above: the recluse exposed below: the recluse crows
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- From the Dhammapada, yo:
Few cross over the river.
Most are stranded on this side.
On the riverbank they run up and down.
But the wise person, following the way,
Crosses over, beyond the reach of death.
- I remember my Uncle Tom (yes, that's his actual name) joking about rising gas prices many, many years ago. He said, "I don't notice a difference. Ten bucks still gets me ten bucks' worth of gas!"
- Happiness or freedom? Dostoyevsky fan-boy Berdyaev wrote: "The higher, the God-image worthiness of man demands the right to arbitrary freedom and to suffering, Man – is a tragic being, and in this is a sign of his belonging not only to this, but also to another world. For a tragic being, containing infinity within him, the penultimate order, tranquility and happiness upon the earth is possible only by way of renunciation of freedom, of renunciation of the image of God within him.”
- Here are galleries of some of my favorite comic-book covers: Cloak and Dagger, Green Lantern Mosaic, Birds of Prey, Marvel Universe: The End, Xero, The Shadow Strikes, Power Girl, Evil's Return, and Deus Vitae.
- Hey, you couldn't get me to go rock-climbing or bungee-cord diving if you held Kate Beckinsale to my head - but I always yearn to swing from great heights and hurl myself off the tops of buildings as a kickass superhero. Damn, I was born into the wrong reality.
- Peace isn't the norm, is it? Dr. Fredric Wertham (who was a bright bulb despite his pariahship as far as the comics world goes) referred to "peace" as "prewar." Humans merely pause between wars; there is never a case of war interrupting peace.
- Inspired by his ordeals in the Auschwitz and Turkheim concentration camps, philosopher Viktor Frankl concluded that “love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire,” that “the salvation of man is through love and in love.”
In Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, Miusov tells of Ivan’s public assertion “that there was nothing in the whole world to make men love their neighbors. that there was no law of nature that man should love mankind.” Freud asked in Civilization and Its Discontents: “Why should we do it [obey the “love thy neighbor as thyself” rule]? What good will it do us…How can it be possible?”
Berdyaev wrote: “Love cannot be neutral and directed equally upon everyone without distinction…One must be merciful to all, but it is impossible to love all alike.” He distinguished love as “personalistic,” not global. I agree. Truly, home is where the heart is, not in the abstract homo sapiens. Love spreads from heart to heart, not treaty to nation or law to crowd. Mass reformers tend to become deformers, and utopian goals become ghoulish. Berdyaev again: “The love of the good and constant striving for it makes men spiteful, hard and merciless toward their fellows.”
- I'm full of smiles today. For all my worry and disgust with this planet's madness, I'm infused with the Spirit. I'm convinced that a Laugh is the ultimon; existence springs from Joy. Yes, it's easy to say when health is good and the day passes smoothly, but I must insist that Joy, the vibration of Love, is the Primary, the Monad. I hope that I have the bravery and power to laugh in the face of evil and death someday. I'm dwarfed by the heroism of those who have. Thank you, heroes, for your championship of Joy, your alliance with the Laugh!
Schiller wrote in his "Ode To Joy":
Joy, joy moves the wheels
In the universal time machine
Flowers it calls forth from their buds,
Suns from the Firmament,
Spheres it moves far out in Space,
Where our telescopes cannot reach.
- Some metrosexual poesy from Yours Truly here.
- Recently, a local talk-show host expressed her amazed respect for crowds taking to the streets and bothering to protest in South Korea. Why this weird fascination with mob mobility? So many folks seem dazzled by the prospect of social unrest pouring out onto public squares or avenues, as if sheer numbers makes heroism and righteousness. No matter what the cause, I shudder at the sight of the mass. I don't like the feeling that a crowd intensifies: a base, anonymous, mindless fervor. Reveling in sheer numbers reduces Man to Math. I am an identity-addicted creature, not an anonymous drop in a nameless ocean. I don't mistake tantrums for praxis or praxis for redemption. One of the grisliest mob actions humans can muster is war. And what is war but mobs protesting each other? No. Don't take me out to the ball game. Too many people, too many - shiver - fans. Activist march at noon? I prefer lunch to a lynch mob. Concert tonight? No thanks. I have the CD.
- Go ahead, snicker. But I dig "Where'd You Go?" by Fort Minor. Pretty and touching. (Cool beat too.)
- FMRIs suggest point to a correlation between lust and testosterone. Since older women lose estrogen, their prominent testosterone tends to increase their lust and sexual appetite. (Hear that, Mrs. Robinson?)
- I have no "white guilt" - or white pride. Only tribal racists have racial guilt or racial pride. Being ashamed or proud of one's race is like lamenting or celebrating one's shoe size.
- Edwin Locke, Ph.D.: "Rights are ethical principles applicable only to beings capable of reason and choice. There is only one fundamental right: a man's right to his own life. To live successfully, man must use his rational faculty, which is exercised by choice. The choice to think can be negated only by the use of physical force. To survive and prosper, men must be free from the initiation of force by other men, free to use their own minds to guide their choices and actions. Rights protect men against the use of force by other men."
- I feel smarter and wiser every day. I look back at myself from a week, a month, a year ago, and I wince and mutter, "Dumbass!" I'll feel likewise about my present self a week, a month, a year hence. So each smarter, wiser day is cancelled by the next smarter, wiser day. This amounts to a constant feeling of increasing smarts and wisdom without recognizing any definite smarts and wisdom! One day's brilliance is the next day's trash. Does this mean that I'm a perpetual dumbass who hallucinates increasing smarts and wisdom? Am I doomed to be a brilliant trash collector?
- Hamlet: “A man may smile, and smile, and be a villain.”
David Herrle 6/2008