T post
(It’s been a while. Thanks for the refresher and thanks to Gary Saul Morson)
AFast look. Ingest/digest more at breakfast BUMP!
“The laws of the human soul are still so little known, so obscure to science, so undefined, and so mysterious, that there are not and cannot be either physicians or final judges” except God Himself.”
Dostoevsky
Word.
Excellent post.
And very accurate.
Thanks to all who add to it’s content.
Respects
Re-read an essay from Cognitive Dissonance
http://twoicefloes.com/empire-in-decline-propaganda-and-the-american-myth/
...And the truly frightening realization, something I suspect most of us know deep down in our hearts but don’t actually acknowledge, is that the majority of people in positions of power and/or wealth are either sociopaths or harbor strong sociopath tendencies. Which means they do not think in terms of civic duty and public service, but rather about personal gain and ever more power. As conditions continue to deteriorate, less and less sane and well-meaning people will be willing to step up and attempt to lead, creating an even larger power vacuum the sociopaths are more than willing to fill.
...Those who claim “They would never do that” are hopelessly and dangerously deluded, mesmerized by the great American myth or just hopelessly deep in denial. For crying out loud, of course they’d do ‘that’, just as you and I are capable of doing just about anything when subjected to great stress and pressure. The difference is that in the grand scope of things, whatever we might do would harm mostly ourselves and maybe those nearest to us, while ‘they’ can and will harm thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, to maintain their status quo and position of power.
Last night I watched a biopic of Rostropovich. My God, what a spastic cellist. He invited Solzhenitsyn to stay at his dasha when the writer had nowhere else to go. Called him second to Dostoyevsky. Needless to say, Slava found himself on a plane with no direction home, all his tours cancelled.
Still don’t like his music. Shostakovich either. What’s all that freedom for? Bombast, anger, noise, ego? Give me Janos Starker’s rubato and agogic accents.
Got to hand to the the Russians, though. All their imagination seems baptized just enough to ever long for a higher world. Think of Tarkovsky. Inspiration without a doubt.
Some ‘light’ reading for an early Sunday morning!
Thank you for posting it. Happy New Year!
= fallen man
per your tag: ping
GREAT article by Barton Swaim. Thanks. The is evil and SUPEREVIL. The SUPERIOR EVIL just squabble with each other.
https://selfdefinition.org/psychology/BF-Skinner-Beyond-Freedom-&-Dignity-1971.pdf
Subtitle: The End of Freedom in America (funny how that is LEFT out, eh?)