- The line between a dream and a daydream exists only as a thin veil to see to it that the ego does not descend into madness.
- Our society does not value sleep. The early bird gets the worm–so goes the expression. But cultures have expressed themselves differently throughout history, the Greeks, for example, in protecting their leisure. It is not clear what straw will break the camel’s back of Ford’s forty-hour work week of American pragmatism. One can only hope that there are more siestas involved.
- The hyper-specialization demanded by our current education system has created a workforce that is perfectly curated to be plugged into the capitalist machine. The mental activity of the 19th century gave way to the physical fitness of the Cold War era. This has now given way to the physical degeneration of the body and hyper-specialization of the mind. Knowledge has not retained any intrinsic value. That is to say, it no longer is held for what it is in itself. The Industrial Revolution coincided with modernism and the overhaul of our education system. The subsequent two world wars further cemented the view that knowledge is essentially useless unless it can be put “to good use.” That is to say, unless it has a certain utility. Principally, this is for the acquisition of money and power. Knowledge, therefore, becomes subservient to money and therefore its slave. As Sir Francis Bacon so shrewdly acknowledged, “knowledge is power.” Even the physical sciences, which have reigned supreme in our public education system, are now being rendered obsolete because of a lack of utility. Since computer science, biotech, and engineering are the most useful at this juncture, they are therefore most profitable. Children grow up attending science museums to learn the importance of “knowledge” to be “smart.” All knowledge is perceived as knowledge of the physical universe and the contents therein. Since the universe is finite, it is simply a matter of time before human beings acquire all knowledge–perfect knowledge–effectively, crowning themselves as the new Lords of the Cosmos. As a queen bee needs a fleet of drones for a successful hive, so too does the global capitalistic machine need many hyper-specialized cogs to fit perfectly into the system of efficiency. Or, in the words of Dostoyevsky, an organ stop. Thus ensues a population that does not know their right foot from their left. Thankfully, with everyone working from home–and Amazon and DoorDash at our fingertips–we do not even need to put on our shoes. Or better, perchance, we shall shift to uni-feet shoes, much like the trend towards all-gendered bathrooms. I’m still awaiting for the rise of the children’s critical thinking and philosophical museums. For those who think of themselves as most critical usually lack critical thinking.
- YouTube suggested videos: the new a priori value system.
- Language always devolves from its initial lofty heights into something more crude, more base, and less distinct–dare I say…less holy? Thus, the angelic meter of Homer juxtaposed next to the apocalyptic horror of John the Revelator’s Koine Greek. Or, the rich sonnets of Shakespeare vis-a-vis the disintegration of structured poesy in the modern poems of T.S. Eliot. Fundamental to this decline is the lack of divine address. Thus, languages lose their sharpness and distinctness erodes. Martin Buber’s I-Thou has thus been transformed from a divine encounter into a human, all-too-human monologue: the i(Phone)-You(tube). And the ego thereby completes its objectification.
- The craving of oils, fats, or sweets is proof that humans regularly confuse what is good for them. So also that suffering that follows from inexorable sacrifice. In Utilitarianism, as with the American Dream, the most healthful regimen is the one most avoided.
- It is not a matter of time but of priority–a Netflix special for every occasion!
- As the Greek King Antiochus Epiphanes IV sacrificed a pig to Zeus on the altar in the Jewish temple, so also does the modern man gallantly and irreverently mount a flat-screen TV in his bedroom: a desecration of the holy.
- A crick in the neck forces one to walk around with the head slightly cocked as a dog looks for understanding when his master asks him a question. The difference, then, between the moral man and the madman is not one of quality, but of degree. Life, time and time again, confronts us to look into the eternal abyss, which, ordinarily speaking, consequences a “snapping back” to that which the world has reckoned the “status quo.” Sometimes, however, the neck does not crack, and one navigates through the chaotic waters of life in a perpetual state “to understand.” Or, more accurately, an ecstatic state. This “overstanding” allows the seer to course himself far past the horizon–or, in common language, past accepted notions, ideals, values, mores &c.–to the blessed mythical lands of Hyperborea. Indeed! The ecstatic soul thereby is able to see things thereupon from a different point of view; or, dare I say, angle! It is for this reason that I have remained skeptical of chiropractors!
- The author of Ecclesiastes was the first existentialist–or dare I say, Nihilist?
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Blessed are the Poor in Spirit 