I have an old friend, an individual who expresses his disdain for “socialism.” He speaks of “force collectivism” with condescension. His point, policies to help the majority, those under-employed, individuals and families unable to “help themselves” are contemptible. I and others, react to his aversion to public funding of services targeted to persons, who…
Owing to three errors. — During the last centuries science has been promoted, partly because it was by means of science that one hoped to understand God’s goodness and wisdom best- this was the main motive of the great Englishmen (like Newton); partly because one believed in the absolute utility of knowledge, and especially…
Saturday morning, following a few days of warm weather trees in Geneva are flowering. After the austere gray and brown season of winter cold the effect is enchanting. Life is. I do not understand life. The binary operations of my mind suited to simple problem solving makes visible only one side of life’s equation. …
Once decay has reached its climax along with the infighting of all sorts of tyrants, the Caesar always appears, the final tyrant who puts an end to the weary struggle for sole rule-by putting weariness to work for himself… In these ages bribery and treason reach their peak, for the love of the newly…
Once again I visited the old Joliet penitentiary. The abandoned, decrepit site draws me. I wanted to have another opportunity to feel the place, a scarce relic of the past. The prison was constructed in 1860 out of limestone, built by convicts brought from the prison at Alton. Alton was shuttered in part due…
Evil- Examine the lives of the best and most fruitful people and peoples and ask yourselves: whether a tree that is supposed to grow to a proud height can dispense with bad weather and storms; whether misfortune and external resistance, some kinds of hatred, jealousy, stubbornness, mistrust, hardness, avarice, and violence do not belong…
Even the most harmful man may really be the most useful when it comes to the preservation of the species; for he nurtures either in himself or in others, through his effects, instincts without which humanity would long have become feeble or rotten. Hatred, the mischievous delight in the misfortunes of others, the lust…
57 Choosy Taste If it depended on my choice,I think it might be greatTo have a place in Paradise;Better yet-outside the gate. — excerpt The Gay Science. Prelude in Jokes, Cunning and Revenge by Friedrich Nietzsche, pub. 1887, trans. by Walter Kaufmann April 2nd. Yesterday was my birthday. I contemplated wax candles on the…
41 Heraclitean Only fighting yields Happiness on earth, And on battlefields Friendship has its birth. One in three are friends: Brothers in distress, Equals, facing foes, Free-when facing death! — excerpt The Gay Science. Prelude in Jokes, Cunning and Revenge by Friedrich Nietzsche, pub. 1887, trans. by Walter Kaufmann What? How counter intuitive! “Only…
Today at lunch with a friend, our conversation segued into religion. Religion is a topic many of us find uncomfortable. Some of us have a robust faith, and some take pains to be unaligned, (my term for the agnostic.) Putting labels to use to discuss religion is certain to over-simplify, to distort a more…
