Lost in the Ghetto (very interesting and very sad)

City Journal ^ | Summer 2000 | Theodore Dalrymple

[sinkspur]

That's why we should be glad we live where we do, where religions are kept at arms' length from the government.

[cornelis]

Hi, livius. Ortega in Spanish! Ortega was for Spain with hope. Even the English is a treat (Norton).

Objectivism Revisited: Ortega on Philosophy and Science

Ortega: I Exist Therefore I Think. (critique of idealism, phenomenology, and other such objectivism)

[cornelis]

--“The select man, the excellent man is urged, by interior necessity, to appeal from himself to some standard beyond himself, superior to himself, whose service he freely accepts....Contrary to what is usually thought, it is the man of excellence, and not the common man who lives in essential servitude. Life has no savour for him unless he makes it consist in service to something transcendental.... This is life lived as a discipline—the noble life. Nobility is defined by the demands it makes on us—by obligations, not by rights. Noblesse oblige. ‘To live as one likes is plebeian; the noble man aspires to order and law’ (Goethe).”

--Ortega y Gasset

[dighton]

I thought some of you might find this an interesting article.

Dalrymple is always worth reading. Thank you for this post.

Going to the dogs

[thinktwice]

When you go out to meet your fate,
when that time comes that none await;
"What were your achievements?"
might be asked you at the gate.

The end of a poem -- by me.

[cornelis]

For what it's worth:

The Discombobulated Unconditioned

I will not forget you when I die
remember you more when I lie
at last and look to what I have lost:
all bodied souls taken from me.

I am now the unimposing need that needs
you; the buried diamond, needs the ring
of this you do not sing yet enough -- but
watch the grief spilled on this coffin.

[primeval patriot]

bump to the top

[thinktwice]

More, from the same poem (post 25), by me ...

"Often they are little things,
that add up early and late.
They fill up loving scrapbooks
kept by parents and your mate.

But achievements can be great things, too:
use endurance to reach your goal.
An invention comes from a single mind,
art from a single soul.

When you go out to meet your fate .... (see post 25)

My underlying, poetic theme is the logical question humans can expect from God: "What did you do with my gift of reason?"

[livius]

Thanks, cornelis! I think it's time to start a "bring back Ortega" movement!

[primeval patriot]

bump to the top

[ladysusan]

Very strange. My mother stopped speaking to me when I entered nursing school in 1972. I was the first married woman to be admitted into this particular school. My mother and I had been on a collision course for years though; it wasn't just nursing school. It was the entire idea that I should be independent. Nursing school was just the breaking point for her.


When I broached the idea of medical school with my father I was told that "No self respecting man will let a woman take out his appendix." That was 1964, when I was 14 years old.

And I was born into working class America.

[primeval patriot]

bump in the night

see also Going to the Dogs

[primeval patriot]

Two and one quarter year bump.