There is a great ladder of religious cruelty, with many rungs; but three of these are the most important. Once men sacrificed human beings to their God, and perhaps just those they loved the best–to this category belong the first-born sacrifices of all primitive religions, and also the sacrifice of the Emperor Tiberius in…
O sancta simplicitas!………….. Giving our senses a passport to everything superficial, our thoughts a godlike desire for wanton leaps and wrong inferences!–how from the beginning, we have contrived to retain our ignorance…… And only on this solidified, granitelike foundation of ignorance could knowledge rear itself hitherto, the will to knowledge on the foundation of…
Saturday and I am up early. The days are longer and I am thankful for extended day light plus a morning that offers me hot coffee and music. As I arrived here at Starbucks Paul Simon’s Mother and Child Reunion played on my car radio. I’ve witnessed Paul Simon in concert and I felt…
Tuesday evening is philosophy discussion night. Eight to ten of us gather together to discuss an essay. We “go” together in conversation where ever our stories seem to lead us. We have discussed Nietzsche’s work before. He is difficult for many reasons, none the least is shear brilliance of his intellect. The springboard for…
Decided to visit Galena Illinois for the weekend. Galena is close by the Mississippi River and and is known for it’s most famous resident, General Ulysses S Grant. Grant lived in Galena at the conclusion of the War Between The States. Galena has a Main Street, looking to be at least a half mile,…
Natural disasters are not as bad As not knowing what is enough. Loss is not as bad As wanting more. –Lao Tsu, Tao Te Ching 46
Yesterday I was reminded of the fragility of language. Words are spontaneously used, transparent, selected for a purpose almost by reflex. As a man working on a motor instinctively reaches into his tool tray for the 3/8 inch socket because he “just knows” that’s the one that fits–so we chose our words, you and…
“If we live through this precarious moment, if his catastrophic instinct to retaliate doesn’t lead us to nuclear winter, we will have much to thank our current leader for. …He will have woken us up to how fragile freedom is. The whip of the executive, through a Twitter feed, can lash and intimidate, punish…
It is possible to act well in spite of one’s difficulties and apprehensions, a reserve of spiritual power becomes manifest, and may be accessed and drawn upon. The Fremen were supreme in that quality the ancients called “spannungsbogen” – which is the self-imposed delay between desire for a thing and the act of reaching…
The more you love, the more you can love— and the more intensely you love. Nor is there any limit on how many you can love. If a person had Time Enough, he could love all of the majority who are decent and just. –Robert A. Heinlein The Notebooks of Lazarus Long
