June 2009
24 posts
“Und was der ganzen Menschheit zugeteilt ist,
Will ich in meinem innern Selbst...”
– Faust
“Utter immortal harmony! How bright!
How splendid an illusion! but, alas!...”
– Faust, Coleridge trans.
May 2009
37 posts
More on Games
Continued from this.
Luke P:
First, I am not speaking about games in a universal sense. However, I have found myself wondering recently if there might not be some connection between the creation of a game and other kinds of creation: say, a work of literature. I wonder if man as a game-maker is not perhaps a sub-category of man as maker. Perhaps the man who creates a game is in this sense...
Re: Re: Games
E:
The key may be ‘pretend to.’ Why is Chess so popular, historically speaking at least? Is there any great utility contained within? The answer to this question may unpack the utility of other institutions. We often prefer the closed instead of open ended because we can claim to understand it, although there must be a greater and lesser amount of such understanding if we are to demonstrate our...
“Some women wait for Jesus.
Some women wait for Cain.”
– Leonard Cohen
NPR | U.S. Electric Grid →
Madoff Victims →
Money and Continuity
S previously commented:
Continuity, however, is precisely the New Testament’s “mammon”.
He expounds:
What I was saying… Money is our best-attempt at material continuity. The value of money is that it was, is, and will be tradable. The choice to serve “God or money” is really a choice to serve the eternity that invades life or the material continuity that recycles it. ...
Getting to know Reinhold Niebuhr
Selections from his letters:
The pastors are exceedingly well trained, very theological, and either Barthian or strictly Calvinist. Bathianism is actually a very good leaven against the strict Puritanism of Calvinism which exists here in a much more rigorous and I should say more arid form than in Scotland. Yet in a way it is more profound than Scottish theology, which seems ot me more...
Re: Games
Reponses to this post. Apologies so long delayed. Required some thought.
Nejnejnej Njet:
Here is an old explanation to “successful” games that I never forgot or really found disproof of. “People like games where small units dies a lot - like splashed a lot - explodes or so..” . Look at Lemmings, Worms, Cannon fodder, to name a few. Tower defense may be counted in..
And,...
As I reflect over the experience, the limits and extent of my pragmatic approach to religion were exhibited in Japan — and even if behind this stands an ultimate commitment to truth — does this suffice for living? Or should living, well or otherwise, even be an end? What do we assume as ends even as we search for others, if we search at all? If we find a rubric that seems helpful, can...
I have been discussing Heidegger. I have a pile of go stones in a box. I am packing for the weekend. I am formulating resolutions. I will write at least a sentence each day in my Japanese journal.I will begin responding to email. I will rise earlier. I will attempt to translate German theological literature. I will. I will.
The pragmatist lifts up his head. Will this work?
S responds to this:
“Institution” might just be modern slang for “tradition”. I think institutions are for solving the problem of continuity across death (and more disorderly things). Corporations, universities, etc. are sort of subsets of this, each solving various domain-specific problems - though I suppose they can be retooled for other uses too. The fact that we...
We have not yet learned to think. What often passes for such are lists of facts with no order except the march of time, which also is forced on us. Can we be taught to think? Or is thinking, by necessity, something that comes from within instead of without?
An educator can pass off a list of facts for memorization, but where can thinking be facilitated? Might not institutions, even if they were...
“Every year they hate us more.”
– The Dark Knight Returns
“Every year they grow smaller.”
“They’ll kill us if they can, Bruce.”
“To be chained is sometimes safer than to be free”
– The Advocate, The Trial
“And there was Batman himself. He was the real boss. As he was quick to assert....”
– Frank Miller, Dark Knight Returns
Wolfram Alpha Introduction →
Long working hours. Invigorated by Eliade. Books on Niehbuhr and the new perspective on Paul. Must first finish one on Don Quixote. Attempting to journal privately. Found three or four distinct journals on this computer. My writings are in disorder.
We see the trickles of blood flowing from the Savior’s body onto Adam’s skull. This motif is also found in certain Florentine primitives(the Academy’s collections), but it disappears in the great paintings of the Renaissance. Moreover, it was to be expected. The myth of Adam buried in the “Center of the World,” at the top of the Cosmic Mountain, in the very same...
Damnation of Faust. William Byrd. Work. Distractions. Early mornings. Exercise. Grad school acceptance. Additional waiting. Eliade. Brenner. Potok. Rosebud.
“Truth is the basis on which the power of the press stands and falls. Our only...”
– Otto Dietrich, Reich Press Chief, Triumph of the Will
“I saw them burning books in the square. They poured gasoline on them and set...”
– Ivan
“They have no writers”
– Ivan, Ivan’s Childhood
BSetzer on Cross-Border Flows →
Cheese steaks. Discussions about professional sports, Europeans and math, and television series I don’t watch. Tea ceremony. Mental fatigue, infixation, wandering. Time in front of a computer. Books unread, or read poorly.
“In one of Chesterton’s stories—“The Head of Caesar,” I...”
– JL Borges