Mujalifah's mighty musings in mirth and magnanimity

mujalifah's gone to christodeklerk.com

2006-01-22T21:06:00.000-08:00

I'll no longer be posting here.

But I will be posting here.

sexuality, metaphor and metamorphosis

2006-01-18T13:43:00.000-08:00

Rushdie says that the fear of women's sexuality is partly behind Islamic extremism. I infer from the article that this is how he explains the Western embrace of women's sexuality:

"The Western-Christian world view deals with the issues of guilt and salvation, a concept that is completely unimportant in the East because there is no original sin and no savior," he said

And what I get from this quote is that when we talk about women's sexuality, we're just talking about sexuality period.

And then there's this interesting bit on the notions of metaphor and metamorphosis from the philosopher Santayana's "Life of Reason". Apparently Greeks seldom if ever used metaphors, says Santayana.

"the classic mind could well conceive transformation, of which indeed nature is full; and in Greek fables anything might change its form, become something else, and display its plasticity, not by imperfectly being many things at once, but by being the perfection of many things in succession. While metaphor was thus unintelligible and confusing to the Greek, metamorphosis was perfectly familiar to him." (Chapter 6 of Reason in Religion)

Santayana goes on to say that this is why Christ's metaphor at his Last Supper was transformed into a doctrine and practice of metamorphosis. It was easier for the Greek-influenced mind to swallow metamorphosis than metaphor.

the holistic murmur: to grumble with grumbling tummies

2005-08-01T15:42:00.000-07:00

On the changing use of the word "protest"

Geoffrey Nunberg gives a short overview of the historical use of the word protest - emphasizing that in recent years the word has lost the preposition that properly should be accompanying it. "I protested against you" became something like "I protested my mistreatment". What is of interest to me in the usage of the word in this way is the ambiguity that seems present in the identification of whom the protest is against. I'd argue that "Protesting against the government" isn't quite the same as "protesting the government". By this latter usage I could mean that I'm protesting against you for what the government does.

On coming back to the heart of protest, because it is all about you, all about you G-d

So Moses and Aaron said to all the Israelites, "In the evening you will know that it was the LORD who brought you out of Egypt, and in the morning you will see the glory of the LORD, because he has heard your grumbling against him. Who are we, that you should grumble against us?" Moses also said, "You will know that it was the LORD when he gives you meat to eat in the evening and all the bread you want in the morning, because he has heard your grumbling against him. Who are we? You are not grumbling against us, but against the LORD." - Exodus 16:6-8

// Moses and Aaron do not feel that they are worthy of being the subject of protest - of Israel's grumbling. If the Lord's people grumble, it ought not to be against them, mere men, but rather against the Lord. It is because they grumble that their Lord will reveal his glory. They will see, because they grumble against him.

WhatÂs more is that the grumbling is physical as much as it is ideologically. Their Lord freed them from Egypt, but they grumble because they feel captive in that freedom. And their stomachs grumble as they grumble. However, their Lord will answer their grumbling, showing them that leaving Egyptwas his will. He will answer their grumbling, giving them food. Only Aaron and Mosesbesoughtd them to recognize that their grumbling is against their Lord and not mere men.

"How dare they grumble against God?" someone might ask. "Does that not rob him of his glory?"
But grumbling against God is evidently affirmed here. They were right in their grumbling (wrong in their disobedience that followed). Moses even affirms it. He says it is better they grumble against their God than man. Aaron and Moses appear to consider it degrading of their Lord's honour that they as mere men be the victim of Israel's grumbling - a grumbling that is the product of those who have reconciled themselves with their need for food in their desire for life. Thus, they grumble against their Lord as their stomachs grumble against him. There grumbling against God is motivated by a desire for life. There appears to be nothing wrong here with that.

In this context, Romans 13:1-7 becomes interesting and may have a different hue of light shed upon it in lieu of the previous passage.

Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God. Consequently, he who rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves. For rulers hold no terror for those who do right, but for those who do wrong.

The usual mantra that I've been exposed to by those who identify 60's rebellism in today's pop culture, conclude that the system will only be replaced by another system. The rebel will only birth a new system by their rebellion against the system. Whether it is the Glorious Revolution of England or the French Revolution, there's a sense that rebels usually end up establishing a new system that is only as tyrannical if not more than the one before. While I'm interested in identifying the exceptions to that rule, it would seem in this passage that for a system to exist it must necessarily require God's blessing.

That "rulers hold no terror for those who do right" appears compatible with the passage from Exodus where Aaron and Moses say "Who are we, that you should grumble against us?" Their institution as leaders, would be futile and a disgrace to their God for the Israelites to challenge. If you feel (or more strongly know) you are in the right and blameless in God's sight, the message appears to be - take the protest to God not man.

tub, suit, self

2005-07-04T18:01:00.000-07:00

Watch the video on zed. Wait for it. It doesn't stream.

Doing something on a Friday evening is what I really do prefer. We filmed this video one evening in May and it was very enjoyable. I'm looking forward to the next one of these.

Song of the Spirits

2005-07-01T19:07:00.000-07:00

To the deep, to the deep,
Down, down!
Through the shade of sleep,
Through the cloudy strife
Of Death and of Life;
Through the veil and the bar
Of things which seem and are
Even to the steps of the remotest throne,
Down, down!

While the sound whirls around,
Down, down!
As the fawn draws the hound,
As the lightning the vapour,
As a weak moth the taper;
Death, despair; love, sorrow;
Time both; to-day, to-morrow;
As steel obeys the spirit of the stone,
Down, down!

Through the gray, void abysm,
Down, down!
Where the air is no prism,
And the moon and stars are not,
And the cavern-crags wear not
The radiance of Heaven,
Nor the gloom to Earth given,
Where there is One pervading, One alone,
Down, down!
In the depth of the deep,
Down, down!
Like veiled lightning asleep,
Like the spark nursed in embers,
The last look Love remembers, Like a diamond, which shines
On the dark wealth of mines,
A spell is treasured but for thee alone.
Down, down!

We have bound thee, we guide thee;
Down, down!
With the bright form beside thee;
Resist not the weakness,
Such strength is in meekness
That the Eternal, the Immortal,

Most unloose through life's portal
The snake-like Doom coiled underneath his throne
By that alone.

[from PB Shelley's Prometheus Unbound]

videoed conversations

2005-04-24T00:32:00.000-07:00

"What does it mean to speak? The current view declares that speech is the activiation of the organs for sounding and hearing. Speech is the audible expression and communication of human feelings. These feelings are accompanied by thoughts. In such a characterization of language three points are taken for granted:

1) speaking is expression...
2) speech is regarded as an activity of man...
3) human expression is always a presentation and representation of the real and the unreal." - Mr. Heidegger.

murmuratur

2005-04-16T08:34:00.000-07:00

When something is threatened, it withdraws into itself. Dread, above all things, makes us draw into ourselves, makes us pale and lonely. Dread is vague; unlike fear it has no single clear-cut object. Its fog is all the more crippling for that; it can be so dense, so full of horror, that the ego sinks helplessly away. And it draws back into an inwardness devoid of ego, a lonely, contact-less realm, where all one expects is the next blow.

The man possessed by fear, however, still possess himself. There is an external object htere, against which he can pluck up courage. With his ego still (unlike with dread) undissipated, he is still able at least to assert ihmself against it, however down-trodden or weak-kneed he might be. And from fear can come murmuring: the sound which first distinguishes a man from the blinkered herd.

Ernst Bloch from Atheism in Christianity

²⁰For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of Him who subjected it in hope; because the creation itself also will be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation groans and labors with birth pangs together until now. Not only that, but we also who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, eagerly waiting for the adoption, the redemption of our body. For we were saved in this hope, but hope that is seen is not hope; for why does one still hope for what he sees? But if we hope for what we do not see, we eagerly wait for it with perseverance.

²⁶Likewise the Spirit also helps in our weaknesses. For we do not know what we should pray for as we ought, but the Spirit Himself makes intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered. Now He who searches the hearts knows what the mind of the Spirit is, because He makes intercession for the saints according to the will of God.

Romans 8:20-27

Who dares? for I would hear that curse again.
Ha, what an awful whisper rises up!
'Tis scarce like sound: it tingles through the frame
As lightning tingles, hovering ere it strike.
Speak, Spirit! from thine inorganic voice [1.135]
I only know that thou art moving near
And love. How cursed I him?
Prometheus speaks from PB Shelley's Prometheus Unbound

enduring reign

2005-04-01T06:39:00.000-08:00

I'm listening for the Spirit and I'm asking her , 'now where are you and, please, where am I?' She tells me I'm not here, so I go with her.

I stepped off campus for one week in November and took a trip to the Republic.

During that week, I wrote a few lines - observations, words, confessions. I wrote down whatever I was told to write.

Line 1: "When it rains, people pay attention and are forgiven."

It was a sunny summers day (for their summers are our winters) and the land was dry. My father, sister and I had not told a soul that we were coming to the country, to be at my grandparents' 50th anniversary. We arrived, having come from the opposite side of the planet, unannounced.

Faces I had not seen for 5 years masked familiar souls that I'm afraid to say that I don't really know. We looked at each other. We said hello.

Under happy chatter, the silence between us related absence.

Sorry for abandoning you. I reassure you, I've abandoned myself.

Chatter in my uncle's home office - every man with a Castle or a Windhoek in hand. The light draws shadows under the trophies of the wild hanging on the walls. Daylight turned to darkness, a few long strokes of lightning filled the atmosphere with nitrogen, and the clouds let go. Sitting with my uncles, my dad, and myself (for I was beside myself at that time) I saw men drawn into the rain of the Spirit.

Their chatter she hushed and their protesting hearts she annointed with their own warm tears.

The rain fell hard, too hard for anyone who didn't need the forgiveness that it gave. Water collected on the rock hard soil and began to run down in any direction it could.

As for the rain, where it came from or where it was going, nobody knew or spoke about even after. For as fast as it came it was gone; nothing said. For the duration of the cloud burst nothing was said and even if something was said, it was the man beside himself that spoke.

The Sileni of Alcibiades are back to preach the art of love

2005-03-18T20:40:00.000-08:00

"Socrates was chained to a wife, and by what a filthy accident he himself paid for this blot on philosophy, in order that others thereafter might be made more cautious by his example. Jerome thus mentions this affair, writing about Socrates in his first book against Jovinianus: "Once when he was withstanding a storm of reproaches which Xantippe was hurling at him from an upper story, he was suddenly drenched with foul slops; wiping his head, he said only, 'I knew there would be a shower after all that thunder." - abelard in historia calamitatum

I disagree with Abelard, I think it is a great thing that Socrates was married. pff, Abelard. Heretic.

Erasmus (my patron saint) is all over Socrates' wife - in the affirming sense, you naughty kids. Socrates' wife adds to his credibility. But here's my question - the paragraphs come straight out of the 12th Century from Abelard's autobiography. Note the passion, note the sense of suffering under the passion and his low estimation of something that enthralled him. What's not right with Abelard and Heloise's relationship?

NOW there dwelt in that same city of Paris a certain young girl named Heloise, the neice of a canon who was called Fulbert.

Thus, utterly aflame with my passion for this maiden, I sought to discover means whereby I might have daily and familiar speech with her, thereby the more easily to win her consent. For this purpose I persuaded the girl's uncle, with the aid of some of his friends to take me into his household ... by his own earnest entreaties he fell in with my desires beyond anything I had dared to hope, opening the way for my love; for he entrusted her wholly to my guidance, begging me to give her instruction whensoever I might be free from the duties of my school, no matter whether by day or by night, and to punish her sternly if ever I should find her negligent of her tasks.

We were united first in the dwelling that sheltered our love, and then in the hearts that burned with it. Under the pretext of study we spent our hours in the happiness of love, and learning held out to us the secret opportunities that our passion craved. Our speech was more of love than of the books which lay open before us; our kisses far outnumbered our reasoned words. Our hands sought less the book than each other's bosoms -- love drew our eyes together far more than the lesson drew them to the pages of our text. In order that there might be no suspicion, there were, indeed, sometimes blows, but love gave them, not anger; they were the marks, not of wrath, but of a tenderness surpassing the most fragrant balm in sweetness. What followed? No degree in love's progress was left untried by our passion, and if love itself could imagine any wonder as yet unknown, we discovered it. And our inexperience of such delights made us all the more ardent in our pursuit of them, so that our thirst for one another was still unquenched.

In measure as this passionate rapture absorbed me more and more, I devoted ever less time to philosophy and to the work of the school. Indeed it became loathsome to me to go to the school or to linger there; the labour, moreover, was very burdensome, since my nights were vigils of love and my days of study. My lecturing became utterly careless and lukewarm; I did nothing because of inspiration, but everything merely as a matter of habit. I had become nothing more than a reciter of my former discoveries, and though I still wrote poems, they dealt with love, not with the secrets of philosophy. Of these songs you yourself well know how some have become widely known and have been sung in many lands, chiefly, methinks, by those who delighted in the things of this world. As for the sorrow, the groans, the lamentations of my students when they perceived the preoccupation, nay, rather the chaos, of my mind, it is hard even to imagine them.

a soundtrack to life

2005-03-14T22:53:00.000-08:00

Jesus Blood Never Failed Me Yet - Gavin Bryars - If you haven't heard it, perhaps you ought to, but i won't say that you must. But read this:

"The door of the recording room opened on to one of the large painting studios and I left the tape copying, with the door open, while I went to have a cup of coffee. When I came back I found the normally lively room unnaturally subdued. People were moving about much more slowly than usual and a few were sitting alone, quietly weeping." - Gavin Bryars' writeup on how this came about.

What I'd never noticed before is his comment on the unpredictability of the tape loop of the man singing:
"I noticed, too, that the first section of the song - 13 bars in length - formed an effective loop which repeated in a slightly unpredictable way." I wonder what he means by that.

SImon turner - hymn for thatcher - Much like Gavin Bryars, which i had heard a couple of years ago. This tune I heard for the first time yesterday. it describes an overwhelming dillema which culminates in a moment with a woman who, though in the company of her own privacy, disgustedly she realizes that she's allowed herself to be penetrated by music that betrays what she has convinced herself of as pure hogwash. angered at herself for being caught unawares, she tries to drown the music - she tries to move on. but it does not let her go easily.

When bombs are dearer than a home

2005-03-08T17:31:00.000-08:00

"the B-2 stealth bomber, cost over $1 billion per unit to produce, and are armed with ordinates like the GBU-15 (guided bomb unit), which costs $245,000 per unit" - Just read this in an article on migration and human security.

America could feed an entire African country off of a military plane and one bomb.

Northrop Frye on Democracy as Open [Source] Myth

2005-03-02T08:54:00.000-08:00

the following quotes come from Frye. They resonated within me.

"you don't need to be Freud to see that you cycle around your childhood your whole life"

"you can only really teach by parable"

"the book is the world's most patient medium"

"the educational attitude is a militant one"

Frye then goes on to speak about freedom and responsibility, which i'll paraphrase - dipping his ideas, fondue style, into my subjective understanding.

The more freedom we have, the more we need to be responsible for what we do. This is why people crave for authority. Submitting oneself to an authority, Frye says, allows the individual to be the machine he is comfortable being. Frye says the public conception of a machine is one that says the machine is not self-defeating, it can do its thing without anxiety. Just so, the individual casts on to authority the fears of having to wrestle self-defeating anxieties of having freedom.

It is in his application of mythology to an understanding of how the world works today that Frye's concern about the machine man really bares fruit. He notes the difference between open and closed mythologies. Closed mythology is the authoritarian imposition of ideas on the individual - it is the means by which an authority governments. Open mythology, however, is fashioned democratically - formed in the individual. Words and the stories that colour the definitions for "freedom" and "liberty" come from within the individual in a democracy.

I don't know, but I think I'm starting to sense a strong and violent devotion among people to the maintainers of the status-quo, to the rule of the security state. I do not think that the security state is a positive development. A democratic closing to violent potentialities means that the individual, with his now limited freedoms, has less of himself to be responsible for.

Instead of internally being formed by the tyranny of infinite possibilities (rule of freedom), the individual in the security state is fashioned by an externally imposed limitation on being (rule of man). Certainly, I can sit here and think of what it must be like to have infinite possibilities, but it's a demotivating exercise since it is such a reminder that I am so far away from being - I feel dead and the thought of endless possibilities I know is futile.

Uh oh, it's gone. It just walked away. The Point just up and left. Don't worry, I'm sure it will return.

Erica and I are going to watch the English Patient tonight.

like “falling down an elevator shaft and landing in a pool of mermaids"

2005-02-28T11:46:00.000-08:00

Hunter S. Thompson is dead. He's the guy that the film Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas was made about - believe it or not, it was a true story. I remember watching that film three or four times over two days - it (and playing tetris) seemed the perfect corollary to a post-wisdom tooth pulling, pharmaceutical binge.

That was my introduction to Thompson and pretty much all I ever found out about him, apart from a conversation once in high school with a friend who had read some of his articles.

Reading his obituary in the Economist was a reminder to me of how precariously silly the seriousness I invest into life is. I stare at the things around me, I stare at the Next and I wait to see what will happen, wait to pounce and make sense, I wait for an opportunity to prove my relevance by keeping sober and awake for the moment. Meanwhile I decay and become a tyrant over self and others.

Thompson had something to say - it would be a shame to reduce him to a nonsensical, drug abuser.

"Journalistic objectivity was a nonsense to him; he threw it away, and turned his gaze on himself." - The Economist.

The University and the Human Spirit

2005-02-25T07:34:00.000-08:00

Break the bonds which shackle the human spirit,
enlarge the bounds of human reason and freedom,
inquire freely into all matters of knowledge,
follow the argument whithersoever it may lead:
such is the great adventure of civilisation,
and of its teaching and research laboratory—
the university. - Jan Smuts (CU Reporter, Vol 78, pp 1300–1303.)

a chest of jest

2005-02-23T11:49:00.000-08:00

Fretty, petty ladies,
shrill and scream,
over the scratches on their babies.

Forget the babies, ladies,
you both have rabies!
You gnaw away at the men with chests.

But the fretty, petty ladies,
think they're something,
because they've got breasts.

But, no, there's more, there's more:
Here comes the chestless chap.
Shying any responsibility,
he claims to be the victim of a trap.

No matter how hard he works - for he is always working - even in self-professed laziness - he exausts himself simply in seeking the start.

A start is somewhere, a start can be anything.
But a start is something he cannot find truth in.
He could lie to himself and say that any start is something, but he doesn't feel like lying today.
While this means he can't resign himself to a start, it doesn't mean he is resigned to the stopped position he is in.

He knows that resting in the nothing - the pre-start - the stop - is also an OEM purchase of a lie.

Oscilating between starting and stopping, the chestless man buckles under the tyranny and like a drowning engine you can't keep pushing his button. You can shove him around and he'll go wherever you do - but he's essentially a burden - truly a liability, unless he's good looking - those kind you can at least arrange with the furniture.

Those chestless chaps that have a social bent to them, will bring down whatever they can - because if they can't start - no-one is allowed to start either.

The only problem I have with the chestless men are that I think they actually may have a point. Then again, it's really no place for me to say that they do, because in fact, I'm one of them.

As for the fretty, petty ladies - I can't really look down on them either - sure, a scratch is something, and yeah, they are well endowed.

Friendly Sunday Protesting

2005-02-22T00:06:00.000-08:00

"Yes: man is in fact nailed down - like Christ on the cross - to a grid of paradoxes: stretched betweem the horizontal world and the vertical of Being; dragged down by the hopelessness of existing-in-the-world on the one hand, and the unattainability of the absolute on the other, he balances between the torment of not knowing his mission and the joy of carrying it out, between nothingness and meaningfulness. And like Christ, he is in fact victorious, by virtue of his defeats; through perceiving absurdity, he once again finds meaning; through personal failure, he once more discovers responsibility; through the defeat of several prison sentences, he gains a victory-at the very least-over himself (as an object of worldly temptations); and through death - his last and greatest defeat - he finally triumphs over his fragmentation..." - Vaclav Havel (Letters, p 375)

I'm not quite sure about the prison sentences, but apart from that, I've never thought of Christ as a victor over himself, over fragmentation. Is the fragmentation the human-God split? is it the division of good and bad desires and denials in his body/mind?

I wonder how much of a humanist Havel considers himself to be... despite his commitment to human rights and good government, his desire to live in the truth and to have others live in the truth puts the pursuit of Being over all other things.

But I don't think his Being is God. I think his Being is the zeitgeist of the True man - an ever coming next man, the man who takes responsibility for all he does, the man who does not delude himself about his existence, the man who won't allow himself to be forgiven and who in turn forgives not either. The next man is everyone and No-one. He rides a sweeping current up to his maker. And there he says: "hello."

Take back the university

2005-02-10T01:54:00.000-08:00

What Christian in their right mind would argue that the Church did not start the university? Ought a good Christian do such a thing as to try and detract from the cultural legacy of the great faith? While it may seem like heresy, I believe that exploring a different read on the history of the university will help bring a fresh perspective to the problems of our time. To students who take ownership of their education, this is our reading of history: students started the university.

In the early eleventh century, students came together from all over Europe in search of an education. Together students would hire a teacher to instruct them in a subject. Students determined the subject matter and paid the professor directly, in class. If a professor did not teach relevant material or misused class time, students would simply boycott the class and not pay. As enrolment grew, this ad hoc arrangement transformed into something a little more permanent. Students organized themselves into student governments called guilds. These student guilds served as the administration of the university.

Up and out of their homes, teenagers as young as twelve would leave home and their native lands to join student organized universities in cities such as Bologna, Italy. The student guilds wielded significant power. They determined programs and course material, regulated the city's housing costs, and set the schedule for the academic year.

Professors formed their own guilds and would hire and fire members as they saw fit, but it was students who determined who got paid and who did not. The city and townsmen owned the property of the university, but it was students who determined how it was to be utilized. The students had a major bargaining tool. If the city did not do what they wanted, they would threaten to move the school. It is subsequently no wonder that cities sought and eventually gained control over the university, as a significant source of income was in the control of youth.

Charters were drafted between the city and the student guild, allotting rights to the students that essentially made them citizens unto themselves. This meant that much of the administration of civil and criminal justice was placed in the hands of people whom today would be considered mere adolescent children. Anyone holding this view back then would very likely have been out of a job. The student government was the university's board of governors.

Student guilds were truly international societies. Run like a modern consociational democracy, every nationality present at the university would have had two elected representatives sitting on council. Decisions were legislated by a majority vote with important decisions requiring the attendance and polling of all students.

The historical leadership of students in determining their education is worth considerable attention today. It says several things. First, students want to learn. Students are "authentic learners." Maybe there are many "students" at this private institution who "are not passionate for truth," but whose fault is that? Students do not determine their peers.

Second, students are not clients. Students are the principal investors. Principal investors own a significant share of the company and consequently gain a significant say. Instead of being represented through an Ipsos-Reid poll, principal investors have their people sit on the board.

Third, students should be given the permission to think. Students of the eleventh century were given permission to learn by virtue of a burden on them to set the agenda, and by the professors who consented to teach them. Today, even while IDIS professors dare students to think, many students still need to be given the permission to think. Dared "students" do very well at memorizing what's been given them to learn. Working hard, they meet expectations by getting sapere aude in their brains and out verbatim on paper. Students given the permission to learn, however, are willing to confront the unknown. Instead of alleviating their fears by letting others tell them how things "really" are, a student must be given permission to confront the void in life.

The success and failures of the eleventh century, student-run university deserve to be considered today, when issues of retention, relevancy, and identity now challenge the business of post-secondary education. The ideas delineated here are only those of one student who pretends to know what the problem is. He is a student who dares to challenge the idea that the university came from the church while giving himself permission to rethink how it is run today. He may be wrong, but he would rather look like a fool, even a heretic, than not try.

A Barbaric Boer had "holism" down

2005-01-27T17:30:00.000-08:00

Jan Smuts fought with my great, great grandfather against the English. Using guerilla tactics, the formidable but unfashionable afrikaners took the English imperialists to tea in the early part of the 20th Century.

But gold lust drove the English to desperate measures - a combination scorched earth policy and concentration camp program robbed the Afrikaners of their homes, their livelihood, their wives and their children. Almost 70 000 afrikaners were killed.

Jan Smuts is South Africa's Lester B Pearson, but not really because he was a whole lot more. He was the only signatory to have been both at the forming of the League of Nations and the United Nations. He went from studying in England to fighting against England to being a member of the British Prime Minister's Imperial War Cabinet during World War I. And he also was twice the president of South Africa.

And on top of that, Smuts coined the word "holism" - an idea where the whole is seen as greater than the sum of the parts.

He died on September 11, 1950 at his family's farm in South Africa.

Moritorium on mayhem

2005-01-14T08:34:00.000-08:00

I like how the word for death and custom/habit/morals can be the same word in latin, mori.

mori - present, infinitive, active for "die, expire, fail, decay"
while:
mori - masculine, dative, singular for "custom, habit, mood, manner, fashion, character, behavior, morals"

mori also happens to be the name of the fruit from a black mulberry tree.

Maybe it wasn't apples that Adam and Eve indulged in, maybe it was black mulberries!

And in Genesis 22:14, Abraham almost sacrifices Isaac on mount Moriah.

That's funny because my whole ordeal over the word came up while trying to translate a story in Latin about two pious individuals who almost sacrificed a goose that was really the gods.

Could Isaac have been the superman that Nietzsche alluded to? Could Isaac, following Kierkegaard's train of thought about Abraham and Isaac, have been the perfect sacrifice bound down, looking up into the eyes of the patriarch: "Father, why have you forsaken me?"

Homo homini deus

What one positively ought

2005-01-13T09:50:00.000-08:00

"I say, gentlemen, hadn't we better kick over the whole show and scatter rationalism to the winds, simply to send these logarithms to the devil, and to enable us to live once more at our own sweet foolish will!"- Dostoevsky

Paleolithic participants

2005-01-13T04:38:00.000-08:00

A start with fright
I wish I drank through the night
Now I sit immersed
in juice though I thirst
Wanton wackos slap my face
They pounce on me as I pace
Look at me! Look how I bore
Stay tuned, man. There is more