Friedrick Nietzsche

"Power which no longer requires proving; which disdains to please; which is slow to answer; which is conscious of no witness around it; which lives oblivious of the existence of any opposition; which reposes in itself, fatalistic, a law among laws" p.85

I really like this quote. It reeks of something primal, something close to the divine.

Leary on Revolutions

"Cultural revolutions and neurogenetic mutations can exist gracefully underground in the form of elites and cults. But when they begin to surface they become democratized, bureaucratized, vulgarized, and, of course, co-opted by" the other side.

- Timothy Leary, What Does WoMan Want p.119

Low Bow to Morality

"Each of us will be well advised, on some suitable occasion, to make a low bow to the deeply moral nature of mankind; it will help us to be generally popular and much will be forgiven us for it."

p67 Civilization and its Discontents by Sigmund Freud

The Freudian Stumble

"The Roman who gave up an important undertaking if he saw an ill-omened flight of birds was therefore in a relative sense justified; his behavior was consistent with his premisses. But if he withdrew from the undertaking because he had stumbled on the threshold of his door he was also in an absolute sense superior to us unbelievers; he was a better psychologist than we are striving to be. For his stumbling must have revealed to him the existence of a doubt, a counter-current at work within him, whose force might at the moment of execution subtract from the force of his intention." - Sigmund Freud, Psychopathology of Everyday Life p. 259

Self-Knowledge

How many so-called educated people really know much about themselves? ...

I belong to What I Possess [a poem]

I belong to What I Possess

You, my griddle, you make me pancakes, I feel silly saying it, but, you make my day

And you, my radio, whisper to me through the night; the cashier tells me she thinks you may be broken, as if that could make me love listening to you any less

And you, my phone, I see your jacket on my floor; victim of my once and future negligence, forgive me

And you, my wooden box of valuables, veteran articles of my self-association, in you I store the best of what I love

You, the gritty tangerine from that poem the other night, now dripping alive and real, give yourself to me

You, my copal incense, when I blow on your hot charcoal you sizzle and glow

You, my copy of Ovid's Metamorphosis; remember when I found you in the vacant lot, and picked you up, and blew the dust off your rain-ruined covers--at night in bed feel my caress while the scent of your ink makes me delirious

And you, my writing dictionary, let me turn your trickling stream of life into a rushing river--move me

And you, my typewriter, orphaned, ward of my estate, between us there is nothing we need to justify, except perhaps a rare bad joke

You, my journal, I spill dreams between your pages when we awake, you claim these from me as I fill your pages

And you, my favorite blanket, make my skin comfortably warm as I draw you near; I care not, how tattered you may become

All of you, I try in vain to leave you--honestly, I can--yet really, I belong to what I possess.

The Epic of Myth [a poem]

Planted firmly in the bare earth,
is the true soldier of epic myth,
Who dances with the east wind
and in sorrows bows down low
under rains the west wind wept.

She wore a dandelion diadem helm
Gird a blade of grass for her sword
One shield only she has chosen:
a vast, unbending web of leaves.
Many summer passions burn down
And yet, an utter cool becomes her.

It shines brightly amber, her shadow
Where on purest bed of winter snow
she awakens to perpetually blossom.

Professors Who Don't Read The Books

Three university professors I have taken classes with (thankfully none of them in my current degree program) informed the class that Sigmund Freud had only one patient and based all of his work on just that one patient.

I really wish the professors would read the books before they try to tell us what is in them. Freud had more than one patient. Here is a quote from one of Freud's books I have read: "On my return from my holidays my thoughts immediately turned to the patients who were to claim my attention in the year's work that was just beginning." p. 256 of Psychopathology of Everyday Life. Wait! Is this a misprint? "Patients"? Plural? No, I am afraid it is not a misprint.

I don't think I want to know why three professors from three different universities have made that same mistake. What I do have to question is why I continue to patronize these people with my time when so many of them speak so ignorantly. Here are my reasons:

1. When I have a PhD nobody will tell me I have to go back to school (except that my degree is in Education, so they will tell me to go to school)

2. When I have a PhD then I can say that liberal arts professorships are obsolete without anyone being able to argue that I am only saying it because I was not capable of earning a PhD

3. When I have a PhD in Education, then I can unschool my children with far less interference from the people on the local schoolboard, and I can help others unschool or homeschool their children

4. When I have a PhD then I can read whatever I want and call it work and maybe even get paid for discussing it with people

5. When I have a PhD then people who have no internal way of discriminating smart from stupid will automatically assume I am smart

6. I have lots of school loans and right now the only thing surer than death and taxes is inflation--might as well pay them back later when the $s are easier to come by because they are worthless... er... a... worth less... than they are now

So, hey, if they don't want to read the books, then that's their problem. Besides, I haven't had to deal with any of that this year in my classes, so let's keep our fingers crossed.

The Salvation Racket

I don't like the way people use "Jesus died for you". They use it to imply that "therefore you owe him your life in return" (which isn't so bad) and the (hideous) hidden corollary "We are his representatives, and we will accept your life from you as His proxies."

It is the same ruse employed by the ruling class when they tell us the governments they own guard our lives against other governments, so we and our children therefore owe our lives to the State. In both cases it's racketeering, pure and simple. Both religion and government are (most but not all of the time) protection rackets.

Pay the U.S. Government mobsters and they will protect you from the Russian Government mobsters. Pay the mobsters of heaven and they will protect you from the mobsters of hell.

Not that the Churches are going to get RICO Acted any time soon, much less the U.S. Government, but the neat thing is as soon as you realize they are all-too-often racketeering, it sets you free because it makes it real easy to discern those who are practicing true religion from those who would die at the sight of God's shoelaces.

Skeletons On Thrones And Under Them

The Roman Catholic Church may tell us it doesn't have any more skeletons in its closet, but it is worth noting that the whole Vatican City is built atop a pre-existing cemetary.

Freud on Morality

"...morality is only a selfish regulation laid down by the few who are rich and powerful and who can satisfy their wishes at any time without any postponement... The decision in this conflict can only be reached by the roundabout path of fresh insight. One must bind one's own life to that of others so closely and be able to identify oneself with others so intimately that the brevity of one's own life can be overcome; and one must not fulfil the demands of one's own needs illegitimately, but must leave them unfulfilled, because only the continuance of so many unfulfilled demands can develop the power to change the order of society. But not every personal need can be postponed in this way and transferred to other people, and there is no general and final solution of the conflict." - Sigmund Freud, p.130 Jokes and their Relation to the Unconscious

Thoughts?

Secrets of Pythagoras

"The Pythagoreans likewise said, that it is more necessary to pay attention to philosophy, than to parents and agriculture; for it is owing to the latter, indeed, that we live; but philosophers and preceptors are the causes of our living well, and becoming wise, in consequence of having discovered the right mode of discipline and instruction.

"Nor did they think fit either to speak or write in such a way, that their conceptions might be obvious to any casual person; but Pythagoras is said to have taught this in the first place to those that came to him, that, being purified from all incontinence, they should preserve in silence the doctrines they had heard.

"It is said, therefore, that he who first divulged the theory of commensurable and incommensurable quantities, to those who were unworthy to receive it, was so hated by the Pythagoreans that they not only expelled him from their common society, and from living with them, but also constructed a tomb for him and considered him as dead."

- Iamblicus, Life of Pythagoras

Seems sort of like Coca-Cola guarding their soft drink recipe, or maybe like Microsoft maintaining its monopoly. If they didn't, then customers might be better off going elsewhere.

Only eight people in the whole world know the Coca-Cola recipe and that's the way it must stay for the company to retain its value.

This is why we have Property law. It is both the reason why I cannot use Tony DiTerlizzi artwork on my website without permission, and the reason he can make a living producing that artwork I enjoy so much.

Anyway, the point my mind is racing to arrive at is this: just like iTunes licenses music to people to listen to on their computer, why not have a similar setup for licensing copyrighted artwork for people to use on their websites? Pay a few dollars per URL you want to use it on.

Does anything like this already exist or does someone who works for Apple want to recommend they create a new brand that parallels iTunes? You know, sort of an iTunes for pictures.

There are dozens of artists whose work I would buy a license to use.

Here's a list of such artists that I will periodically add to (especially when I find the long list I have put somewhere):
Sir William Fettes Douglas
Rob Alexander
Kev Walker
Jeremy Jarvis
Tsutomu Kawade
Ron Spears
Justin Sweet