Enjoying the view from Limbo
There are gods even here. — Aristotle, Parts of Animals When I play with my cat, who knows whether she is amusing herself with me more than I am with her? — Montaigne, Apology for Raymond Sebond We imagine we are better than we are, because we instinctively exaggerate the value of the things we do well. Every time I watch a sparrow...
Philosophic hedonism.— The soul naturally inclines toward beliefs, solutions, behaviors, and aims that promise the greatest pleasure. Education is primarily the process of unlearning the childhood weakness for mistaking the quickest or most immediate pleasure for the greatest pleasure. The educated person is thus the one who habitually forgoes the near or easy pleasure in favor of the distant, rarefied one, and the...
From the entry on “Bird” in Cirlot’s A Dictionary of Symbols: Every winged being is symbolic of spiritualization. The bird, according to Jung, is a beneficent animal representing spirits or angels, supernatural aid, thoughts and flights of fancy. Hindu tradition has it that birds represent the higher states of being. To quote a passage from the Upanishads: ‘Two birds, inseparable companions, inhabit the...
We are living in the proverbial “interesting times.” To say the world is in a state of flux would be absurdly generous. The world is in a state of freefall. Nothing will stop this fall now, until, inevitably, we hit the ground. And having lost the use of our wings, due to rampant materialism and generations of spiritual lockdown, we have no civilizational...
When birds stop flying,
And flowers unbloom, call me —
Until then, be calm.
_______________________
Sentimentalists
bore me with their mock feelings —
Distractions from life.
______________________
I have several
good reasons not to panic —
in my camera.
Anaxagoras says the world is comprised of innumerable seeds of all things, which are grouped into various proportions, these proportions determining each thing’s identity, by a whirlwind controlled by Mind. Aristotle’s own theory of the intellect is influenced by this Anaxagorean imagery, as he equates “controlled” with “known,” and Anaxagoras’ seeds with his own notion of potency (matter). Anaxagoras believes the cosmos, qua...
In Plato’s Phaedo, Socrates, in his dying hour, describes his mind’s eye view of the Earth, as a final life lesson for his friends. The most striking feature of his remarkable quasi-mythical account is his speculation that the true surface of the Earth is not the ground we walk on, which we mistakenly call “the Earth,” but rather the upper limits of our...
Early twentieth century Irish nationalist Robert Wilson Lynd wrote the following very worthy, somewhat Stoic, observation: In order to see birds it is necessary to become a part of the silence. One has to sit still like a mystic and wait. One soon learns that fussing, instead of achieving things, merely prevents things from happening. To be passive is in some circumstances the...
As many of you know, I had surgery to repair a broken bone in my foot back at the end of January, an injury which severely curtailed one of my lifelong essential activities, walking. Well, August 9th here in Korea, I underwent Round 2 of this surgical adventure, removing the screw inserted during the first round. As a result of my current hospitalization,...
As I prepare an essay about the latest ghoulishness from the proprietors of the theme-park-cum-abattoir that offensively continues to call itself Great Britain — someone please tell be what’s “great” about it these days — I am only too happy to take a short break from my disgust, and before (hopefully) inspiring yours, to enjoy that part of the living world which has...
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