Sacrifice– The sacrificial animal does not share the spectators ideas about sacrifice, but one has never let it have its say. –excerpt The Gay Science, Book 3, Section 220 by Friedrich Nietzsche I am haunted by this line of text, by this thought. Compared with other mammals life for humans has great added difficulty. Our…
Dreams— Either we have no dreams or our dreams are interesting. We should learn to arrange our waking life the same way: nothing or interesting. –excerpt The Gay Science, Book 3, Section 232 by Friedrich Nietzsche Lately I hardly dream. Where does a dream belong? Are dreams the visitation of a god? A message from…
Faith makes blessed— Virtue bestows happiness and a kind of bliss only on those who have not lost their faith in their virtue— not on those subtler souls whose virtue consists in a profound mistrust of themselves and of all virtue. Ultimately, then, “faith makes blessed” here, too, and not–mark it well– virtue. –excerpt The…
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…
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…
…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…
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…
There was only one norm, man; and every people thought that it possessed this one ultimate norm. But above and outside, in some distant over-world, one was permitted to behold a plurality of norms; one god was not considered a denial of another god, nor blasphemy against him. It was here that the luxury…
“Sin” is a word seldom mentioned, rarely heard now-a-days. The emotion of shame though is all too prevalent. Is it universal to have hidden anxiety that one fails to be “good enough?” No matter the surface appearance due to education, social status, etc., it’s not unusual to wonder if one is a failure. Why…
