Enjoying the view from Limbo
The only thoughts that ultimately matter much are those which we may, following Nietzsche, call “thoughts out of season.” This is true in part because seasonal thoughts, by definition, do little to advance the discussion, and tend to merely amplify the ambient noise, but mainly because such thoughts, being reflections of one’s time and surroundings, are often difficult even to classify as thoughts...
Everything in our experience can be divided in two. After all, that most basic division explains why we have our world of experience in the first place: the primordial world-egg was split in half, or God created heaven and earth, or the Yin and Yang were distinguished — as you please. And this is why we rational animals are so naturally apt to...
In Part One of this discussion, I included the following among my principles: Profit. Never seek material gain from the best thing you can do; for that is the literal meaning of selling one’s soul. You will not get it back. Upon reading this particular principle, a serious student who is trying to work out her own life priorities at this time offered...
The best writer writes as the most intimate friend speaks, namely as though he were talking to himself, and for himself. He also hesitates to take his writing too seriously, and may even be suspicious of it. The best teacher is not the one who can answer all your questions, but rather the one who knows how to ask questions, and what the...
As I write this, it is still the early hours of a temporally indefinable election aftermath in the United States. In this age, there is perhaps no sharper focus in which a thoughtful person may observe his own soul than an election time, as there is never a moment when the extent of such a person’s isolation is clearer than when everyone around...
Recently, a student told me that she feels “disgusted” by her father’s way of speaking of other people, whether in the news or in the world generally, as he tends to criticize everyone as though they are all “stupid” if they do not think as he does. In reply to this student, I noted that sometimes we feel “disgusted” by another’s attitude —...
Today is full of the noise. Every moment, the mindless chatter of the most mindless of chattering creatures, the late-modern slave, cuts through every thought, interrupts every quiet intake of breath, disturbs the rhythm of every calm reflection. I walk to the pond, a cup of coffee in my hand and a camera around my neck, hoping for a peaceful moment of escape...
Wisdom is one thing. It is to know the thought by which all things are steered through all things.
— Heraclitus.
At one time they are all brought together into one order by Love; at another, they are carried each in different directions by the repulsion of Strife, till they grow once more into one and are wholly subdued.
— Empedocles.
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