W and Dostoevsky - George W. Bush is a man possessed

[indigobusiness]

W and Dostoevsky
George W. Bush is a man possessed
by Justin Raimondo

Midway through his inaugural address, when the president proclaimed "the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world," I wondered if Bush or his speechwriters knew or cared how alien this ultra-revolutionary rhetoric would seem to conservatives of the old school – and soon had my answer:

"Because we have acted in the great liberating tradition of this nation, tens of millions have achieved their freedom. And as hope kindles hope, millions more will find it. By our efforts we have lit a fire as well, a fire in the minds of men. It warms those who feel its power; it burns those who fight its progress. And one day this untamed fire of freedom will reach the darkest corners of our world."

A fire in the mind – surely, I thought, Bush's speechwriters can't have inserted this phrase without knowing its literary origin. It is taken from Dostoevsky's novel, The Possessed, a story set in pre-revolutionary Russia in which the author chronicles the intrigues of the emerging revolutionary movement: one of the main characters is based on the infamous nihilist Sergei Nechaev, whose aim is to make a revolution of such destructive power that bourgeois society will be completely destroyed. Their strategy is to provoke a violent crackdown on all dissent – which will then spark an explosion of revolutionary violence. To this purpose the nihilist Peter Verkhovensky worms his way into the confidence of Lembke, a provincial governor, convincing him of the need to crush rebellious workers who are distributing revolutionary leaflets and generally agitating against the government. The result is an uprising of murderous anger, a volcanic eruption of nihilistic violence that consumes the provincial capital in a great fire. In the end, Governor Lembke stands amid the crowd watching his mansion go up in flames:

"Lembke stood facing the lodge, shouting and gesticulating. He was giving orders which no one attempted to carry out. It seemed to me that every one had given him up as hopeless and left him. Anyway, though every one in the vast crowd of all classes, among whom there were gentlemen, and even the cathedral priest, was listening to him with curiosity and wonder, no one spoke to him or tried to get him away. Lembke, with a pale face and glittering eyes, was uttering the most amazing things. To complete the picture, he had lost his hat and was bareheaded.

"'It's all incendiarism! It's nihilism! If anything is burning, it's nihilism!' I heard almost with horror; and though there was nothing to be surprised at, yet actual madness, when one sees it, always gives one a shock.

http://www.antiwar.com/justin/

[amber dog democrat]

1. Thank your for this insight.

I will track downThe Possessed and read it.
I had the Chimp pegged as the Man of Action in Notes from the Underground.
We can agree the Chimp is basically stupid. This is one of the defining characteristics

[indigobusiness]

2. Sure. Any reason to read Dostoevsky is a good one.

This is an insightful perspective. Justin R is an astute writer.

[cliss]

3. Thanks for posting this, I.

I agree with Justin Raimundo. This inaugural speech should be read by every person in America. It's absolutely incendiary.

Notice the wording - fire. Here's a comment from another newsgroup:

'What this means, in plain language and in practice, is a foreign policy of perpetual war:

"We will persistencly clarify the choice before every ruler and every nation, the moral choice of oppression, which is always wrong, and freedom, which is eternally right".

Translation: we will continue to launch wars of aggression against anyone who gets in our way. If you think Iraq is a big deal, you haven't seen anything yet...."

For all the talk of "freedom" and "liberty" - Bush used the former 27 times, and the latter on 15 occasions - this president and his fanatic followers have been the very worst enemies of civil liberties on the home front. Bush has launched the most serious assault on the rights guaranteed by the Constitution since President John Adams imposed the Alien and Seditions Act of 1798. And if Bush is bad, his followers are far worse.

[Demeter]

4. And That Smoke Over Iraq Is Just the Fires of Freedom!

Roast in hell, Bush!

[H2O Man]

5. Is not the essence

of Dostoevsky that power is an addictive force, and just as the alcoholic starts by drinking from the bottle, but ends with the bottle consuming him, the politician/ruler who whores for power, and mistakes it for a force he controls, will be consumed in a direct proportion to the internal abuse of that power that measures his lust?

The moral arch of the universe at times seems long and wide to the individual as he experiences the march of history. But it is sure.

[indigobusiness]

6. Seems so.

This controlling ethos is the folly of an estrangement with the eternal now, and a fundamental loss of touch with the sacred.

Few are able to cope with power, least of all those who lust for it.

[H2O Man]

7. People with addiction issues

are predisposed to being incapable of handling the chemical reactions that result in their brain when they get their hands on reins of power. When I watched him last week, I kept thinking that his grin looked as mindless as that of Goober Pyle, Gomer's stupid(er) cousin on the old Andy Griffith shows. All in all, I'd feel safer with Goober being appointed president.

[indigobusiness]

8. It seemed to me the expression of a wishful philosophy

built on a foundation of sand, with all the incipient scrambling to maintain a footing.

Wisdom is lost on Gooberism.

A wise leader wasn't in the cards for us. What does that say for our karma? Our future?

The gnashing of teeth will soon drown out the half-hearted applause.

[H2O Man]

9. A con man

fools others. A buffoon fools himself. The president believes the lines that are prepared for him. I think that is one significant difference between the Goober and the Gipper: Reagan knew he was playing a role. He was a con man.

[indigobusiness]

10. That is an apt distinction.

Bush seems like a spider caught in his own web. He will do anything to mitigate the consequences of his own delusional perspective. That is what truly frightens me, and remains to be suffered in full.

[H2O Man]

11. "an apt distinction..."

It's the difference between shit and sugar, as some of us crude folk at the grass roots are apt to say.

Decades from now, students of history will debate if Bush was consciously evil, or unconsciously evil? We know that Voltaire said that ignorance is the mother of all cruelty .... and Bush is nothing if not a vain, ignorant, and cruel man. Perhaps the ironic thing is that his desire is to be a great man in history .... and, indeed, he will be remembered with historical figures, though not in a manner he is aware of.

[indigobusiness]

12. I think I've been insulted.

But, no matter, Reagan was as much a force of destruction and misguided notions as Bush. He had more personality, I guess, but was as despicable and his legacy found wings in the current debacle. I see them both as facades for some dark undercurrent that has swept us downstream and onto the mudflats of our collective demise.

[H2O Man]

13. Hopefully

you are not a fan of either Reagan or Bush .... and thus will not be insulted by anything I say about either of them.

Reagan tended to only fight smaller, weaker foes. Hardly a noble trait. Yet he never risked starting a major war, in the sense that the current president continues to.

Reagan was also not prone to religious delusions.

[indigobusiness]

14. Obviously not a fan, but you trashed my observation of your observation.

I'm crushed, but will recover.

I don't think people decades from now will have the luxury of hating Bush for the dire straits they find themselves in. There will be too strident a survival struggle. They will be forced to live in the moment. What a price to pay for that...but that is something.

Robot armies being deployed as we speak. What's next?

[H2O Man]

15. Exodus

in the mental sense.

People in future decades may find that survival is an option only when the luxury of hatred is seen as a poverty of spirit. From that vantage point, they will look back on the Bush years as a turning point. There is every indication that you and I will be sitting on a dock in a bay off some warm island, smoking good cigars and debating some point or another about J. Edgar's favorite dresses.

[indigobusiness]

16. I knew there was some reason

for suffering you gladly.

Very well done!!!

I wish I had your optimism, but I trust you are far wiser than I. Nothing has recently crossed my mind on a better breeze.

[H2O Man]

17. Every night

reaches its darkest point shortly before the sun rises. If the amount of "bad" in today's world gets you down, you need to think about how much good occures each and every hour .... because if there wasn't that much good, all that bad would surely bring the house down.

In a very real sense, things are not just okay .... things are perfect. Those things that appear imperfect are but temporary, and we have to be careful to not give it too much room in our heads. As the prophet Bob Marley sang, "If you get down and you worry every day, you're saying prayers to the devil, I say."

It's blistering cold out, and there is about two feet of snow on my lawn. But I'm thinking about the new roses that I'll be planting this year. Plant and animal consciousness allows us to step away from the problems of the day.

[indigobusiness]

18. The pendulum swings...

as I sit plagued by a Big Picture perspective. I notice the perfection of the working manifestation of things, while tragically aware of the abrogation of our stewardship of this planet. Nevermind our mistreatment of one another. Oddly, I'm not so worried as ashamed, and on the lookout for ameliorating solutions.

Wisdom teachings say to welcome the purification, and to transform one's consciousness to face the new day in true spirit. This, I'm wrangling with.

[H2O Man]

19. Perhaps

all organic life on the earth's surface, including human life, is merely doing exactly what fits the earth's needs at this particular time. I'm not advocating the second coming of James Watt, nor saying that the manner of unconscious destruction that most human beings are actively engaged in are okay. But human beings have not created anything that did not previously existed. We have only assisted in bringing forth those forces that were spoken of by the insightful people of all the tribes .... forces from beneath the surface.

The earth, like every living thing, has a life expectancy. Human being weren't there at the beginning, and won't be there at the end. This fact, in my mind, justifies my belief that it is a good thing to grow roses. There are a number of types on sale in the coming weeks. I'm expanding on the old roses that people brought here in the late 1700s; the hedge roses are still growing, though all the worries and concerns of those people who planted them near my house are long gone .... buried in the dirt that fertilizes those same roses, generation on generation.

[indigobusiness]

20. Everything dies. The journey matters.

The process is important. Conduct counts. Many species are dying as a direct result of the the unhealthy impact of the human creative and destructive influence on the planet. The impact of Jets and Shuttles on the upper atmosphere is solely a product of man.

Disregard of sentient life, even at the level of bugs, reminds me some of the rhetoric I hear that seems to value only American war casualties.
Pull the wings off flies as a child...kill gladly for the war machine as an adult. Where does one draw the line and insist on responsibility? An accounting?

I accept fate as gracefully as I can, even laughing at my own absurd lot. That's different than grieving over the trashing of the garden. The healthier and more abundant the life, the more robust the spirit. Hard lessons teach, but so do blissful and ecstatic ones.

[H2O Man]

21. everything dies .....

for a reason. If a caterpillar clung to its existence as a caterpillar, a butterfly could never be born. As Seattle said, there is no death, merely a change in worlds. And, again as he said, that is the force that makes us all relatives after all.

Part of being human is feeling moods and emotions. Nothing wrong with that, though feeling even a mild depression is not much fun. But we are not our moods, any more than we are our senses. At least that's what I keep telling myself. If I didn't, I think that the last couple of weeks would make me think that I am, in fact, the "last guy" that Arlo Guthrie spoke of in his infamous introduction to his infamous song in tribute to the FBI.

[indigobusiness]

22. We are what we think and feel

as much as we are our bodies. The weird part is that we are what others think and feel as well...but that's too much for me to tackle at the moment. Not that I am all that adept at discussing what I only marginally understand, anyway. I'm exhausted from wrestling my computer all day. I'm whipped.

All things die to one thing and are born to another. Like the rich soil that anchors the rosebush awaits its turn to be the rose.

[H2O Man]

23. what we think

what we feel, and our bodies ..... and what others think ..... hmmmm. Exhausted as you may be, at least you have them in the correct order.

[Tafiti]

25. I hear this a lot (or at least a variation of it).

"Perhaps all organic life on the earth's surface, including human life, is merely doing exactly what fits the earth's needs at this particular time."

Though you explicitly stated this was not your intention, in my view, this line of thinking leads to the justification for civilization destroying the planet - as if things were supposed to turn out this way, and that this is all a part of evolution. Think of a river dam. This dam is not natural - it's not supposed to be there. But since it is, everything around it has to adjust - adapt. But some things don't adapt, and they perish. Does that scenario describe the process of pure evolution? Perhaps on the surface. But wait, that dam was never supposed to be part of the equation. It was an unnatural occurrence. It tainted the process. What was it that was so great as to throw a wrench into the spokes of the evolutionary bicycle? Us.

As you might have guessed, my own thoughts on this are that the Earth (the gods, the "forces" of evolution, if you will) is no longer at the helm. The magnificent homo sapiens sapiens have usurped that power. We ate at the tree of knowledge of good and evil (metaphorically speaking), and our innocence was lost. This knowledge was never "meant" for us. Evolution did not lead up to this point "on purpose." It's not linear. The metaphysical "theme" of evolution is circular. Life feeds on life feeds on life feeds on life - this is necessary. But no more. For most of us, does being fed depend on rainfall, sunshine, instinctual hunting skills, et al.? No, it depends on process, production, agriculture. We don't take what we need and leave the rest alone. We take it all, store it up, and sell it to each other. This, also, was not meant to be. But neither were we meant to die. Barring the eventual planetary disaster that would make life on Earth disappear (the expansion of the sun to the point of disintegrating the Earth), our kind would have survived probably to perpetuity. We possess nearly every possible advantageous adaptation, and our potential was endless. But we were too smart for our own good. 10,000 years ago, evolution died, and civilization was born. Civilization is simply unsustainable, and will eventually fall and suffocate under its own weight. But one must not confuse civilization (especially Western) with humanity. This was not our destiny, there's no such thing. But it happened. And the planet is collapsing as a result. I believe it'll happen much sooner than people realize. My only hope is that there will be some pieces left to begin again, from the beginning. Oh, the lessons we will have learned...

[H2O Man]

26. Very interesting.

And well thought-out. I enjoyed reading what you wrote. I probably agree with 99.9999% and maybe a little more. But for fun, let's look closely at that tiny, itty-bitty area where we might not agree fully.

I'll start with dams. Not far from my home is a beautiful creek. On some property that a friend owns, I used to have out-door activities for kids from screwed-up families, when I was a social worker. On the edge of the creek, we built a nice "fire pit" for cooking meals. The children and adult volunteers loved to sit there, and watch the beavers, busy building their dams.

A man from "the city" (in upstate NY, "the city" is all of NYC, Long Island, and north-eastern NJ) bought property near my friend's. His house was so far from the stream that he had to go out of his way to be "disturbed" by the kids. But he was. He was worried that the very edge of the firepit was on his property, and had screaming fits.

I tried to reason with him. But he was unreasonable. He didn't like kids or beavers. One day I walked down to the creek. It was sad, but funny. The man had rented a bulldozer. He ruined the firepit, and then went to destroy the beaver dams. The bulldozer was at a 90 degree angle to the ground, very stuck in the creek. He was having a fit. I knew that the sound of my voice was upsetting to him, so I didn't offer to help.

Now, that's a long way of saying dams are indeed part of nature. But some beings have a greater understanding of how they should be built. Others are just fools on machines.

I used to show kids something I learned. Bury a tire. Next to it, set a good-sized rock. Come back in two years. The tire will have popped out of the ground; the rock will be in the process of being absorbed. The lesson doesn't need my explanation.

I've spent decades on environmental issues. I've gone through the NY state courts on (Native American) burial protection cases. I wrote much of the policy of repatriation for a neighboring state. I spend over 20 years researching and working on a couple SuperFund Sites; I helped the federal government in two cases in federal court versus the military industrial complex.

I've found that at times, something can SOUND one way, but actually mean the exact opposite of my preconceived notions. (wink)

[Tafiti]

30. Your tire and rock lesson made me smile.

You're right, it doesn't need an explanation. Though I think we're injecting the Earth with so much poison (literally and figuratively) that it'll be too much to overcome. Clearly, you're the optimist, I'm the pessimist.:)

For the record, I agree with your assessment about dams, but that was part of my point. A beaver's dam is natural. Ours are not. The dams I had in mind are those mammoth, man-made structures that are, for instance, forcing into near-extinction certain species of salmon in the Pacific West and Northwest. What I mean to say is that the dams disrupt their ways of living, reproducing, etc. Suddenly, these adaptations that have worked for them for millions of years become obsolete. Though a dam does not represent a total destruction of their habitat, it is altered in such a way as to make their modes of survival ineffective. This is merely killing them softly.

[H2O Man]

32. The earth is alive

and, as such, absorbs that which is natural, are expells that which is un-natural. Human society will learn that lesson quite soon.


The massive dams are a larger version of the fool on the bulldozer. It is our responsibility to try to keep fools on bulldozers, or the other manifestations of mindless machine politics in search of instant profits, from destroying the environment. We should support groups like Trout Unlimited, but at the same time we must become Minnow Unlimited.

We also must understand --and accept -- that the work we do today may not appear to be successful .... because we have the limitations of being human, and seeing success in human terms .... when in fact, every environmentally conscious effort begins to turn the tide. We are dealing with events and forces that have taken hundreds of years of unconscious activity to create. Those actions will have some very negative consequences. But our actions can and will build, and will bear fruit in the future.

In the mean time, we should enjoy our time on this earth. We each get to ride around on it for a certain number of spins around the sun. It's been spinning for a long time before we got on, and it's going to spin for a long time after we get off!

[codswallop]

36. The responsibilty to conduct a symphony of well-tuned instruments

playing the song in the proper key. Harmony.

[codswallop]

27. You raise a seminal point ...a critical point of the debate.

Your dam example reminds me of the biologists that won't interfere when a subject they are studying is being attacked or predated upon etc. Because "it wouldn't be natural"...as though humans had at some point stepped outside of the natural world and were no longer part of the evolutionary chain.

Humans are a product of nature, and anything they do is a natural consequence of evolution. Dam building or bomb building, war or peace, annihilation or prosperity: all evolutionary products.

[Tafiti]

31. I couldn't disagree more.

First of all, I fail to see your point in your first paragraph. Should the biologists in question interfere, presumably to save the animal being attacked? What would be the purpose? This line of thinking was exactly what I was talking about: we think we know what's best for the world, and everyone and everything in it. You may take it as a given that the animals should be saved. That doesn't make any sense looking at it from an evolutionary perspective.

Secondly, saying all these things are a "natural consequence of evolution" is bizarre. They are not products of nature, but of complex culture (civilization). These are all things that support our way of living, and nothing else. Do indigenous tribal peoples have atomic bombs, prisons, machine guns, factories, automobiles, etc.? Are they necessary for pure survival? I would answer that with an emphatic no. Yes, human beings are a product of evolution, of course, but not the way we live. That was my point, to which you obviously disagree (which is fine). Our species survived and thrived for millions of years before civilization began around 10,000 years ago, and they lived in a much different way than we do. That's why the planet was in pristine condition after millions of years of human existence, because their way of life worked well, and was indeed a natural consequence of evolution. Now why is it, then, that 10,000 years of civilization is destroying the planet at such an alarming rate? And why are approximately 200 species of animals going extinct every day? Could it be, possibly, our way of living? I fail to see how this could be a "natural consequence" of evolution.

You seem to have a linear view of evolution, as if there's a master plan directing its path - I do not believe this. Everything we do has little to no survival value in the evolutionary sense. For instance, the fact that we can correct poor eyeseight with glasses, contact lenses, or laser surgery is a usurpation of evolution in a strict sense. Whereas this disadvantageous characteristic would naturally be "weeded out", and thus not be passed down through the gene pool, it survives and reproduces regularly. This does not enhance our survival value, but it doesn't matter. We don't need the process of evolution to "correct" that flaw on its own, because we have our own way of side-stepping it. In other words, and in many other instances, the pure process of evolution no longer applies.

It seems to me your use of the term "evolutionary" is more in a colloquial sense, rather than technical. As in, "the evolution of the film industry in the past 30 years has been astounding," to denote improvement or development. Not, "the hominid evolved from the australopithecines", to denote the actual process of Darwinian evolution. That's the only way for me to make sense of your assertion that the atomic bomb is an evolutionary product.

[codswallop]

34. There is no should or shouldn't

in the workings of nature. For an observer to go against his instinct to rescue something, whether a child or a bird, is a perversion of nature...a rationalizion rather than a realization of nature.

I have no linear view of evolution, I merely speak to fundamental level by saying that all life is a product of evolution and so are all natural actions. Choosing to exclude human free-will and action (however it manifests) from nature is not natural.

How could human impact on our environment be anything but a product of evolution? What is it then? Because we could've done a better job is like saying a catastrophic comet impact could've missed. If we do better, so be it. If the comet misses, so be it. It is what it is. Rationalizing the facts doesn't change them, it just perverts their meaning.

[Tafiti]

37. I agree with your first sentence, but you contradict it in the next.

You say there isn't, but clearly, you think there is a "should". You are assuming that rescuing something or someone from predation is instinctual. On what basis can you claim this? What evolutionary advantage does that have for us, or the predator for that matter? I can see rescuing an animal if it has injured itself, or otherwise unable to move, and letting it go free, or helping it to. But from a predatory attack? Gee, you're rescuing the victim, but what about the predator? You just snatched a meal away from him (or his offspring). The good you are doing for one is evil for another. That's what I was trying to get at. I think we'd have to agree to disagree on this one. I think that is decidedly unnatural, and you obviously think it is. You seem to think it is a matter or morals or ethics, but those are just cultural constructs. They have little meaning in an evolutionary context.

[codswallop]

40. No, no, no...You are missing the entire point here.

I am not morallizing or making any judgments. I'm using an example to make a point about evolution. I'm not saying anything should do anything, but if any sentient being thwarts their instinctive impulses because of some intellectual rationalization, then it is unnatural...a perversion of nature.

The biologist that has an instinctive, impulsive desire to help some helpless creature, but doesn't because of some academic notion that it would be interfering with the natural process...has removed himself from the sphere of nature and evolution and has elevated himself to some godlike status. The point being that the biologist is as much in the evolutionary mix as everything else. Following his impulses is within the natural flow of evolution. Denying them, is not.

[codswallop]

35. You seem to think technology is not a product of evolution.

Your eyeglass example is absurd (no offense intended), though I understand what you are driving at when you say:

the fact that we can correct poor eyeseight with glasses, contact lenses, or laser surgery is a usurpation of evolution in a strict sense.

Eyeglasses are no less natural technology than a bird nest. They serve our needs. And perhaps the people have poor eyesight possess some subtle genetic trait or intellectual quality that serves the species? If this trait were "weeded" out from the gene pool, it might prove detrimental to the species, and prove devolutionary.

Humans don't control evolution in the slightest, they only have their evolutionary impact, like everything else.

[Tafiti]

38. Again, agree to disagree.

You're not grasping my point, but that's fine. I admit it's probably a fringe minority opinion.

Your reasoning behind my eyeglasses example is amusing to me. Along that line of reasoning, I can then say: "The atomic bomb we dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was natural, because I surmise that those Japanese people possessed a certain genetic trait that would've ill-served the human gene pool, and would've proved detrimental to the human species. The A-bomb was evolution in action." Human technology, be it constructive or destructive, is part of evolution right? Our free will is part of evolution, too, as you say. That's pure survival of the fittest, I suppose. You could put the Holocaust in the same example, saying that it was also evolution in action. Maybe the Jews also possessed a detrimental trait that Hitler prevented from entering the gene pool? Thus the Holocaust was a natural consequence of evolution. Sorry, but that is absurd.

Again, our views on how evolution works are diametrically opposed to one another. I see what you're saying, and I emphatically disagree. Though I still say that you simply don't understand what I'm trying to say. But, for now at least, I'm through trying.

[indigobusiness]

39. That doesn't follow the logic.

A trait was not removed from the gene-pool by dropping the bomb.

The point here, if I may, was merely that all forms of technology are arrived at through evolution and are a part of it. Whether eyeglasses, bird's nests, bombs, dams...whatever. They are products of evolved beings in pursuit of their instinctual and perceived needs. There is no separating humans from the equation.

You must not even be trying to see this point, as your rebuttal implies by your example. Completely missing the point. There is no difference in the evolutionary impact of a landslide dam or one of human creation.
It seems intent figures in to your rules. But all animals have intention, not just us humanimals.

Hitler was an individual, not a genetic trait. It is easy to understand what you are saying, it is also clear you don't understand the engine and process of evolution.

[H2O Man]

41. The Fall from Grace .....

is viewing human beings as separate from the creation/universe/God.

[indigobusiness]

42. Not terms of evolution.

Apples and oranges. It all works in its proper context, but its important to sort out the fruit salad.

[H2O Man]

43. Actually

the fall from grace is a very specific part of evolution .... it was the result of the development of a specific part of the human brain.

[indigobusiness]

44. The God part of the brain?

What part of the brain?

Evolution by the Godly punishment of banishment from the Garden would be an interesting position to champion in the debate.

It seems more psychosocial evolution than organically physical evolution, but that would only be a categorical distinction.

[H2O Man]

45. Read Carl Sagan's

The Dragons of Eden for the best description. No the "God gene" at all. The layer of the brain that is located at the back of our skull resulted in our awareness of being distinctly individual, with a knowledge that we will ... um, er, uh DIE. Yikes! It also is responsible in large part for our feelings of right and wrong. By no coincidence, it was the growth in the skull-size to hold this new layer of brain that made human birth so difficult. Thus, the Fall From Grace is both bibical and evolutionary reality. The story in the Good Book is one of the finest examples of the poets of yesterday having a serious grasp of science.

[indigobusiness]

46. Carl Sagan fell from my pantheon...

with his Velikovsky witch-hunt. Shameful. Velikovsky prevails.

But, I did read the book, and I do take your point. It is the hallmark of what we call 'self-awareness'. Dolphins and some apes possess this quality, and I often wonder if they ponder their death...
or make moral considerations.

?

You make a good point about the lessons of yesterday being lost on babbling contemporary dialog.

[tavalon]

28. Ah, a fellow Gaiaen

It does make it a bit less painful when one looks at the big picture without that personal little ego thing getting in the way. OTOH (though I don't think these are actually conflicting ideas) I agree with the other poster as well, the journey matters.

It's how I justify my rather Nihilistic point of view around the human race while fervently fighting against the current manifestation of fascism that has reared it's evil little head in my country.

[H2O Man]

29. I am an optimist

and also try to be realistic. Thus, while I know that everything is as it should be (or it wouldn't be), I also recognize that things can be better. Yet the only way that things can be better is if we are better. It takes no great insight to know that today is a direct consequence of yesterday, and hence tomorrow will be a direct consequence of today. So if anything is to be different in the future, we need to change something today.

But only people can change. All of the rest of the process, no matter if we call it "evolution" or "creation," occures mechanically. And the evolution of all that is organic is mechanical: it either rises or declines, grows or decays. And all of our insistance that "this should be different!" or "that should be different!" is merely fine words that lack a full insight into not only what is happening around us, but why.

On a very recent post on this thread, I spoke of a fool on a bulldozer attempting to destroy a beaver dam in a creek. True story. But it's more: it's western society .... and it's rapidly destroying eastern society. As mindless as that man who felt uncomfortable having a beaver dam in a creek.

I'm responsible for my actions. I can make a serious attempt to protect beaver dams, etc etc. But if I become too focused on an unrealistic quest to save all the beaver dams as I am, it is simply another distraction from doing what I might in order that others will not be mindless agents of destruction.

Everything is perfect. Today is perfect. Until we realize this, and not merely intellectually, but in our heart, our best efforts can only meet marginal success.

[codswallop]

24. This sends a chill up my spine.

"'It's all incendiarism! It's nihilism! If anything is burning, it's nihilism!' I heard almost with horror; and though there was nothing to be surprised at, yet actual madness, when one sees it, always gives one a shock.

[Name removed]

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