Animals as critics— I fear that the animals consider man as a being like themselves that has lost in a most dangerous way its sound animal common sense; they consider him the insane animal, the laughing animal, the weeping animal, the miserable animal. –excerpt The Gay Science, Book 3, Section 224 by…
Monday in Geneva is overcast, most likely with haze from wildfires in Canada. The anticipated Ukrainian counter offensive has likely begun. Reuters alone reported a press release from the Russian side. The relative absence of information leads me to believe that engagement has begun. No question that many are going to die. There’s a…
Once I was tempted to think that candidates for office are bloviating buffoons, vacuous minded, baby kissers, etc. etc. I no longer think such a candidate for office is harmless. Who is not dismayed by the condition of the country; we are all bit performers in a comedy of societal dysfunction. It is unclear…
Returned from a wedding in Michigan. We received the invitation from a couple on my wife’s side of our family. No two weddings are alike. Two family groups are brought together in celebration of a beginning of life-together for two adults who have been recipients of parent’s devotion. The endeavor of parents to enable…
…Since the ancients believed in dreams,waking appeared in a different light. The same goes for the whole of life, which was illumined by death and its significance;for us “death” means something quite different. All experiences shone differently becausea god shone through them. –excerpt The Gay Science, Book 3, Section 152 by Friedrich Nietzsche As the…
The debt ceiling crisis is over. The idea that our nation could refuse to make good on debts already incurred is surreal, the creation of an insane world. In effect this would destroy the credit of the nation by a single political impasse. Embedded in my mind is image of President Biden and Speaker…
Do we pray anymore? Piety is obsolete in a secular society. Not entirely of course. Always there are remote places that have yet to hear the news. News takes time. “God is dead,” Nietzsche proclaimed as in the “Gay Science” published 1882. A way of life predicated upon reliance upon the technology of the…
Yeah, I know it’s a spectacle. But it is a spectacle that I care about. For most of my adult life drag racing has captured my imagination. A distinctly American, male oriented form of competition, involving imagination to visualize the possibilities of maximizing the output of an engine, to understand the physics of a…
At the racetrack on a Saturday afternoon, I feel gratitude for yet another experience of earthly paradise. I am able to be with others, fellow citizens that I know only slightly. That fragment of common ground is enough: the passion for quarter mile competition unites us. Paradise, an ideal condition of experience is always…
Starbucks on Saturday morning, the first day of Memorial Day weekend. Sunshine is rapturous… I sometimes catch myself in a fit of imagination wondering what it must have been like to live in the Athens of Greece during the reign of Pericles, the golden age of Athenian democracy. Radical idealists of all stripes are…
