To write something, anything at all is only one reason for starting the day at Starbucks. Perhaps a good conversation will be possible? Wednesday is a day of good fortune since I have benefited from a good chat with Doug, as well as prospect of reflecting upon some aphorisms from Beyond Good and Evil. …
This day, a Tuesday is unsettled with respect to the weather. Also, in truth the unsettled condition is the normal state of things for homo sapiens, for everyone of us, no matter our class, our poverty or our affluence. Education and health or youth or professional success does not eliminate the fact that not…
Monday. Feeling as if this is the first day, the first page of six more to be filled, hour by hour with my life. I am not alone though. Around me are others, working, playing, worrying, exploring, celebrating, and fucking up. All of us, with rare exception know that we are on the cusp…
Finally, as for the common people, the great majority, who exist and are only allowed to exist to serve and to be of general utility, religion gives them an invaluable sense of contentment with their situation and type; it puts their hearts greatly at ease, it glorifies their obedience, it gives them (and those…
To love humanity for the sake of God – that has been the noblest and most bizarre feeling people have attained so far. That the love of humanity, in the absence of any sanctifying ulterior motive, is one more stupidity and abomination; that the tendency to love humanity like this can only get its…
There is a great ladder of religious cruelty, and, of its many rungs, three are the most important. People used to make human sacrifices to their god, perhaps even sacrificing those they loved the best – this sort of phenomenon can be found in the sacrifice of the firstborn (a practice shared by all…
Why atheism today? God “the Father” has been thoroughly refuted; and so has “the Judge” and “the Reward-giver.” The same for God’s “free will”: he doesn’t listen, – and even if he did, he wouldn’t know how to help anyway. The worst part of it is: he seems unable to communicate in an intelligible…
And what infuriated the slavesabout and against their masters was never faith itself,but rather the freedom from faith,that half-stoic and smiling nonchalancewhen it came to the seriousness of faith. Enlightenment is infuriating. Slaves want the unconditional;they understand only tyranny, even in morality.They love as they hate,without nuance, into the depths, to the point of…
From the beginning,Christian faith has been sacrifice:sacrifice of all freedom, of all pride, of all self-confidence of the spirit;it is simultaneously enslavement and self-derision, self-mutilation. There is cruelty and religious Phoenicianism in this faith,which is expected of a worn-down,many-sided, badly spoiled conscience. Its presuppositionis that the subjugation of spirit causes indescribable pain,and that the…
This weekend I am in Louisville, Kentucky. I like Louisville. On the Ohio River the city draws from the past and reaches for a future. I am reminded of the story of Daniel Boone, that he was a Kentuckian. There is a regional pride here, a linkage to what is owed to the past. …
