January 2009
120 posts
“In the 20th century, the Soviet Union made the state’s role absolute. In the...”
– Putin
“The international financial system must be reformed. Far from providing a level...”
– GS
“Eventually I understood that the strength of the dollar was due not to people...”
– George Soros
“Freedom is not a binary.”
– The voice from behind the curtain
Grammar and Religion
When persons react negatively to religion is this primarily a reaction against a certain set of grammar, one that potentially threatens to contain and inhibit the behaviors of an individual? Perhaps even the individual disappears entirely into the grammar of the community, like a paper pusher in a Kafkan novel, yet another Turing machine.
What then is it we mean when we speak of...
豫北敘事曲
WP | Police detain prescient blogger →
“The separation between a theological-religious experience of Biblical texts and...”
– George Steiner, via MN
Grammar and Governance
Is grammar enforced? In Germany yes. The government tells you how you must write. In many other circumstances violations of grammar are dealt with by usual methods for exclusion. For instance, while no governmental institution exists in the US to prosecute deviations from correct grammar, various groups do maintain their own standards, through which various ‘correct’ spellings of...
Dr. Nic on GitHub from Ilya Grigorik on Vimeo
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“Ich kann nicht anders”
– Luther
“An intellectual is one whose thought is non-imitative”
– Solzhenitsyn, Gulag Archipelego (thanks to E)
“One cannot totally rule out the risk of a run on the cross-border uninsured...”
– Roubini
Grammar-Identity-Information-Order
In Vienna I was introduced as a philosopher. In Munich last weekend as a monk. I usually introduce myself as a web developer or programmer. Sometimes as writer. When they ask me what I studied, sometimes I say Asian history, sometimes philosophy, sometimes computer science, sometimes religion.
What am I really? Does this question even make sense? From what do I take my primary identity? Can I...
“These statements substantially harm the religious esteem of the Islamic...”
– Amsterdam Court of Appeal’s Prosecution of Geert Wilders
It takes time for the global economy to find a new and sustainable growth path. The necessary changes are that the U.S. expands production and China expands consumption. Neither is easy. And it takes time to implement changes to achieve the desired objectives. Institutional inertia is hard to overcome. The U.S. is stimulating consumption again to boost its economy because it has the...
Westminster Cathedral Choir | Missa Aeterna Christi Munera
Our challenges may be new. The instruments with which we meet them may be new. But those values upon which our success depends — hard work and honesty, courage and fair play, tolerance and curiosity, loyalty and patriotism — these things are old. These things are true. They have been the quiet force of progress throughout our history. What is demanded then is a return to these truths....
Is madness perhaps not necessarily the symptom of degradation, of collapse, of cultural decadence? Are there perhaps—a question for doctors who treat madness—neuroses associated with health? With the youth of a people and with youthfulness?
We descended to (from?) madness for a moment; now again a single voice. Likely thankfully for most of our readers we have decided not to follow Nietzsche...
“To live alone one must be a beast or a god, says Aristotle. Leaving out the...”
– Nietzsche
“Fellow-citizens, we cannot escape history. We … will be remembered in...”
– Abraham Lincoln
Tractus XXI
He told me that he had never known depression until he came to Germany. I told him I had never known anything else. Suddenly thinking about trying to be happy
made me sad. I was always depressed but never sad. Now I am sad.
In fact, broken.
Record without a player.
Perhaps I should be like a flower
in a field. It blooms, blossoms, grows,
without a thought for the other.
Whereas I am...
Tractus XX
What can we represent as numbers?
Not the laugh of the newborn. Not the cries of the damned.
What can we represent as numbers?
A face, a photograph, but no more.
Tractus XIV
We burnt them.
And all that was left was ashes.
All that was left was pain,
Among those left behind.
Friends, daughters, sons, Holding the memory. Should have killed them all?
Then even the memory would be gone. And we could move back to becoming.
“We’re somewhat in the position of a Rust Belt state in the 1970s.”
– Tim Odson, director of the Center for California Studies on persons fleeing Calfornia
Tractus XVIII
One should not ask questions.
Rather, life should be framed as a series of assertions.
Believe you are beautiful
And soon the world will come to see you as such.
And if they don’t
then kill them.
Or move.
Tractus XVII
I sing America.
I sing hope.
The freedom train.
But what happens when I come out of the kitchen.
And still am dark.
Is this beautiful?
Am I beautiful?
What if I am not,
but continue to insist that I am?
What then, America?
Tractus XVI
I have decided that the truth is not important.
What is important?
Action.
Contemplation is not important?
No.
How can one know that one is doing the right thing?
This is not an important question. What is important is action.
Doing what?
Things that are important to me.
Tractus XV
What is the good?
God.
And what must we do to become good?
We are incapable of good.
So what are we supposed to do?
Accept Jesus as Lord and Savior.
And then?
Await the second coming.
In the meantime?
Don’t do evil.
Besides this?
What happens good will happen naturally, it does not need to be commanded or forced.
I have nothing else to say.
Tractus XIV
Why do you have him as your intellectual hero?
Many reasons.
He has an exotic name?
I wouldn’t say ‘exotic,’ but yes, foreign.
Was he a foreigner?
Yes.
How was he educated?
For the most part in our system.
And what distinguishes his philosophy?
It is a protest against oppression, against violent workings of the world.
It is a reaction against the system in which he was...
Tractus XIII
I have done it again. One year in every ten I manage it——- A sort of walking miracle, my skin Bright as a Nazi lampshade, My right foot A paperweight, My featureless, fine Jew linen.
…
Dying Is an art, like everything else. I do it exceptionally well. I do it so it feels like hell. I do it so it feels real. I guess you could say I’ve a call. It’s easy enough...
Tractus XII
There is Christendom. Then there is Christ.
Where is Christendom?
Wrought of stone and political maneuvers.
And where then is Christ?
In the hearts of men.
In my heart also?
If you call upon him.
And then?
He will be there.
And if I can’t feel him?
They you haven’t called correctly.
The wrong number?
The wrong attitude.
How can I know?
Because you will know when you have...
Tractus XI
There is an end to death. There is an end to dying.
What is it?
When you die.
And then?
That is it.
Tractus X
In between the you and the I there is space. Too much. Come closer.
Now we can think together. Or someone else can think for the two of us.
It was too much trouble anyways, to think for one’s self.
An end to loneliness.
Tractus IX
I can write without saying anything.
For there is nothing between the words but space.
And the opening is a clearing. The clearing is a revealing.
In revealing is a presence. The presence is being.
The being is withdrawn. The withdrawn is coming.
The coming is art. Art is the opening.
The opening is a clearing. The clearing is a revealing.
In revealing is a presence. The presence is being.
...
Tractus VIII
What thinks you of the Germans?
Effeminate cowards. Deballed losers. High-pitched screamers.
Really?
They are a noble race. They are the last race. They are the unicorn.
Was meinst du?
They can do nothing. They are nothing. A joke.
What is the punchline?
Death awaits.
Tractus VII
It is a concentration camp. It is not a concentration camp.
He is a Nazi. I am a Nazi. You are a Nazi.
We kill. We will kill. For what is ours. For what they have taken from us.
For religion. For land. Because we love the smell of burning bodies.
Is this man?
His balls should be cut off. Or one at least.
Tractus VI
We are America. We are the world. The world is us. The world should be like us.
We have conquered. We will conquer. We are the best. We are the strongest.
We will conquer by our might. We will conquer by our virtue. We will conquer by our culture.
We are the titans. We are the descendants of Sparta. We care for neither the life or death of our enemies.
Die scum, die.
Tractus V
The union that is, the union that is to be.
Something, my friends, is blowing in the wind. Is it the answer? Is it the union? Or is it the dissolution that comes by union?
Is there a strong man still in the house?