13 nights after Die Wende

Oceanic thoughts on rough seas

Well this post is simply a thoughtful glance around the world where so few are dancing in the street it’s enough to make a grown man scream civilization in contrast to culture is a failure and an evil. I could spit pixels defending the observation. I ain’t. No need really to defend the obvious. Sociopaths are pervasive in contemporary television, from high-brow drama all the way down to cartoons -- and of course the news as well. From the scheming Eric Cartman of South Park to the seductive imposter Don Draper of Mad Men, cold and ruthless characters captivate us, making us wish that we could be so effective and successful. Yet why should we admire characters who get ahead by being amoral and uncaring? In his follow-up to Awkwardness, Adam Kotsko argues that the popularity of the ruthless sociopath reflects our dissatisfaction with a failed social contract, showing that we believe that the world rewards the evil and uncaring rather than the good. By analyzing characters like the serial killer star of Dexter and the cynical Dr. House, Kotsko shows that the fantasy of the sociopath distracts us from our real problems -- but that we still might benefit from being a little more sociopathic.

Gabriel Marcel “I would point out that no revelation is, after all, conceivable unless it is addressed to a being who is involved-committed-in the sense which I have tried to define-that is to say, to a being who participates in a reality which is non-problematical and which provides him with his foundation as subject. Supernatural life must, when all is said and done, find a hold in the natural-which is not to say that it is the flowering of the natural. On the contrary it seems to me that any study of the notion of created Nature, which is fundamental for the Christian, leads to the conclusion that there is in the depth of Nature, as of reason which is governed by it, a funda­mental principle of inadequacy to itself which is, as it were, a restless anticipation of a different order.

To sum up my position on this difficult and important point, I would say that the recognition of the ontological mystery, in which I perceive as it were the central redoubt of metaphysics, is, no doubt, only possible through a sort of radiation which proceeds from revelation itself and which is perfectly well able to affect souls who are strangers to all positive religion of whatever kind; that this recognition, which takes place through certain higher modes of human experience, in no way involves the adherence to any given religion; but it enables those who have attained to it to per­ceive the possibility of a revelation in a way which is not open to those who have never ventured beyond the fron­tiers of the realm of the problematical and who have there­ fore never reached the point from which the mystery of being can be seen and recognised. Thus, a philosophy of this sort is carried by an irresistible movement towards the light which it perceives from afar and of which it suffers the secret attraction.”

My post is somewhat tangential to the above observations. This post is about time and about people in time and people in time but clearly out of the time they are in by virtue of mass disinterest. Leonardo comes to mind from only 500 years ago. Or Nietzsche. Again I am not going to ring the changes epoch by epoch, name by name, but my interest is how do these souls exist as rare plants in environments inhospitable? The answer is from Buckminster Fuller-they are verbs. These persons are agents of energy. They use their energy to accomplish positive aims.

Fuller is 32 years old and had a newborn daughter and a dependent wife. He was flat broke, unemployed, and un-creditworthy. Desperate to provide for his family and somewhat ashamed of his apparent inability to do so, he decided to commit suicide so that his wife could cash his life insurance policy and make a new life for herself and their daughter. Standing on a cliff above Lake Michigan, Bucky prepared to jump. Just as he did so, he had a realization that was to dramatically change the course of his own life, and eventually the lives of countless others.

In committing suicide, I seemingly would never again have to feel the pain and mortification of my failures and errors, but the only-by-experience-winnable inventory of knowledge that I had accrued would also be forever lost — an inventory of information that, if I did not commit suicide, might prove to be of critical advantage to others, possibly to all others, possibly to Universe.

Though very unlikely, he decided that if there was even a “one-in-an-illion” chance that his unique human experiences might be of “evolutionary value” to others, then his life was not merely worth living — it might be said not to belong to him at all, but in fact, to belong only to others. This was the moment when he steered his ship into uncharted waters and began living his very own kind of life with an intention both admirably courageous and exceptionally disciplined.

If I take oath never again to work for my own advantaging and to work only for all others for whom my experience-gained knowledge may be of benefit, I may be justified in not throwing myself away. This will, of course, mean that I will not be able to escape the pain and mortification of being an absolute failure in playing the game of life as it has been taught to me.

This is our problem as humans. We dislike “Verbiage” but we work for pay. Twice alienated then is it any wonder self government is myth? And dangerous myth too.

Take a brief step away from what truth perception provides as self evident and enquire how can “We Dem Mixed Multitude” closely resembling a mob, control our elected rulers, our public servants, if politics is a more than full time job even with hired help and lobbyists and a safe district gerrymandered to fit a pressing political need? Rationalists say no concerns, only say 4 issues are vital for the voters in the District, not war or peace, not excessive spending, not massive corruption, but a pressing issue that pets are being abandoned just like people but unlike people they have no say, or if people have a say, it is not recorded as an issue like too many loose doggies or a rise in abandoned cats.

Ah was it worse under Nero or later Constantine or later still Genghis Khan? History is silent. Moderns speculate. Clearly no one did anything then to revive culture but worked hard to sustain the civilization-the control mechanism over millions. As a mortal man I endure my time. As a Californian I surf it. Time has a stop but this end point is not disclosed. Civilizations too have a stop and not infrequently the astute sense it. Cavafy has a poem I love that fits this evening writing mood of June 2023.

But Wise Men Perceive Approaching Things

Because gods perceive future things, men what is happening now,
but wise men perceive approaching things.

Philostratus, Life of Apollonius of Tyana, VIII, 7.


Men know what is happening now.
The gods know the things of the future,
the full and sole possessors of all lights.
Of the future things, wise men perceive
approaching things. Their hearing

is sometimes, during serious studies,
disturbed. The mystical clamor
of approaching events reaches them.
And they heed it with reverence. While outside
on the street, the peoples hear nothing at all.

And there is Otto Rene Castillo

Before the Scales, Tomorrow:

And when the enthusiastic
story of our time
is told,
who are yet to be born
but announce themselves
with more generous face,
we will come out ahead
--those who have suffered most from it.

And that
being ahead of your time
means much suffering from it.
But it's beautiful to love the world
with eyes
that have not yet
been born.

And splendid
to know yourself victorious
when all around you
it's all still so cold,
so dark.

Otto Rene Castillo

"I think of my suffering, of the problem of my suffering. What am I suffering from? From knowledge"

Thomas Mann