A Sunday of Liberty
But we want to be the poets of our life—first of all in the smallest, most everyday matters.
RSS
  • About
  • Sites of Interest

Truth Could Be a Game That We Play

Nescire Aude

Obiter Scripta, no. 123

Never Gonna Give You Up

Behold the Loaf

Do You Even Lift, Seneca?

Movin’ On Up

Truth Could Be a Game That We Play

July 2, 2022 By Damian in books, eric hoffer, juxtapositions, nietzsche No Comments

Does not civilized living depend on not seeing things as they are? There can be neither order nor stability and continuity without illusions about authority, about the attainability of desired goals, about the quality of our fellow men, and about our own nature. A confrontation with naked, raw reality shreds the fiber of civilized life.

— Eric Hoffer, Before the Sabbath

****

Even if we were mad enough to consider all our opinions true, we should still not want them alone to exist: I cannot see why it should be desirable that truth alone should rule and be omnipotent; it is enough for me that it should possess great power. But it must be able to struggle and have great opponents, and one must be able to find relief from it from time to time in untruth — otherwise, it will become boring, powerless and tasteless to us, and make us the same.

— Nietzsche, Daybreak

****

The theme of this book is that, for better or worse, lying, untruth, is not an artificial, deviant, or dispensable feature of life. Nature engages in it, sometimes with remarkable ingenuity. Art, with its “telling of beautiful, untrue things,” has at times so dominated the mind of a period thinkers could seriously argue that life may be understood truthfully only in aesthetic terms. The impulse to transcend mere literal fact occurs throughout nature. Quite humble biological organisms evolve as a semblance, an alias; a pictorial rendering of some other, less vulnerable organism, Might we not say, for example, that species of Cycloptera, insects that resemble leaves, trompe d’oeil masterpieces which might have been painted by a seventeenth-century Dutch master, perfect in color, shape, and size, even complete with imitation veins and fungus spots, are works of art? It is a seductive hypothesis that falsehood is “on the side of life,” is the lubricant that makes society run, while truth can be harsh, dangerous, and destructive; too simple, too naked, for the complexities of twenty-first-century society, inheritor of one of the most brutal hundred years in the history of mankind.

— Jeremy Campbell, The Liar’s Tale: A History of Falsehood

Nescire Aude

July 2, 2022 By Damian in books, foolosophy, writing No Comments

The essayist is allowed to be familiar, with the understanding that familiarity differs crucially from being personal. What has changed in recent years, and not in the essay alone, is the new penchant among writers for the uncomfortably personal, chiefly residing in confession. The great essayists have also been great adepts of tact, with bone knowledge of precisely how much of themselves they should reveal, how much to hold back. They did not foist their sadnesses on their readers, did not feature their weaknesses. In contemporary writing, consummate tact has been replaced by constant confession. Contemporary writers, essayists among them, provide us with accounts of their sexual kinks, their addictions, their longings, the nightmares of their childhoods, their mental illnesses. Balzac called the artist, by which he meant chiefly the writer, a prince among men; today the prince has increasingly become a patient.

— Joseph Epstein, Gallimaufry: A Collection of Essays, Reviews, Bits

Recently, the Man with the Chin of Gray and I were joking about our weariness with this sort of thing. I said that “I don’t want to know about it” would probably look pretty sharp translated into Latin, and that I might make that the motto of my family crest. Serendipitously, I happened to read this shortly thereafter in Benedict Beckeld’s Western Self-Contempt: Oikophobia in the Decline of Civilizations:

As the middle class increases its numbers in a civilization’s mature days, knowledge democratizes and theory grows popular. The illusion of reflection and profound thought spreads to all and sundry. With ubiquitous education and at least a smattering of theory for almost everyone, ever larger swathes of society will fall victim to the higher self-placement that tends to go hand in hand with oikophobia. We would therefore do well to turn the in some sense laudable Horatian dictum that Kant quotes in his essay What Is Enlightenment? (1784), namely sapere aude, “dare to know,” which leads to a cohort of busybodies believing that they can steer their societies teleologically by means of superficial knowledge, into an equally laudable nescire aude, “dare not to know,” dare to admit ignorance, dare to be open to doubt and to take yourself somewhat less seriously.

It’s not precisely the same implication, but I think it will suffice for my purposes. Dare to be intellectually humble, yes, but also dare to be intellectually discerning. Learn when to look away for the sake of dignity.

Obiter Scripta, no. 123

July 2, 2022 By Damian in obiter scripta, the geist of the zeit No Comments

Where moderation is an error, indifference is a crime.

— Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, The Waste Books

Dictionary dot com’s Words of the Day for the past week have been: choice, dissent, draconian, autonomy, galvanize, and liberation. Is it really too much to ask to get an interesting, possibly unknown word delivered to my mailbox every morning — you know, just for fun — without it becoming yet another opportunity for political sermonizing? Boy, I really didn’t know what to think previously about complex topics like abortion or federalism, but now that the person in charge of the dictionary email listserv has oh-so-subtly made their point, I’m convinced!

Never Gonna Give You Up

June 29, 2022 By Damian in juxtapositions, socmed, the geist of the zeit No Comments

It’s especially weird since the entire argument behind banning him was to limit the reach of his posts, but I’ve seen 15 different screencaps of his Hutchinson thing. Everyone wants to share it themselves. https://t.co/lncD0k4uY0

— Noam Blum (@neontaster) June 28, 2022

****

Anger and jealousy can no more bear to lose sight of their objects than love.

— George Eliot, The Mill on the Floss

Behold the Loaf

June 29, 2022 By Damian in books, juxtapositions, poetry No Comments

A positive thing about academic life is that it affords us the possibility of specialization. But this positive is at the same time also a negative, because the specialization of departments and the delimitation of knowledge mean that, when someone tries to understand an issue in an interdisciplinary, global way, it is in the very nature of academia to protest. Though I place this book within political philosophy and the philosophy of history, my analysis walks among many academic disciplines—philosophy, philology, history, sociology, political science. And when someone pays a visit to several departments, but then after a brief time leaves again in order to see the larger whole, it is almost inevitable that he will be accused of not being serious. An interdisciplinary approach will often, therefore, require a certain ruthlessness in tearing down, for at least a little while, the walls that keep neighboring areas apart. Members of the various departments will often resent encroachment on their turfs, since they spent so many years of hard labor to become initiates themselves.

— Benedict Beckeld, Western Self-Contempt: Oikophobia in the Decline of Civilizations

****

The grey beards wag, the bald heads nod,
And gather thick as bees,
To talk electrons, gases, God,
Old nebulae, new fleas.
Each specialist, each dry-as-dust
And professorial oaf,
Holds up his little crumb of crust
And cries, “Behold the loaf!”

— Eden Phillpotts, “Miniature”

Do You Even Lift, Seneca?

June 23, 2022 By Damian in battling personal entropy, juxtapositions 2 Comments

Without philosophy the mind is sickly, and the body, too, though it may be very powerful, is strong only as that of a madman or a lunatic is strong. This, then, is the sort of health you should primarily cultivate; the other kind of health comes second, and will involve little effort, if you wish to be well physically. It is indeed foolish, my dear Lucilius, and very unsuitable for a cultivated man, to work hard over developing the muscles and broadening the shoulders and strengthening the lungs. For although your heavy feeding produce good results and your sinews grow solid, you can never be a match, either in strength or in weight, for a first-class bull. Besides, by overloading the body with food you strangle the soul and render it less active. Accordingly, limit the flesh as much as possible, and allow free play to the spirit.

— Seneca, Moral Letters to Lucilius, Letter 15

****

Physical strength is the most important thing in life. This is true whether we want it to be or not. As humanity has developed throughout history, physical strength has become less critical to our daily existence, but no less important to our lives. Our strength, more than any other thing we possess, still determines the quality and the quantity of our time here in these bodies. Whereas previously our physical strength determined how much food we ate and how warm and dry we stayed, it now merely determines how well we function in these new surroundings we have crafted for ourselves as our culture has accumulated. But we are still animals – our physical existence is, in the final analysis, the only one that actually matters. A weak man is not as happy as that same man would be if he were strong. This reality is offensive to some people who would like the intellectual or spiritual to take precedence. It is instructive to see what happens to these very people as their squat strength goes up.

— Mark Rippetoe, Starting Strength

Movin’ On Up

June 16, 2022 By Damian in omnigatherum No Comments

I shook hands with a billionaire today. In a couple of weeks, we’ll have a meeting where he says I can, and I quote, “tell me what you need.” This is it, fellows. This is my chance to pitch someone on my lifelong dream of becoming an ornamental hermit. “Yes, sir, I’ve been thinking it over, and I’m going to need a grotto, a folly or two, a custom-built library…”

The Choice

June 8, 2022 By Damian in books, juxtapositions, lin yutang, poetry No Comments

The invention of printing has done more to change the content of the average man’s mind than anything else. That content is one of the most curious and terrifying phenomena of the modern age. We know too much and too little. We all have a mass of information and opinions on world-wide topics, from Hitler’s schizophrenia to Mussolini’s daughter, from the rise of Kemal Pasha to the proper breeding of turkeys. And yet we really know very little on these subjects. What’s in our minds resembles what’s in the town gossip’s, widened to cover the world. It is as if we were looking at a remote landscape through a field glass that brings just enough details to justify all sorts of exciting speculations. We are all suffering from a surfeit of undigested information, and all floating blissfully on the surface of imaginary, and rather undependable, borrowed opinions. Nobody knows anything any more. The more I read the more ignorant I become. The choice today before any educated man is between unread innocence and well-read ignorance.

— Lin Yutang, “500th Anniversary of Printing,” With Love and Irony

****

Grant me, indulgent heaven, a rural seat,
Rather contemptible than great;
Where, though I taste life’s sweets, still I may be
Athirst for immortality.
I would have business, but exempt from strife;
A private, but an active, life;
A conscience bold, and punctual to his charge,;
My stock of health, or patience, large.
Some books I’d have, and some acquaintance too,
But very good, and very few.
Then (if one mortal two such grants may crave)
From silent life I’d steal into my grave.

— Nahum Tate, “The Choice”

I Started a Joke Which Started the Whole World Crying

June 5, 2022 By Damian in fresh hell, jests japes jokes jollies No Comments

For the past four days, several journalists at The Washington Post Montessori School have been doing the Twitter equivalent of hair-pulling, biting, kicking and scratching one another, which started when one of them did the Twitter equivalent of chuckling at a “problematic” joke. By way of comparison, on that same day, several of us at work were telling offensive and profane jokes about a guy we know who stands roughly three feet tall, and somehow we all got on with our lives. Forget education, income, and all those sociological markers; the real divide in the workplace is over humor.

Guess You’ll Die

June 2, 2022 By Damian in books, fresh hell, the geist of the zeit No Comments

I’m at Amazon’s Seattle headquarters, where about 30 Amazon employees are staging a die-in during Amazon’s Pride Flag raising ceremony in protest of the company’s continued sale of what they say are transphobic books. pic.twitter.com/Pz0Pyy0Mzi

— Katherine Long (@_katya_long) June 1, 2022

For some odd reason, I often find myself these days remembering an anecdote about Bruce Lee:

Bruce had me up to three miles a day, really at a good pace. We’d run the three miles in twenty-one or twenty-two minutes. Just under eight minutes a mile. So this morning he said to me “We’re going to go five.” I said, “Bruce, I can’t go five. I’m a helluva lot older than you are, and I can’t do five.” He said, “When we get to three, we’ll shift gears and it’s only two more and you’ll do it.” I said “Okay, hell, I’ll go for it.” So we get to three, we go into the fourth mile and I’m okay for three or four minutes, and then I really begin to give out. I’m tired, my heart’s pounding, I can’t go any more and so I say to him, “Bruce, if I run any more,” —and we’re still running—”if I run any more I’m liable to have a heart attack and die.” He said, “Then die.” It made me so mad that I went the full five miles.

— John Little, Bruce Lee: The Art of Expressing the Human Body

As Louis CK might say, of course we shouldn’t say something like that to those who use performative fragility as a form of manipulation. Of course not. But maybe…

1 2 3 4 ›»

I write in my notebook with the intention of stimulating good conversation, hoping that it will also be of use to some fellow traveler. But perhaps my notes are mere drunken chatter, the incoherent babbling of a dreamer. If so, read them as such.

– Basho, The Knapsack Notebook

Currently Reading

A Theory of the Aphorism: From Confucius to Twitter
A Theory of the Aphorism: From Confucius to Twitter
by Andrew Hui
Against Joie de Vivre: Personal Essays
Against Joie de Vivre: Personal Essays
by Phillip Lopate
Three Men in a Boat and Three Men on the Bummel
Three Men in a Boat and Three Men on the Bummel
by Jerome K. Jerome
Why Liberalism Works: How True Liberal Values Produce a Freer, More Equal, Prosperous World for All
Why Liberalism Works: How True Liberal Values Produce a Freer, More Equal, Prosperous World for All
by Deirdre N. McCloskey

goodreads.com

The Past Is Always With Us

  • July 2022
  • June 2022
  • May 2022
  • April 2022
  • March 2022
  • February 2022
  • January 2022
  • December 2021
  • November 2021
  • October 2021
  • September 2021
  • August 2021
  • July 2021
  • June 2021
  • May 2021
  • April 2021
  • March 2021
  • February 2021
  • January 2021
  • December 2020
  • November 2020
  • October 2020
  • September 2020
  • August 2020
  • July 2020
  • June 2020
  • May 2020
  • April 2020
  • March 2020
  • February 2020
  • January 2020
  • December 2019
  • November 2019
  • October 2019
  • September 2019
  • August 2019
  • July 2019
  • June 2019
  • May 2019
  • April 2019
  • March 2019
  • February 2019
  • January 2019
  • December 2018
  • November 2018
  • October 2018
  • September 2018
  • August 2018
  • July 2018
  • June 2018
  • May 2018
  • April 2018
  • March 2018
  • February 2018
  • January 2018
  • December 2017
  • November 2017
  • October 2017
  • September 2017
  • August 2017
  • July 2017
  • June 2017
  • May 2017
  • April 2017
  • March 2017
  • February 2017
  • January 2017
  • December 2016
  • November 2016
  • October 2016
  • September 2016
  • August 2016
  • July 2016
  • June 2016
  • May 2016
  • April 2016
  • March 2016
  • February 2016
  • January 2016
  • December 2015
  • November 2015
  • October 2015
  • September 2015
  • August 2015
  • July 2015
  • June 2015
  • May 2015
  • April 2015
  • March 2015
  • February 2015
  • January 2015
  • December 2014
  • November 2014
  • October 2014
  • September 2014
  • August 2014
  • July 2014
  • June 2014
  • May 2014
  • April 2014
  • March 2014
  • February 2014
  • January 2014
  • December 2013
  • November 2013
  • October 2013
  • September 2013
  • August 2013
  • July 2013
  • June 2013
  • May 2013
  • April 2013
  • March 2013
  • February 2013
  • January 2013
  • December 2012
  • November 2012
  • October 2012
  • September 2012
  • August 2012
  • July 2012
  • June 2012
  • May 2012
  • April 2012
  • March 2012
  • February 2012
  • January 2012
  • December 2011
  • November 2011
  • October 2011
  • September 2011
  • August 2011
  • July 2011
  • June 2011
  • May 2011
  • April 2011
  • March 2011
  • February 2011
  • January 2011
  • December 2010
  • November 2010
  • October 2010
  • September 2010
  • August 2010
  • July 2010
  • June 2010
  • May 2010
  • April 2010
  • March 2010
  • February 2010
  • January 2010
  • December 2009
  • November 2009
  • October 2009
  • September 2009
  • August 2009
  • July 2009
  • June 2009
  • May 2009
  • April 2009
  • March 2009
  • February 2009
  • January 2009
  • December 2008
  • November 2008
  • October 2008
  • September 2008
  • June 2008
  • November 2005
  • October 2005
  • September 2005

What’s It All About When You Sort It Out?

  • alan watts
  • animals
  • aphorisms
  • art
  • atheism
  • augean stables
  • battling personal entropy
  • beards
  • bonsai minimalism
  • books
  • bread and circuses
  • bring me the head of nicholas carr
  • buried alive
  • calvin and hobbes
  • conspicuous crusading
  • crime and punishment
  • drugs
  • editorial vigilantism
  • education
  • environment
  • eric hoffer
  • extraordinary popular delusions
  • foolosophy
  • free speech
  • fresh hell
  • gender
  • george carlin
  • germans supported their troops too
  • getting and spending
  • herbivory
  • history
  • humanitarian diet
  • identity
  • jests japes jokes jollies
  • jesus tie-dyed for your sins
  • juxtapositions
  • language
  • lin yutang
  • literature as moral fiber supplement
  • lucubrations
  • macho macho men
  • marriage
  • media/propaganda
  • meditation
  • montaigne
  • moralizing
  • music
  • mythology
  • nietzsche
  • nihilism
  • non compos mentis
  • noteworthies
  • notorious jbp
  • nyx
  • obiter scripta
  • ohferfucksake
  • old dixie
  • omnigatherum
  • panta rheism
  • philosophy
  • poetry
  • political philosophy
  • procrusteans
  • prying eyes
  • psychology
  • race
  • religion
  • revillaging
  • samesecks
  • santutthi
  • saturday shuffle
  • science
  • sex-you-all
  • silent moving pictures
  • so many books, so little time
  • socmed
  • solitude
  • spiritual-not-religious
  • technology
  • thanksralph
  • the big sleep
  • the cult of multi
  • the feeling of absurdity
  • the geist of the zeit
  • the great awokening
  • the madness of crowds
  • the statusphere
  • the wire
  • thursday throwback
  • tribalism
  • unintended consequences
  • verily
  • waiting for the barbarians
  • walking
  • who's žižoomin' who?
  • work
  • world football
  • writing
  • Ω

Vox Populi

This is disturbing. All of it. God, you are such a good writer.

—Shanna

The prose is immaculate. [You] should be an English teacher…Do keep writing; you should get paid for it, but that’s hard to find.

—Noel

You are such a fantastic writer! I’m with Noel; your mad writing skills could lead to income.

—Sandi

WOW – I’m all ready to yell “FUCK YOU MAN” and I didn’t get through the first paragraph.

—Anonymous

You strike me as being too versatile to confine yourself to a single vein. You have such exceptional talent as a writer. Your style reminds me of Swift in its combination of ferocity and wit, and your metaphors manage to be vivid, accurate and original at the same time, a rare feat. Plus you’re funny as hell. So, my point is that what you actually write about is, in a sense, secondary. It’s the way you write that’s impressive, and never more convincingly than when you don’t even think you’re writing — I mean when you’re relaxed and expressing yourself spontaneously.

—Arthur

Posts like yours would be better if you read the posts you critique more carefully…I’ve yet to see anyone else misread or mischaracterize my post in the manner you have.

—Battochio

You truly have an incredible gift for clear thought expressed in the written word. You write the way people talk.

—Ray

you say it all so well i want to have babies with it…

—Erin

A good person I know from the past.

—Tauriq Moosa

Look what you wrote about a talented man. You’re gum on his shoe, Damian. If you haven’t attempted to kill yourself before, maybe it’s time to give it a go. Maybe you’ll be successful at something for once.

—”Fuck Off”

MoFo, I have stumbled in here before and love your stuff.

—Barry Crimmins

It is sad that someone who writes so well should read so poorly.

—Ally

A stunningly well-written blog.

—Chris Clarke

He’s right, of course.

—Mari, echoing Chris

Adjust your lousy attitude dude!

—Old Liberal

Truth Could Be a Game That We Play

Nescire Aude

Obiter Scripta, no. 123

Never Gonna Give You Up

Behold the Loaf

Do You Even Lift, Seneca?

Movin’ On Up

A Sunday of Liberty
© A Sunday of Liberty 2022
Powered by WordPress • Themify WordPress Themes

↑ Back to top