Anti-Luke 23:34

much social criticism would say:
'Father, reject them, for they know not what they do.'
or
'Father, reject them, for they know what they do.'

...signifying something.

There is the well-known soliloquy of Macbeth:

Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,

That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,

And then is heard no more. It is a tale

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,

Signifying nothing. (Act V, Scene V, 20-31)

but most of us live as if the tale signified something.

ad hominem

having now found and read many of the known notes of those who lived and died above the tree line, I can say, with some real dismay, that few of these few had been able to find, or make, a clear way above the mountain peaks.

barbarians inside the gates?

inner or outer "barbarians", in the end we will reportedly learn how much we were.

the deepest question

do we in fact live our daily lives sub specie aeternitatis or sub specie mundi ?

Nietzsche's "errand into the wilderness"?

no. into civilization.

eulogy to monsters?

preparing for a conference where I am to read from Walden to Russians...

it is insightful to note that when Thoreau’s searching in nature was a “spiritual quest”, he did not fear meeting monsters, dragons, demons or tigers therein. that too was part of the disenchantment of the world. eulogy to monsters?

American politics

it is impossible to understand politics in the USA unless one recognizes that it is ~80-85% emotional, about 7-10% rational, with a needed buffer zone in between. this is based purely on my life-experience, and about 40 years of personal observation and reflection.

the cacangel of Nietzsche

on Nietzsche and Christianity...

not revivalist: devivalist
not evangel: cacangel
not evangelism: cacagelism
not evangelist: cacangelist

not the gospel, but the bad news.

late soviet to post-soviet Mo$cow

a visitor to what afterwards came to be recognized as having been the last years of the Soviet Union, if they had the potential in them, could see how the outer "unfreedom" in which the vast Russian majority lived in a kind of enforced solidarity (if with a necessary humor against the Soviet system and ideology) helped to build a kind of "inner freedom" (a common enough self-/socially conscious topic of Russian kitchen commiseration of those times) which gave an inner intensity, content and vitality which the more externally free "Western" travelers might discern (though often enough not) as visitors
with the transition from "the big village Moscow" of the "late Soviet period", to booming Mo$cow with its malls and billionaires, and all the variety of entertainments and activities which had formally not existed for most people in the USSR, the external freedoms and possibilities and activities, have meant that the average, passive Russian, who had a greater "inner life" by the force of necessity of social and living conditions in the past, is quite happily now able to live his or her inner life in relation to greater "outer freedoms".
only those for whom "the inner life" is a personal need (when not perhaps required by outer life), continue to evince the inner life more common in what I call the enforced monasticism of the Soviet times.

the great and terrible Toto!

in the well-known movie version of Baum's The Wizard of Oz, towards the end, the dog Toto goes over to the side of the Wizard's great hall to pull aside the curtain behind which stands the small "humbug" of a man behind the
"I am the great and terrible wizard of Oz!!!".
to all of my experience, observations and study, most that seems "great" in this world is just such a show, but majorities rarely seem to want to see behind the side curtain.

newsless USA

it is very difficult to get international news in the USA, that is, news about events in other parts of the world which do not impact America society or psyche directly. this is both a telling and a disturbing fact of America.
each time in the past 2 decades I have returned to the USA for a visit, I have found "international news" is missing. not only is news filled with the well-known entertainment gossip, and human-interest scandals, but international news is almost impossible to find, without special effort. (and now via the internet.) this "provincial" self-mirroring of the US population viewing itself in hours of often trivial "news", is another sign of the fact that the USA is out of touch with the world.

one aspect of "news" in the world that many people do not seem to know, is that the international broadcasts of eg CNN and BBC are not the same as is shown in the USA. they have perhaps 70-80% -- but this is just a guess from experience -- different content. American BBC and CNN, not to consider the other domestic networks -- are about America almost exclusively. and and program like Anderson Cooper 360 is little more than emotion-mongering.

one hour of international BBC or CNN in Moscow is more international news that one might view in a month of US domestic news", even on "the same" channels.

foolishness and fear in Pyongyang..."1984"?

watching the rare recent broadcasts of the obedient populace and soldiers of North Korea shows the state of foolishness and fear to which humans can be brought. yhese broadcasts should be viewed -- by those who seek a kind of large-scale gnothi seauton to mankind and it story -- as a mirror on the human being in mass conditions. it was not 'just another news story', but a public revealing of some of the darker sides and potentials of and in the human story. ("1984" in 2012?)

one might compare the people of Pyongyang to NY or London to see the contrasts currently possible in the human story.

on "American" patriotism and values

one is born into one's nationality, and unless there was some pre-natal choice, that is hardly one's  achievement, or fault. and even this assumes that one is speaking of "nationality" in the sense of one's political identity, and not as many educated Russians did, and perhaps still do, mainly as of one's culture, ethnicity or country.

American "values", eg freedom, equality, etc, are now (historically again) spoken of abroad as universal human values. secular, they are perhaps not much less undefinable than pre-modern characterizations of the divine. though it is almost impossible in our world to agree on (non)things divine, it is perhaps much more possible for many of differing nationalities to believe we agree in the ultimately ambiguous character and facts of eg "freedom".

a "Harry Haller" in Spaso House would not be unpatriotic, but he would see necessary attempts at political solutions as just temporary and often all too human, however sincere and well-intended. a discussion where the transcendent does not disturb, even by its absence.

"bread and circus" in Moscow

reflections on reading in Patrick Brantlinger's Bread and Circuses... 

Juvenal here looked at the human being merely externally -- which is in fact evident in both "bread" (bodily, earthly life) and "circus" (entertainment; inner life of an outer sort). and kin to choosing between Barabbas and Jesus before Pilate, the crowd condemned Sejanus, but might have praised him. the crowd are fickle. but there seems to be no deeper psychology here. and, reflecting on this, I recognized that it would be possible to describe the majorities of human -- including those I will see in Moscow as I go about my way today -- in deeper and broader ways. Paul's men of sarc, psyche, pneuma; Plato's cavemen; the decisions witnessed by Er, et al; Pythagoras' levels of mankind -- eg not those who love wisdom; the Purusha-Sukta; Steiner's levels of soul; Thoreau's descriptions related to those of "quiet desperation"; even Dostoevsky's Grand Inquisitor's sociology; et al. several of these are more insightful, even "cosmic", in their meaning, to mere "bread and circus" (which is perhaps also not unrelated to Skinner's positive and negative reinforcement, though that reduces men to dogs and mice, which even Juvenal does not seem to have done.)

one can be outraged if one believes the majorities might en masse be much more (which I now do not), or one can just recognize that this is how most people are...be they inwardly or outwardly delighted -- looking somewhat historically -- with circuses, church services, or consumerism.

and though I can still feel daily in Moscow an aspersive attitude to the majority, history shows that this is a permanent fact(or) in the human world.

probably better to understand and accept it -- practical (and theoretical) anthropology -- than condemn and challenge it.

nb. Hesse's Steppenwolf gives a clear(er) 20th century critique of what Brantlinger's book shows has been found for two centuries by serious thinkers, philosophers, social critics, et al in Juvenal's "bread and circus".

april 10, 2012

the shopping cathedral of enjoyment

in Moscow's new Afimoll (a mall) beneath the crisis-halted construction of the Moscow Citi project, I read yesterday in a work on the meaning in Gothic architecture (which I got in NY's Cathedral of St John the Divine), of how Bernard of Clairvaux had a stance to the world very different to that present in this mall's shops, shoppers and strollers.
"We who have turned aside from society, relinquishing for Christ's sake all the precious and beautiful things in the world, its wondrous light and colour, its sweet sounds and odours, the pleasures of taste and touch, for us all bodily delights are nothing but dung." (Universe of Stone, Philip Ball, p. 44-45)
this is a retreat, a kind of escape from the lures of the world of the senses.
another stance to the world, and one I have tended to live, is to "turn away from society" not "for Christ's sake", but for the sake of insight into the world, life, mankind. to learn through experience of the world; to turn experience and study into insight and knowledge. closer to the idea of education, to the German Bildung (in it later, 19th century sense).
escape. experience.
the thousands of people ambling around the mall with no more apparent aim than relaxation and enjoyment of a day off in the marble-floored mall, gave no sense of being interested in escaping from the world, and not much intention of insight via experience.

Moses, Nietzsche, big bang...

Moses: ex deo lux

Nietzsche et al: ex nihilo lux

big bang: ex materia lux

reflections on a week in Manhattan...

from the 102nd floor of the Empire State Building looking south...Manhattan is just a large island. not even seven hills to deify or mythologize it, it is all really just a massive human construction.

the Statue of Liberty, as much as it would represent NY and/or the USA, is not old historically, however much it may have sincerely inspired viewers with varying and changing ideas over this time. (even a skeptical steppenwolf recommends the audio tour of the island. well-done, it should perhaps move any heart sympathetic to the human story.) like nearby Ellis Island, mainly for those of "steerage", its meaning has been mostly surpassed by flight, and it is a period piece in fact. a tourist site.

the New York Stock Exchange...so much power is some a comparatively small building!

the UN General Assembly Hall...gathering today almost all the nations of the world...a necessary, understandable gathering...has surely already been compared to the Tower of Babel, probably also to the  ancient Agora of Athens...but it has nonethemore a "flat", horizontal kind of human reality of discourse to it.

"Times Square", for whatever it was in the past, seems to be an empty location of facades, where preponderantly less than thoughtful people photograph a missing meaning.

the memorial site of the World Trade Towers...difficult to imagine the height, but the physicality of the planes crashing into the Towers reminds how of earth-bound we humans are.

St. Patrick's Cathedral seen inside and Park Avenue's shopping street...characteristic contrasts, indeed contradictions, in the human condition: (not only) vertical vs horizontal, otherworldly vs this-worldly.

seeing these and other places in "NYC"...a kind of demythologizing of NY.

Moscow, London, NY

untraveled Moscovites really have little realistic sense of how provincial, even mono-tone, their life and society is compared to eg London and NY.