Literary Lessons

   When I was young---that is, before I married and had kids----I used to spend as much time as I could reading, all types of books. I especially was interested in historical novels, not for the history per se, but for the intensity of the characterization of the many individuals who were players in whatever story was being told. Through hundreds of pages, the characters were so finely and thoroughly developed that the reader felt more understanding of them and what motivated them than with real-life people. The author described them physically and psychologically in greater detail than could be known about one's contemporaries.
    Many of the figure in literature had complicated thought processes and some had devious minds. Loyalty, betrayal, reparation, pride and, yes, prejudice were all powerful forces in motivation, and there was no particular hurry to extract whatever justice, or revenge, was deemed due. Strategy may thought to have been abandoned, but by the climax of the novel, was found to have been a perpetual force in how life played out. Some things were never forgotten, but put on the back burner until the time was right.
     It seems in today's society actions are taken rashly without much thought to consequences. What happens today is forgotten tomorrow. Or so some think, those who have failed to explore the complexities of human behavior, which the authors of yesterday developed in their characters, both good and the evil, as in Shakespeare's villains and heroes.  If today we tend to ignore what goes on in people's minds, that does not mean that something has not been etched in their minds forever. We see people acting out the drama of what happened to them years ago, some slight or insult unable to be forgotten. As witness the inexplicable atrocities that psychiatrists and human behaviorists attempt, too late, to find a reason for.
     World leaders would be major characters in any book ever written. Assume their mental makeup and massive egos have led to their status, and assume further that they are hypersensitive to anything that affects them in any way. From intelligence gleaned from even reading about the workings of the minds of others, one should be able to recognize the sensitivity of the other, as equivalent at least to his  own.
   To be blinded by one's own sense of self to the risk of denigrating another power player is a dangerous failing. We have on the world stage at present two such figures. If one insults the other by name calling, for instance, the result is not just a similar retort, but most likely a lifelong resentment and a desire for revenge, especially in a brutal ego-driven world leader.
      If one unloads epithets and insults, and thinks they will be forgotten, that has to be a grave mistake. If one  player is half the age of the other, strategy favors youth, with as much as 50  years to plan that strategy. Or much less, if the younger has already served up the older as a world class sucker who cannot realize his own shortcomings and so is doomed to levy disaster not only upon himself, but on the country he represents.