Munich
The spirit of Munich is a sickness of the will of successful people, it is the daily condition of those who have given themselves up to the thirst after prosperity at any price, to material well-being as the chief goal of earthly existence. Such people – and there are many in today’s world – elect passivity and retreat, just so as their accustomed life might drag on a bit longer, just so as not to step over the threshold of hardship today – and tomorrow, you’ll see, it will all be all right. (But it will never be all right! The price of cowardice will only be evil; we shall reap courage and victory only when we dare to make sacrifices.) Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s Nobel Lecture, 1970 technorati : Nobel Lecture , Solzhenitsyn ,...
A Metaphysics of Crap
I finished Pirsig’s Lila some time ago, but haven’t gotten around to saying anything about it because it wasn’t really good enough to say anything about. The simplest thing that can be said about is this: it is kitsch, and it fails the standard set by Pirsig himself in Zen–it is devoid of Quality, for it claims to be something that it is not and in so doing justly falls into the rubbish heap of groundless philosophically inclined ideas that attempt to build an intellectual edifice out of arbitrarily conceived generalities that in the conceiver’s persuasive opinion are natural agreed upon norms. For some reason I have that children’s song ringing in my ears: the foolish man built his house upon the sand. If you’d like...
Justice in the Hands of the People
A bizarre adventure experienced and recounted by one of my friends last night inspired my uptil now dormant fascination with the idea of citizen’s arrest. Now, I must admit that one of my life goals is to make a citizen’s arrest. To that end I have printed off this code and plan to have it near my person at all times; armed with this code and a firm sense of citizen justice, my status as a vigilante is ensured. Beware law-deriding fiends, for the citizen’s arm of justice will bring you to your knees, in accordance with ORC 2935.07! ORC 2935.04-When a felony has been committed, or there is reasonable ground to believe that a felony has been committed, any person without a warrant may arrest another whom he has reasonable cause to believe is...
Lose your Life/Gain the World
There is a simple truth which one can learn only through suffering: in war not victories are blessed but defeats. Governments need victories and the people need defeats. Victory gives rise to the desire for more victories. But after a defeat it is freedom that men desire–and usually attain. A people needs defeat just as an individual needs suffering and misfortune: they compel the deepening of the inner life and generate a spiritual upsurge. (272) Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago. The more I read of Solzhenitsyn (and I’ve read a great deal already, nearly 400 pages) the more I am convinced that his poignant examination/expose of the cancerous USSR serves as a fitting analogue of Christian spirituality. There is a lot more to that;...
Mint Condition
Remember those science experiments you did as a kid? Perhaps your favorite part was the magnets or maybe it was even the dissecting, if you were a purist or a contrarian. One particular science experiment I remember well had to do with two very common place things: a penny and some Coke. The preparation for the experiment was one of the best parts. For the penny you’d have to come up with the dirtiest grubbiest coin you could find. The more tarnished the better. Grocery store parking lots were good places to look, as were the crevices in the couches. The best penny was the one that only revealed its pennyhood by size–all the embossed features were begrimed beyond recognition. The Coke was fun too–as kids we hardly got to drink the stuff. ...