Enjoying the view from Limbo
Life must be ordered hierachically. That is to say, every life is in fact ordered in a hierarchical way, whether one intends it or not — whether in a rational order or an irrational one. Most people’s lives, it goes without saying, are almost completely irrational in their hierarchies. But to live well requires that one’s internal ordering have the most essential activities...
Democratic Surrender.– A headline in The Wall Street Journal, the newspaper of record for Americans with a milquetoast’s craving for the status quo and a middle class investor’s innate aversion to risk, announces that European leaders, by which the WSJ means the particular leaders they wish to highlight, are showing “growing acceptance” of Donald Trump’s “plan” (what plan?) for a negotiated settlement over...
A few thoughts on the eve of “the most consequential election in U.S. history,” as it is being advertised. (Sorry, in order for an election to be that, the U.S. would have to be the constitutional republic it once was, and civilization in a dangerous but reversible condition, neither of which is the case.) To be clear, mind you, I have no further...
I have seen headlines over the past few days railing against the incredible racist fascism on display at Donald Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally. Dismissing this as just the usual mainstream media hyperbole and something-out-of-nothing-ism, I refused even to allow myself to scan any of the articles to find out what the supposed controversy was all about. Today, however, I admit to having...
Is having a fairly regular and predictable daily routine beneficial or harmful to the thinking life? The question is unanswerable until we have clearly distinguished between the two relevant kinds of routine.
There is the routine that aims to minimize the distractions of daily life, and then there is the routine…
Throughout the history of civilization, until just a moment ago, the attraction of “abroad” consisted of the enticing mystery of the unknown, the challenge of the unfamiliar, the risk of fundamental obscurity, and above all the hope, born of the deepest and most natural human need, that one might find wisdom out there. That is to say, the world beyond one’s own comfortable...
From the travel diary of a visitor in the realm of the last man: But I always think of these moments of decision as being like a long, winding slide. Everyone enjoys a slide, so you gladly wait your turn, propped up by the familiar faces and encouraging words of those already in line, until you get your chance to sit at the...
I have not written much on this website recently. As I scan the internet these days, and come to terms with the extent to which everything that is ever written, has ever been written, will ever be written, and can ever be stolen and regurgitated in plagiarized form by a property-obliterating computer technology that short-sighted people today are all imagining will be both...
Modernity is hell-bent on proving what would be without need of proof if we still experienced life as humans. Case in point: it wants to demonstrate through experimentation that mortality gives life its purpose, its interest, and its reason to carry on. People before the age of science used to intuit this simply by recognizing that they were going to die, feeling afraid…
In Book I of his Politics, Aristotle offers a rational argument for the natural legitimacy of slavery. A modern person, encountering this fact for the first time, is likely to respond in one of two ways: (1) “Well, that shows how much we have advanced since Aristotle’s time, and makes it hard to take his political theories seriously;” or, (2) “I wonder how...
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