. . . then why can't you accept that the God of the philosophers is the God of the Bible? And isn't the second acceptance easier than the first?
A question for Pascal.
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If you can accept that a particular man is God . . .
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Incarnation: A Mystical Approach
A Substack meditation for Christmas Day drawing upon Thomas Aquinas, Juan de la Cruz, and Josef Pieper.
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Musk Derangement Syndrome
Political pathologies are not to be multiplied praeter necessitatem, but given the praeter-natural lunacy of the Left, a certain amount of quasi-psychiatry is tolerable, and perhaps even helpful unto political salvation and national sanitation. Move over, TDS.
I now hand off to Roger Kimball.
5 responses to “Musk Derangement Syndrome”
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Saturday Night at the Oldies: Billboard Top Ten in October, 1963 at the Height of the Profumo Affair
Some of us are old enough to remember John Profumo and his entanglement with sex kitten Christine Keeler, which eventually lead to Prime Minister Harold Macmillan's resignation in October of 1963:
At a party at the country estate of Lord Astor on July 8, 1961, British Secretary of State for War John Profumo, then a rising 46-year-old Conservative Party politician, was introduced to 19-year-old London dancer Christine Keeler by Stephen Ward, an osteopath with contacts in both the aristocracy and the underworld. Also present at this gathering was a Russian military attaché, Eugene (Yevgeny) Ivanov, who was Keeler’s lover. Through Ward’s influence, Profumo began an affair with Keeler, and rumours of their involvement soon began to spread. In March 1963 Profumo lied about the affair to Parliament, stating that there was “no impropriety whatsoever” in his relationship with Keeler. Evidence to the contrary quickly became too great to hide, however, and 10 weeks later Profumo resigned, admitting “with deep remorse” that he had deceived the House of Commons. Prime Minister Macmillan continued in office until October, but the scandal was pivotal in his eventual downfall, and within a year the opposition Labour Party defeated the Conservatives in a national election.
Seven made top ten in October of '63, but I only like six. Here they are:
Ray Charles, Busted. "I'm broke, no bread, I mean like nothin', forget it."
Roy Orbison, Mean Woman Blues. A great live version featuring the great James Burton and his Telecaster.
Dion, Donna the Prima Donna
April Stevens and Nino Tempo, Deep Purple
I liked this number when it first came out, and I've enjoyed it ever since. A while back I happened to hear it via Sirius satellite radio and was drawn into it like never before. But its lyrics, penned by Mitchell Parish, are pure sweet kitsch:
When the deep purple falls over sleepy garden walls
And the stars begin to twinkle in the night
Through the mist of a memory you wander back to me
Breathing my name with a sigh.In the still of the night once again I hold you tight
Though you're gone, your love lives on when moonlight beams
And as long as my heart will beat, sweet lover we'll always meet
Here in my deep purple dreams.Kitsch is bad art, but what is the essence of kitsch, and why is it bad? Presumably it is sentimentality that makes kitsch kitsch, and it is this sentimentality that makes kitsch aesthetically and perhaps even morally dubious. One self-indulgently 'wallows' in a song like this, giving into its 'cheap' emotions. The emotions are 'false' and 'faked.' The melody and lyrics are formulaic and predictable, 'catchy.' The listener allows himself to be manipulated by the songwriter who is out to 'push the listener's buttons.' The aesthetic experience is not authentic but vicarious. And so on. Theodor Adorno would not approve.
There is great art and there is kitsch. I partake of both, enjoy both, and know the difference. What is wrong with a little kitsch in moderation? No, I don't collect Hummel figurines and my stoa is not carpeted with astroturf. What is sentimentality and what is wrong with it? There is a literature on this, but I've read almost none of it. Who has time?
Peter, Paul, and Mary, Don't Think Twice, It's All Right. There have been countless covers. The original.
This brings me to Bob Dylan who was awarded the 2016 Nobel Prize in Literature. Now I've been a Dylan fan from the early '60s. In the '60s I was more than a fan; I was a fanatic who would brook no criticism of his hero. And I still maintain that in the annals of American popular music no one surpasses him as a songwriter.
But the Nobel Prize for Literature? That's a bit much, and an ominous foreshadowing of the death of the book and of quiet reading in this hyperkinetic age of tweets and sound bites. A large theme. Get to it conservative bloggers. Why do I have to do all the work?
Dylan's most sentimental song? I don't know, but Forever Young is in serious contention.
A long, long way from It's Alright Ma, I'm Only Bleeding and Visions of Johanna (Marianne Faithful) and Desolation Row. Here is the original of Visions of Johanna.
Village Stompers, Washington Square
Back to Profumo and Keeler: Bob Seger, The Fire Down Below. Take 'below' in two senses, and 'fire' too. There is something demonic about sex obsession.
4 responses to “Saturday Night at the Oldies: Billboard Top Ten in October, 1963 at the Height of the Profumo Affair”
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On Taking One’s Time in Philosophy
Both Brentano and Wittgenstein advise philosophers to take their time. Ludwig Wittgenstein, Culture and Value (University of Chicago Press, 1980), p. 80:
Der Gruss der Philosophen unter einander sollte sein: "Lass Dir Zeit!"
This is how philosophers should greet one another: "Take your time!"
A similar thought is to be found in Franz Brentano, though I have forgotten where he says this:
Wer eilt, bewegt sich nicht auf dem Boden der Wissenschaft.
One who hurries is not proceeding on a scientific basis.
But how much time does one have? One does not know. It is later than one thinks. So get on with it!
"Take your time!" does not apply to the jotting of notes or to blogosophy. It applies to what one writes 'for the ages.'
One's best writing ought to be written 'for the ages' even if one is sure that one will not be read beyond one's time or even in one's time. The vast majority of us are mediocrities who will be lucky to end up footnotes. Don't let that bother you. Just do your level best and strive for the utmost. Do the best you can, with what you've got, for as long as you can. Then let the cards fall where they may.
Habent sua fata libelli. (Terentianus Maurus.) "Books have their fates." What their fates are is unknown to their toiling authors.
Who knows whom you will instruct, inspire, engage, enrage?
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Worldly Success and Spiritual Growth
Worldly success can easily ensnare, and most will fall into the trap. But for some, worldly success has the opposite effect: it reveals the vanity, the emptiness, of worldly success, and thus subserves spiritual advance. One is therefore well-advised to strive for a modicum of success as defined in the worldly terms of property and pelf, name and fame, status and standing, love and sex, the pleasures of the flesh.
The successful are in a position to see through the goods of this life, having tasted them; the failures are denied this advantage, and may persist in the belief that if only they could get their hands on some property and pelf, etc. then they would achieve the ultimate in happiness.
A corollary is that a young person should not be too quick to renounce the world. Experience it first to appreciate the reasons for renunciation. Contemptus mundi is best acquired by mundane experience, not by reading books about it or following the examples of others. Better a taste of the tender trap before joining the Trappists. (Have I spoiled this little homily with the concluding cleverness?)
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Intellect and Will
An intellectual may become a handwringer. But he whose will is strong may become willful and obstinate. Intellect and will need to check and balance each other.
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The Mystery of Sentience
The wonder of it. I stroke the cat. His pleasure is apparent. But where in a physical thing, even a living physical thing, is its pleasure, its surprise, its fear, and the rest of its sentient states?
A philosopher is one who is open to the strangeness of the ordinary. The strangeness elicits his lust to conceptualize, to rationalize, to understand.
In the end, however, the mystery of sentience, along with the other mysteries, darkly feminine, resists his advances. His log0-phallic thrust is no match for her chastity belt.
"You may approach, but you shall never penetrate!"
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The Battle is Just Beginning
Walk the line. Don't back down. It's going to be a long twilight struggle against the forces of darkness, my friends. (Wo)Man up, gear up, but be of good cheer. Long live the Republic!
JFK Inaugural Speech, 1961:
Now the trumpet summons us again–not as a call to bear arms, though arms we need — not as a call to battle, though embattled we are — but a call to bear the burden of a long twilight struggle, year in and year out, 'rejoicing in hope, patient in tribulation'–a struggle against the common enemies of man: tyranny, poverty, disease and war itself.
Of the four, tyranny is greatest threat at the present time, the tyranny of the deep state operatives who control the Democrat Party and pull the strings of the puppet-in-chief, Joe Biden, and who desperately tried, but failed, to replace him with the puppet Kamala Harris. Despite the stinging rebuke visited upon the anti-democratic Dem cadre, they will not give up. Their nihilism has deep and mephitic sources.
I was hoping to uncover an etymological connection between mephitic and Mephistopheles, but I found no evidence of one.
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UPDATE (12/18). Further political 'infusions' to 'get your blood up' in this season of peace and joy. Si vis pacem, para bellum.
Why They Hate Kash Patel. They hate a 'person of color'? What racists they are!
After Penny. Excerpt:
Instead, the left and the weaponized government institutions under its control used Penny’s race, gender, and courage to try to make him a national pariah and a living symbol of its twisted ideas of “white privilege” and “systemic racism.” He had to entertain daily the possibility that he could spend up to 20 years in prison for protecting himself and others, and then live out the remainder of his life as an ex-con whose alleged crimes were rooted in purported racism. He had to live in the knowledge that the elected judicial authorities of our country’s largest and supposedly greatest city—with the unreserved support of many civic leaders, criminal justice theorists, and major leaders of one of our country’s two major political parties—did everything in their power to impose just that outcome on him. He likely realized that if they succeeded—and even if they failed, as they did—they would be emboldened to punish others with the same process.
Last week, I noted with alarm that House Republicans were shrugging off—or even approving of—Donald Trump wanting to jail some of their past and current colleagues who served on the January 6th Committee. As it turns out, I underestimated their bloodthirstiness.
Apparently these embittered losers are incapable of distinguishing between revenge/vengeance and retributive justice. Are these two-bit Bulwark journos unaware that 'retribution' has two importantly different senses in English?
I am not able [not able, Rod, or not willing?] to tell you where this idea comes from, but I can assure you that, from my sources, it’s not idle speculation. Thesis: the drones are from China.
China is taunting us, showing us how advanced its technology is, and that it can violate US airspace with impunity. We don’t have the ability to detect these things before they arrive, and they can cloak themselves from our radar. I had wondered why China or any nation would reveal its advanced technology in this silly way. A possible answer: it could be a display of power in advance of an invasion of Taiwan, as a kind of “Are you sure you want to mess with us, Yanks?” way. Doing this could be a shrewd way of firing a warning shot.
Is Dreher suggesting that Alejandro Mayorkas, Director of Homeland (In?)Security, has been lying to us, along with the rest of the Dementocrat regime about the provenience of drones? Dreher's thesis is the most plausible explanation I can think of.
7 responses to “The Battle is Just Beginning”
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The Mighty Tetrad
Money, power, sex, and recognition form the Mighty Tetrad of human motivators, the chief goads to action here below. But none of the four is evil or the root of all evil. People thoughtlessly and falsely repeat, time and again, that money is the root of all evil. Why not say that about power, sex, and recognition? The sober truth is that no member of the Mighty Tetrad is evil or the root of all evil. Each is ambiguous: a good liable to perversion.
Read the rest at Substack.
4 responses to “The Mighty Tetrad”
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Out of Sight, Out of Mind
Out of sight
Out of mind
Out of range
Of the ill
Will and thought
Of others.
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Saturday Night with ChatGPT and Newsworthy Persons
Maverick Philosopher Saturday NightBased on the provided search results, here’s a comprehensive answer:
The Maverick Philosopher’s Saturday Night series focuses on nostalgic music reviews, often tied to a specific theme or month. The titles within this series include:
- Saturday Night at the Oldies: Guns and Gun Violence (March 2019) – Discusses songs related to guns and violence, including Jr. Walker and the All Stars’ “Shotgun” and Lloyd Price’s “Stagger Lee”.
- Saturday Night at the Oldies: Marital Advice (October 8, 2022) – Shares songs about marriage, relationships, and advice, featuring artists like Hoyt Axton and Al Dexter.
- Saturday Night at the Oldies: Obscure '60s Psychedelia (no specific date) – Highlights lesser-known psychedelic rock songs from the 1960s, including those by artists like The Electric Prunes and The United States of America.
- Saturday Night at the Oldies: The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan (March 16, 2013) – Reviews Dylan’s second album, “The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan”, and shares favorite tracks like “Blowin’ in the Wind” and “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right”.
- Saturday Night at the Oldies: Kitsch, Sentimentality, and Dylan (November 20, 2021) – Analyzes the concept of kitsch in music, using April Stevens’ and Nino Tempo’s version of “Deep Purple” as an example, and discusses its relationship to sentimentality and Dylan’s songwriting.
- Saturday Night at the Oldies: September Songs (September 4, 2021) – Celebrates the month of September with songs like Dinah Washington’s “September in the Rain” and Rod Stewart’s “Maggie May”.
These articles demonstrate the Maverick Philosopher’s eclectic approach to music criticism, blending personal nostalgia, philosophical insights, and literary flair.
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BV: How could any reasonable, fair-minded person disagree with that? A couple of inaccuracies: I have never linked to the Electric Prunes, and I have never even heard of the band United States of America.
Group Mind having praised me, I must now offer up some more content for appropriation. There are questions here I don't even know how to formulate properly. Future shock is upon us. Remember Alvin Toffler's book?
MUSICAL COMMENTARY ON NEWSWORTHY PERSONS
Luigi Mangione: I Fought the Law (and the Law Won). No one is above the law! (Nancy Pelosi) Luigi, Luigi.
Donald J. Trump: Do you love me? You put me down 'cause I couldn't dance; you didn't even want me around. But I'm BACK to let you know, I can really shake 'em down. Contours, 1961? Daddy's Home. And he's home TO STAY. That's the way it is with dictators. Shep and the Limelites, 1961.
Joe Biden: A Fool Such as I. PARDON ME, if I'm sentimental . . . He is indeed fool, and a plagiarist, and the third black president. See here.
Kamala Harris: Born to Lose. Joy to the World. Kamala was a bullshitter, was a good friend of mine; never understood a single word she said, but I helped her drink her wine. Joy to the world! Kamala the commie-clown in action!
Alejandro Mayorkas: the most brazen of the brazen liars of the corrupt-to-the core Biden administration Lies!
But The Times They Are a' Changin'. (Byrds)
3 responses to “Saturday Night with ChatGPT and Newsworthy Persons”
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The Ersatz Eternity of the Past
Denied by Lukasiewicz!
Top o' the Stack.
What Lukasiewicz might have said to Leśniewski: Logically, we are poles apart!
3 responses to “Too Many Lawyers in Government”