The problem with lying is that an individual, or even whole societies forget how to live. One becomes entangled in one’s own misshapen world, the mind-managed world, the one we seek to control, that is slipping out of our grasp. One seems deranged, existentially unhinged as the lies grow in number and scale, the…
“You cannot pass,” – Gandalf to the Balrog on Bridge of Khazad-dûm
A day dawns. Is it a new day, or is it groundhog day, a hellish repetition of the last four years? This is reference to the election of course. Could this be a version of Nietzsche’s doctrine of eternal return? That understanding of history posits that we are fated to repeat every detail of…
When I was in my 40’s I learned that my great Uncle Thomas McLamb was a soldier in the Army of Northern Virginia lead by Robert E. Lee. The War of Northern Aggression did not go well for Thomas. He was greviously wounded by a spent minié ball at Kelly’s Ford, Virginia. Uncle…
The words that I just typed into the header caused a chill as I read them trailing the cursor. I knew on Saturday morning that Sean Connery had passed by means of my cell news feed which is almost an instant conduit of information about events. The next day, scanning the New York Times…
Yesterday we celebrated Halloween by accompanying costumed children on a parade through a suburban neighborhood. The homeowners appeared as happy to dispense treats to passing children, as were the children receiving the sweets. Halloween is a day of celebration, a mirthful exercise of imagination, a costumed reminder of our belonging to a wider community,…
The tragic artist is no pessimist: he is precisely the one who says Yes to everything questionable, even to the terrible — he is Dionysian. — excerpt Twilight of the Idols by Friedrich Nietzsche, chapt. “Reason” in Philosophy published 1888 Yesterday a friend and I chatted for twenty minutes about the writings of Nietzsche…
In that great fatality called Christianity, Plato represents that ambiguity and fascination, called an ‘ideal,’ which made it possible for the nobler natures of antiquity to misunderstand themselves and to step on the bridge leading to the ‘Cross’… And how much Plato there still is in the concept ‘church,’ in the structure, system, and…
“The virus is circulating at a speed that not even the most pessimistic forecasts had anticipated,” Macron said in a televised address. “Like all our neighbours, we are submerged by the sudden acceleration of the virus.” “We are all in the same position: overrun by a second wave which we know will be harder,…
That which is earlier with regard to its rise into dominance becomes manifest to us men only later. That which is primally early shows itself only ultimately to men. Therefore, in the realm of thinking, a painstaking effort to think through still more primally what was primally thought is not the absurd wish to…
