April 2nd, the day after my birthday. I awakened this morning thinking of my ancestors, the ones going back to the England of the first millennium. Like the common Anglo-Saxon they surely had a hoe in their hands and planted the fields at this time of year. They came to this country from somewhere…
April 1, 1949 was the day that I was born. I seldom think about it. In past years often I needed a reminder, “Isn’t today your birthday?’ World War II concluded on September 2nd 1945 with the surrender of Japan. Germany surrendered earlier in May. I was born soon after the second great war…
Every people has its own Tartuffery and calls it its virtues— What is best in us we do not know— we cannot know. Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil, Peoples and Fatherlands #249
A friend forwarded to me the address of a conservative web site. The site featured an article that explores the negative reaction expressed by the conservative minded to philosophers who specialize in postmodern thought. In our discussion group there is always push back when an essay is offered, authored by Slavoj Zizek or Michele…
Art lies in concealing art. –Horace Quintus Horatius Flaccus (December 8, 65 BC – November 27, 8 BC), known in the English-speaking world as Horace, was the leading Roman lyric poet during the time of Augustus (also known as Octavian). His career coincided with Rome’s momentous change from a republic to an empire. An…
Open societies, in their pluralism, create an anxiety that brings about a reaction toward a fixed organic state, which, then as now, serves both the interests of an oligarchy and those of a frightened, insecure population looking to arrest change. We live, certainly, in societies that are in many ways inequitable, unfair, capriciously oppressive,…
Diogenes used his simple lifestyle and behavior to criticize the social values and institutions of what he saw as a corrupt or at least confused society. In a highly non-traditional fashion, he had a reputation of sleeping and eating wherever he chose and took to toughening himself against nature. He declared himself a cosmopolitan…
This same will has at its service an apparently opposite drive of the spirit, a suddenly adopted preference of ignorance, of deliberate shutting out, a shutting of one’s windows, an inner No to this or that, a prohibition to approach, a sort of defensive attitude against much that is knowable, a contentment with the…
229. In these later ages, which may be proud of their humanity, there still remains so much fear, so much SUPERSTITION of the fear, of the “cruel wild beast,” the mastering of which constitutes the very pride of these humaner ages–that even obvious truths, as if by the agreement of centuries, have long remained…
This poem was delivered yesterday via email. I recommend Poem-A-Day for exposure to a variety of poets, and as a form of therapy to counter the negativity that surrounds us. Deception Story by Solmaz Sharif Friends describe my DISPOSITION as stoic. Like a dead fish, an ex said. DISTANCE is a funny drug and…
