"Give me liberty...?"

or...
"...give me safety?"
Патрик Генри

a music bath

after watching TV or listening to a radio, one should take an inner bath with cleansing music, and wash away the insidious commercial music from inside

America's ruined reputation

will the CIA principles and operatives be held accountable?
no

and when in the future the full history of the CIA covertly in the world is finally admitted -- like this report today does about CIA Torture -- it will be as damning of America's ideals as this report, and require a completely different understanding of American life and success during this period.

Pythagoras of Samos and John of Patmos

Pythagoras has been to space,
what John of Patmos has been to time

Out-Ranked by Nietszche

"all epochs are immediate to God*" -- Ranke

*which is dead -- Nietzsche

Weltanschauung?

Welteinschauung
welteinschauen

a new Enlightenment in Russia?

rather a Reendarkenment

human speciation

few are able to speciate their selves from their groups

Re: National Geographic's Apocalypses

The general title of these two National Geographic series is "Apocalypse" (http://natgeotv.com/asia/apocalypse-world-war-i; http://natgeotv.com/asia/apocalypse-the-second-world-war), by which the creators mean terrible, dramatic events in human history (since not the end of the world). But what the two series really are is an apocalypse, an un-covering (Greek apokalupsis, from apokaluptein ‘uncover, reveal,’ from apo- ‘un-’ + kaluptein ‘to cover.'), a revealing of the human being, individually, socially and collectively.
These films can be viewed more usefully as lessons in realistic social psychology than as just past, if relevant, history.

irresponsible in the USA

one of the greatest social problems in the USA:
at all levels and in all areas -- people not being seriously responsible for their actions, before or after

music pollution

television is permeated by music pollution
of the viewers' souls

the chaos of freedom

freedom without leaders
or a common "cosmos" of meaning

their fashion statement

the fashion statement that most make with their dress is
mooooo...

IQ in the metro?

test the educational and IQ level of those who rub the metal sculptures in Revolution Square metro station

foolishness en masse

the entire global mega shopping life shows the foolishness of mankind en masse
but it could be -- and has been -- much worse

majorities' mentalities

group-soul goals to mundane ends

the vicious cacodaemonia of ISIS

the cacodemons inspiring brutish men in current murderous example in northern Iraq are inspired by a spirit virtually the opposite to the spirit of Isis (with her eudaemonia)

the Russian Man-Boy

to understand Russian society, you must recognize and understand the common Russian man-boy

"peace on earth..."?

the ingredients of the varied, leveled human psyche -- individually and especially in groups -- substantiates that human history cannot come to a lasting peaceful state

ones' intellectual ancestors

for those for whom the ideas and lives of "Zarathustra", Plato, Plotinus, Origen, Aquinas, Ockham, Ficino, Luther, Hume, Goethe, Strauss,...are a complicated family personal(ized by study) history...

major changes since D-day?

has humanity -- either in nations, societies or more globally -- changed in any fundamental way from all that which was eg the origins and history of World War II?

White (House) lies

one can only hope that before Obama became President he had no idea how often he would need to lie and feign

(though to discerning (in)sight, he is not very good at these)

America's missing cacosophy

it is certainly clear that when one must look to a book like Moby Dick or even Biblical or Church Father demonology for an understanding of "evil" in man, that one can say America has long had an inadequate cacosophy

lattes for apes?

sitting in Starbucks Europeiski Moscow...
they all seem quite undisturbed...
and certainly distracted...
whether their ur-ancestors were apes or angels

...And all the ideas and emotions merely players?

All the world's a stage,
And all the ideas and emotions mainly players

cacology? cacosophy? pathosophy? demonosophy?

rather than a merely intellectual "theodicy",

or even an "anthropodicy"...

a "cacology" (knowledge/study of evil) and better a "cacosophy" (wisdom of...)

a "pathosophy" (wisdom of suffering)

even a "demonosophy"

are needed.

(if only to play more seriously with as ideas)

truly searching for Truth?

a search for Truth can only truly begin after realizing one doesn't have it
historically... socially... individually...

and that whether one had, lost or disbelieved it

Muir or Moses?

consider for insights the contrasting peak experiences of Moses and Muir

well, naturally...

nature as home

nature as cage

nature as stage

unleashing the brutes

unleashing the primitives, the brutes...
history is filled with their acts
released intentionally or naively

imago dei?

or more realistically?

imago simia

Herman's "Cave and Light" conceived in the cave

Arthur Herman's Cave and Light was written by a somewhat conscious cave-dweller, for unconscious cave-dwellers

but it is a cave-dweller's comprehension of the cave, light and sun

digital vs literary self-reflections in Moscow

one might have additional reason to be somewhat more hopeful for Russia's future did fewer younger generation women seek their images in their cameras than their history's literature

vita contemplativa in Moscow?

a vita contemplativa amidst Moscow's multi-million-fold, multifarious vita activa is realistically, but truly, irrelevant

(as "Harry Haller" similarly knew)

augustine and nietzsche sub specie...

Augustine seeks in his life and writings to make sense of his life, world and time sub specie dei

Nietzsche sub specie nihil

truth or academics

en route to truth...

captured by knowledge institutionalized

Kerouac's "Grand Trip"?

is Kerouac's road-trip and/or its account to be judged great...

if compared to that of Herodotus, Pausanias, Marco Polo,...

Grand Tourists

Goethe fleeing Weimar in Italy

Bayard Taylor afoot in Europe

the daemonic Richard Burton...

and if not in his life on the road

then in his inner travail with these predecessors?

seems he rather traveled lite

departments of phobosophy?

philosophy                                    phobosophy/sophophobia

hell yeah!

Was Voltaire not wrong about God needing be invented...

rather hell

"the (all-too-human) Humanities"

the "Humanities departments" have for decades not themselves much merited any lingering aura of authority they still may have been imagined to bear from their distant ancestors Religion and Philosophy

what is guilty?

if it is pathetic to blame "God" for human brutalities
so it is likely not essentially true -- though man is en masse a passive creature -- to blame materialism and atheism for human atrocities

what does it mean?

there would be no problem with "meaning" were man merely advanced ape

a totally meaningless world would be indescribable

the problem of meaning is man's

the world, the entire universe has meaning,
if only man's

the ultimate "meta-narrative" ?

be they protests, rejections, scepticisms, condemnations,...

moral and/or intellectual

emotional and/or erudite

Faustian and/or purely scholarly

even anti-narratives and anti-meta-narratives are sub specie aeternitatis*

(*be that only filled by a ?)

on the roads to Damascus and Vincennes

compare the experiences on the roads, of Paul and Rousseau

abstractly stated: their contexts, experiences, confrontations, anthropologies, conclusions

e.g.

against the Old Adam for the New

against the Civic for the Natural

individualism*?

most are less indivisible than they are part and parcel of each other
of the group
not individuals

*individual (adj.) early 15c., "one and indivisible" (with reference to the Trinity), from Medieval Latin individualis, from Latin individuus "indivisible," from in- "not, opposite of" (see in- (1)) + dividuus "divisible," from dividere "divide" (see divide). Not common before c.1600 and the 15c. usage might be isolated. Sense of "single, separate" is 1610s; meaning "intended for one person" is from 1889.

cf. http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=individual

applied contemporary idea archaeology

applied contemporary idea archaeology – studying those ideas from the past still living in the present

inner strings

fashions' strings
traditional, customary inner strings

penultimate social psychology

asleep in societal traditions and customs

archaeology of ideas

archaeologist of ideas in history

the theatre outside the Chekhov

a crowd flowed over Khamergerski Lane
beside the famous Moscow Art Theater...

were the actors outside any more real and unpredictable than that of those in?

massed emotions

most seem quite content to rant their political positions before or without learning,
not their vehemently rejected imbecilic enemies facts,
but their own.

Dante's Divine Comedy in Leibnitz's Théodicée?

Leibnitz does not consider Dante's Comedy in his Théodicée

though that is Dante's "response" to the "problem of theodicy"

and shows the philosophically abstract character of Leibnitz's consideration of it

Fukushima's continuing disaster for us all

out of sight, out of mind?
doesn't quite work that way with radioactive particles...
at least not for the body

αγνώθι σεαυτόν and Fukushima again

the ongoing disaster at Fukushima shows avoiding mankind how it is incapable to make such serious decisions and developments as affect centuries if not millennia.

when Marx's Dialectic was out

Disney's Mickey came in
; )

Mickey Mouse in Moscow Metro

a small stuffed mickey mouse on the lap of a 4 year old girl in sitting in the wagon
both grandparents dotting and controlling besides her
from the completely passive social level of society
from Disney in 1928 to Moscow in 2014
a current culture that for the world's sleeping
degrees of sleep

immature beauties in Moscow

many young woman in Moscow whose real beauty surpasses their maturity by 10-15 years

smart travel to our own country

as a smart traveler studies the history of the country to which he will travel

so should one study the history of the one in which we travail

beyond "the pillars of Kant"

the ne plus ultra of the pillars of Hercules

explorers: Prince Henry, Dias, Columbus, da Gama, Magellan, et al

the pillars of Kant

explorers Hamann, Hegel, Goethe, Blake, Coleridge, Steiner,...Leary, Castaneda, et al

the obstacle course to God

theological studies

Jefferson contra Augustine

two visions of human purpose

               fallen, repenting sin              naturally pursuing happiness

poor, lost poetry

one problem with and for poetry is the lack of a common understanding of the "real world"

or the real in the world

the other is the problem -- little enough conscious amidst all the clutter and confusion -- of the "inner world", aka self, aka person

Lethe

a very powerful, popular amnesiac

morality untouched by emotion?

Matthew Arnold: religion as morality touched by emotion
Immanuel Kant: religion as morality untouched by emotion

Augustine and Goethe

needed: a comparison of their ideas of man's origin, life and goals would be very clarifying

Self-Actualization medications -- Maslow's or Dante's

Maslow's system may cause a light-headed, somewhat euphoric state of self-actualization, and is contraindicated for use by criminals and other individuals with vicious tendencies.

Recommended: one part Maslow, two parts Dante.

necessary external controls

for what % of the population of any society are external laws a necessity for civilized conditions to prevail?

That's just incredible!

"the belief in God" must now be that somehow in all of mankind's trivial and terrible

there is yet some barely credible meaning

equality of the other-directed?

what meaning and social reality can political equality have in and for the many dormant and passive...
the other-directed -- be they mass or middle-class?

our earthly home?

walking down a street in Moscow on this lovely sunny day, an insight:

the society, culture and mind of this time is not at all that mankind is some spirit come down to earth

rather that the earthly, physical life is the home and goal of man

In the beginning(s)...

...God created...

...Nothing happened...

when the gods disappeared...

they left music behind

consumerussia

communism, atheist and this-worldly as it was, was concerned with the material life of man shared
when the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was dissolved, rather than returning to Holy, Czarist (from caesar) Russia, Consumer Russia became the "life-blood" of society

personalized poetry

can poetry be appreciated without a shared world- and life-view?

conversations with the dead

spent the week with Origen, Nietzsche, Darwin,...
ideas and images of Moses, Jesus, revelation...

no one, as for years, noticed

"all men are created equal"

all men were created equal...
but then...

the thoughtful...

against the currently prevailing dominant assumptions of the dormant

sleeps

one can sleep in churches and doctrines
one can sleep in departments and fields

theologians adream, or the theology of theological exegesis

most theological exegesis tends to be written as if God Was, not Is

or if He Is, He Is not here and not now, but some other where and when (this writing perhaps only a little excepted)

lessons learned from history?

hardly those from merely the "20th century"

hanging out in Starbucks sub specie mundi

those seen sitting, sipping, smiling in conversations

happily unaware there ever was a time when life time was felt to be deadly serious

relaxing and chatting as if time was, is, and will be on their side

hanging out sub specie mundi

not sub specie aeternitatis

certainly not sub specie mortis 

earthly equality not heavenly justice

the demand for human equality has replaced that for heavenly justice

 

just killing time?

just killing time?
or
enlivening one's life's time

advertising as ignoble mirror

advertisements as mirroring-insult to any nobility and greatness in mankind

Oh my gosh!

Oh my gosh!

"Gosh", not very surprisingly, comes from "God"

and "OMG" has an interesting apparent first usage:

http://newsfeed.time.com/2012/11/29/omg-first-use-of-abbreviation-found-in-a-letter-to-winston-churchill/?iid=obinsite

a private, unexpected Red-Letter Day

traveled today here in Moscow through the essential structural ideas of the 18th century French materialists, Diderot, Holbach, et al.
one of the most "distant" excursions in 40 years, and one of the most conclusive

Stephenwolf on Theology, et al?

if you are reading these, you might want to see stephenwolfontheology.blogspot.ru

citizen or pilgrim

"make yourself at home"

or

"just passing through"

daily historical travel

journeying daily in history, returning to the present with deepened understanding

what has Versailles to do with...

what has Versailles to do with Jerusalem, or Athens, or...

telepathic conditions

an increase in telepathy would be soon followed by an increase in homicides

banal bloggings, 1784

"A contemporary critic complains in 1784 that no one now ever undertakes a stroll, a picnic, or a ride without having to tell all Germany what happened on the way -- or worse still, what thoughts occurred to him on the way; and indeed many of these descriptions [in books of travels] really do overdo the details, faithfully reporting every word exchanged with each innkeeper and stranger met on the journey."

-- Book Production, Fiction, and the German Reading Public, 1740-1800, Albert Ward, 1974, p. 136.

from Calvin to Maslow

from different core beliefs...

beliefs of the core...

self-denigration <  > self-actualization

   

theological tomes or Jacob's stones

to seek to rest one's head on theologies' tomes?

or better (and more perilous) on one of Jacob's stones?

mundane curricula vitae

curricula vitae lived sub specie academiae
   

a-mazed academics

most seem more or less contentedly "lost" for life, and to life, in their sections of a growing idea maze

serious gnothi seauton?

with 40+ years observation, study, travel, experience and reflection:
there is really very little serious human self-knowledge present in our shared human society and "culture"
: )

mere mental workers?

enraptured with or entrapped by personal careers...
how many academics and intellectuals ("mere mental workers"?) not only realize there is the broader human story of which their professional career specializations are merely divided portions...
but act on the desire or need to know this greater human story?
 

branded brains

whoever actually wants to and buys a eg Louis Vuitton item, whether genuine or fake, is simply too unconscious to be embarrassed
if perhaps in different manners
    

"...sometimes such a feeling of emptiness..." 1877

Nietzsche to Malwida von Meysenbug, Lugano, May 13, 1877 [at closing of letter]

"Farewell! Remain for me what you have been, for I feel much more protected and sheltered; sometimes such a feeling of emptiness comes over me that I want to scream."

timeless

there is always an aspect of time in any writing -- the clime and mind of the time, the moment, when, why and by whom it was written, even if it be about timelessness or eternity, or document the most boring scholarly achievement
 

the passive vast majority

in addition to physiognomies and reading materials...
the passivity of majorities can daily be see via the mass fashion of (the 1873, San Francisco) blue jeans, which one can observe worn eg by the vast majority in the Moscow metro trains
 

the pursuit of heaven, perhaps?

the (semi-, un- and conscious) "pursuit of happiness" is surely kin to the desire for the blessed life in heaven
similarly elusive
yet perhaps more a question of what happens to one, to chance, than even pursuing heaven
 
see hap http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=hap&allowed_in_frame=0
 

the anthropography of man

whereas universal-, intellectual-, world-, big-, deep-, meta-, macro-, micro-, transnational-, trans-cultural-, history

or the history of culture, -ideas, -philosophy, -religion, -science, -history, -biography, etc

Geistesgeschichte, Begriffsgeschichte, histoire des mentalite, et al

are part of the "human story", "human history", they are all parts, portions, aspects or divides of the greater human story which whether it can or not in fact be understood in toto, is surely a "unity" in the sense of it all being related to the human being -- as if gnothi seauton as a whole story reflectively considered -- both individually and collectively considered.

thus: the biography of mankind, the anthropography of man

without an otherworldly hell, a Nazi "hell" on earth?

has any serious, independent, scholarly "philosophical" thinker -- a philodicer, as it were -- considered the actual social and "intellectual" history of a loss of the idea, imaginative belief, and earthly fear of Hell, as well as a real living sense of embodied conscience (Gewissen), and the influence of this in the rise (and brutal realization) of "Nazis(m)" and their fellow travelers, whether willing or not?

(and this is, terribly, just one of many such (in)human histories to trace in the 20th century.)

marionettes of ideas and mores

as has been stated since Plato...
'all the world's a stage', and most unconscious marionettes

ahistoria

most people live as if history has not happened

J e e sus, "Steppenwolf"!

a full-grown child has no more knowledge, complexity and insight to all of history, the world and life than to answer "Jesus"?

Jesus, that is simplistic!

(cf. eg Contra Celsum, IV.9)

a child's Sunday school solution

what can be understood of grown man who reads among these blogs and sends, in essence, a four-word "solution":
the Bible
and J e e sus

(cf. eg Contra Celsum, IV.9)

après nous le déluge?

more likely...
after us the fire

did you have a nice time?

or did you learn?

(nice: from Latin nescius "ignorant, unaware," literally "not-knowing," from ne- "not" (see un-) + stem of scire "to know")

the Divine Comedy and Theodicee

seeking a good comparison of Leibniz's and Dante's "theodicies"

biography in anthropography

it is possible so to study the history of ideas, beliefs, social mores, conventions, traditions, etc, that one can recognize and understand one's own personal life, as it were, sub specie historiae.
one's own biography can be understood, even self-known, in the greater biography, the inner anthropography, of mankind.

macro-biography?

as there are e.g. macro-biology, -cosm, -economics, -evolution, -history, -et (often inelegant) al...
so to their could be macro-biography, which could be one's personal biography as seem within the greater story, macro-history, what seems sensible and useful to call "anthropography", of mankind

punishment for theodical failure

when failing human theodicy tests, "God" is often punished by being denied existence

gawk travel

travel to other countries, peoples and places -- especially since easy commercial air travel -- as actually super-ficial and useless without having previously traveled in the histories of where, who and what, etc to be "seen", "heard" and "experienced"

"been there, done that" < > "been there, missed that"
 

"He/she is so nice!"

nice (adj.)

late 13c., "foolish, stupid, senseless," from Old French nice (12c.) "careless, clumsy; weak; poor, needy; simple, stupid, silly, foolish," from Latin nescius "ignorant, unaware," literally "not-knowing," from ne- "not" (see un-) + stem of scire "to know" (see science). "The sense development has been extraordinary, even for an adj." [Weekley] -- from "timid" (pre-1300); to "fussy, fastidious" (late 14c.); to "dainty, delicate" (c.1400); to "precise, careful" (1500s, preserved in such terms as a nice distinction and nice and early); to "agreeable, delightful" (1769); to "kind, thoughtful" (1830).

http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=nice

in Moscow's new winter "fairy-tale" nightscape (January 2, 2014)

near pushkin square

having the time of one's life

the semi-conscious presumption that there is little or no decisive or critical to one's life time.

sic transit gloria mentis

the perennial attempt to establish permanent truth in passing time

ideally

the stories of ideas by which people live and die
and kill
 

story time

the history of ideas by which most slept

the nighttime of a real book

a bright day in a real book, often seems to be necessarily followed by a night
be that of days, weeks, months or years

"Happy New Year!!!" ?

celebrating "New Year's" reveals the (now globally-televised) silliness of the human being.
perhaps a good excuse for a party...the transition of December 31 to January 1 is really a human if historical convention (the solstice might make a bit more sense to "celebrate"), and that for a "year" the actually foundation of which most completely ignore and/or forget, aside from perhaps disbelieving its basis, or not even knowing.

"Happy New Year!!!" ?

unless you stay as little children?

most have the maturity of children

Moscow's soundrise, soundset

the loudest hours of the year...
now this morning hear here the quietest...