Category: Human Predicament
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Beguilement
The Russian prelest means 'beguilement.' It is indeed a beguiling world. The four chief beguilers: sex, money, power, fame. In their grip a man finds this empty and ephemeral world a veritable plenum of reality.
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Louis Lavelle on Our Dual Nature
Louis Lavelle, The Dilemma of Narcissus, tr. Gairdner, Allen and Unwin, 1973, p. 165: The centaur, the sphinx, and the siren express the idea that man emerges out of an animal, and that he never sheds his hoofs, his claws, his scales. Man is a mixture; his dual nature is what makes him man; it…
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Reason, Passion, and Persuasion
1. The cogency of an argument is neither augmented nor diminished by the passion of the arguer. Cogency and passion are logically independent. The same goes for the truth or falsity of an assertion. The raising of the voice cannot transform a false claim into a true one, nor make a true one truer. 2. What's more,…
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Bigot and Anti-Bigot
If the bigot unreasonably and uncritically rejects what is different just because it is different, the anti-bigot unreasonably and uncritically accepts the different just because it is different. No doubt some conservatives are bigots. But some liberals are too: they unreasonably and uncritically reject conservatism. What's more, there are plenty of liberal anti-bigots whose knee-jerk…
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Thinker and Doer
The thinker, because he is a thinker, cannot naively live his life of thought, but must be tormented by doubts regarding it. The doer, because he is not a thinker, can naively live his life of action.
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Man and Beast
The beast in a man is more bestial than any beast. No animal can be bestial, only a man can be. For only man is spirit, and only a spiritual being can degrade itself.
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Life’s Sandwich
All of life's uncertainties are sandwiched between two certainties. We were born and we shall die.
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Why I Like Parties
I like parties. I derive considerable satisfaction from not attending them. There is such a thing as the pleasure of conscious avoidance, of knowing that one has wisely escaped a situation likely to be frustrating and unpleasant. If others are offended by my nonattendance, that I regret. But peace of mind is a higher value…
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People Are What They Are . . .
. . . and they don't change. No doubt there are exceptions. Few and far between, they prove the rule. As a rule of thumb, one most useful in the art of living, assume that Schopenhauer was right in his doctrine of the unalterability of character. Never enter into an important relationship with a person, marriage…
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The ‘Speedball’ Express and Other Quick Exits
Remember John Belushi who took the 'speedball' (heroin + cocaine) express to Kingdom Come? Or perhaps you recall the ill-starred Chris Farley who took the same train. It is 'sobering' to work through the litany of celebrities who chose (whether proximately or ultimately) a drug- or alcohol-fueled exit from the mundus sensibilis.
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Ersatz Eternity
What has been, though it needn't have been, always will have been. What time has mothered, no future time can touch. What you were and that you were stands forever inscribed in the roster of being whether or not anyone will read the record. You will die, but your having lived will never die. But how paltry…
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Our Humble Port of Entry
We humans are surprisingly proud given our lowly and inauspicious entrance into the world. In a line often attributed to St. Augustine, Inter faeces et urinam nascimur: we are born between feces and urine. And we revert soon enough to something of equal value: dust and ashes. Entry through a vagina, exit through a smokestack. On and…
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New Search Engine: Duck Duck Go
While on 'ego surfari' I came upon this page. What a wonderful time to be alive, despite the general horrors of existence, not to mention those particular to our time and place and individual circumstances. See the Whole from many sides. There is much more to it than your foreshortened persepctives allow. Don't obsess over…
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Purgatory is Other People
Other people are mirrors in which we perceive distorted images of ourselves. But in these distortions truths lie hidden which we do well to discern.
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Richard Peck, Seeker of Lost Gold
Living as I do in the foothills of the Superstition Mountains, I am familiar with the legends and lore of the Lost Dutchman Gold Mine. And out on the trails or around town I sometimes run into those characters called Dutchman Hunters. One I came close to meeting was Richard Peck, but by the time…