Enjoying the view from Limbo
Perfect equality of opportunity would require everyone to be born in precisely identical circumstances — not merely in homes of identical material wealth, but rather in circumstances entirely without differentiating conditions that might slant life ever so slightly in favor of this or that individual. Those truly equal in opportunity must necessarily be born among the same number of siblings, and in precisely...
To overcome something, you must face it, live with it, struggle through it, understand it deeply, and work out a way to surmount its debilitating or harmfully limiting effects. Merely avoiding the thing from the outset, by contrast, is not an alternative means of overcoming it, but rather a method of ensuring that you will never overcome it. Failure, spiritual pain, loneliness, the...
When Cyber Ninjas, the Trump-friendly group of something-or-others with no experience or knowledge related to the fields of election procedure and election audits, delayed the release of its Maricopa County audit results, citing one member’s illness, I assumed that this delay was an attempt to buy time as the group searched for a way to escape the Trump cult’s wrath over its findings....
The great modern error, resulting from the spiritual dialectic of modernity: desire as depth. Thesis: Reason is a calculative response to the imperatives of passion; hence the passions comprise the original “state of nature.” Antithesis: If passion is our original nature, then reason, which dilutes or repurposes passion, is a corruption of nature. Synthesis: Desire is reality; reason is merely the deforming mask...
“Biden embarrassing US on world stage,” announces a headline from Fox News, specifically concerning an episode of Laura Ingraham’s show in which she interviews Victor Davis Hanson to arrive at the startling investigative conclusion referenced in that headline. But Ingraham and Hanson, both highly educated and presumably fairly intelligent, along with the entire Fox News corporate entity from whose audience approval they profit...
We do not know why we are here. Hence, every expression of disinterest — and worse, every dismissive certainty – about this question bespeaks a detachment from life itself. There is no life without definition. There is no definition without essence. There is no essence without purpose. “Why are we here?” To the extent that this question has become a laughingstock, a joke...
Rigged.-– Trump Republicans believe their country has gone to hell in a handbasket. However, they also believe Donald Trump could never have lost an election to Joe Biden except by means of a massive conspiracy. In a sense, their paranoia is understandable: It is true that Trump would seem the most natural and likely winner of any election held in a country gone...
You may learn from your anger, but you cannot learn while angry. Anger is an intellectual ditch: no movement possible, all reality transformed into a dark hole in which the soul gradually buries itself in an attempt to justify its perspective by denying the possibility of light. The required spiritual change does not necessarily entail denying the condition that occasioned the anger, which...
In 2014, the Republican Party grassroots, consisting largely of people who identified themselves as constitutional conservatives, backed Matt Bevin, a strong senate challenger to Mitch McConnell in the Kentucky primary. The most prominent name to come forward in McConnell’s defense, both as a public advocate and a major campaign donor, was Donald Trump, who directly attacked the Tea Party in defense of the...
Every human being who was ever born on this planet has either died or is currently in the process of dying. Those currently in the process of dying will certainly complete their process successfully, if the entire history of all living species is any grounds for prediction. To approach life, then, as though the avoidance of death were the primary goal or ultimate...
Follow: