.

The hard part is what to do about the shits. The assholes. I have to be more resolute about them, that's for sure.

As irresolutely as possible.

RESOLVING MORE: As Dennis's last post reminded me, there's a growing relationship (and corresponding growth in tension) between the extent to which politics is about personal morality and the extent to which politics becomes ad hominem. The question of who is an asshole has become ever more complex. Sometimes, political opinions are ad hominem attacks, while at other times ad hominem attacks are political opinions.

(Drives me crazy, and keeps me humble.)

MORE ASSHOLE TROUBLE: It should be borne in mind that even writing a negative review of a book can have serious repercussions:

No self-respecting classicist will admit it, but there actually exists a book entitled Compromising Traditions: The Personal Voice in Classical Scholarship, edited by Judith P. Hallett (University of Maryland) and Thomas Van Nortwick (Oberlin College), published in 1997 by Routledge (who else?). In nine utterly amazing essays and a response, the book may be characterized as a churning, bubbling vat of anguish, apoplexy, bile, and other bad humors.

There is much to be said about this extraordinarily embarrassing book (which might most charitably be understood as heavy-duty therapy), but we will resist the urge, in deference to an eloquent review article by Victor Davis Hanson, professor of Greek at California State University in Fresno ("'Too Much Ego in Your Cosmos'," Arion 6:1 (1998), 137-168). That essay is without doubt the most trenchant ever written about a book in classical studies, and quite possibly about any book in any academic discipline. One genuflects to Hanson's erudition, his willingness to call a spade a spade, and his cranky writing style. Unfortunately it is not available online, but it has been reprinted as Chapter 4 in Victor Davis Hanson, John Heath, and Bruce S. Thornton, Bonfire of the Humanities: Rescuing Classics in an Impoverished Age (Wilmington, DE 2001).

One of the editors of Compromising Traditions (Hallett), after a brilliant piece of literary sleuthing, had concluded in 1995 that none other than Victor Davis Hanson (together with another academic co-conspirator) was in fact the Unabomber. Driven by conscience, she took it upon herself to turn him in to the FBI. Interested readers may slog throught the resulting e-traffic charges, countercharges, and miscellaneous expressions of aggrievement in the archives of the Classics-L listserv (just punch 'Unabomber' into its search engine). But be warned in advance that wallowing in this stuff takes a sturdy constitution.

UPDATE: Much to my horror, I see that I have (as I so often do) understated the scope of the problem. What Victor Davis Hanson experienced as the accused Unabomber is nothing compared to what's apparently in store for Glenn Reynolds. (And, shockingly, at the hand of one of his minions.)

Must we endure another sickening beheading video? Apparently, yes!

On top of that, I see the film is to be released by Miramax, no less!

I knew all along that Michael Moore would eventually be producing these things!

Enough is enough. It's not enough to say "I TOLD YOU SO!" for the umpteenth time.

Clearly, something must be done.