Tuesday, October 20, 2009
Monday, October 19, 2009
Sunday, October 11, 2009
Be joyful though you have considered all the facts.
Yesterday, Adam and I went to see Andrew Bacevich and today Lindsey and I are seeing Wendell Berry at the Overture Center! I love book week in Madison. Even if it were book week every week, it wouldn't ever lose its charm.
Laugh.
Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful
though you have considered all the facts.
We have lived by the assumption that what was good for us would be good for the world. We have been wrong. We must change our lives, so that it will be possible to live by the contrary assumption that what is good for the world will be good for us.
Laugh.
Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful
though you have considered all the facts.
We have lived by the assumption that what was good for us would be good for the world. We have been wrong. We must change our lives, so that it will be possible to live by the contrary assumption that what is good for the world will be good for us.
Thursday, October 8, 2009
These causes seem insufficent.
I couldn't fall asleep to save my life last night, so I finished War and Peace for my advanced history seminar. And... I didn't outright love it or hate it. It contains a few profound insights and MANY beautifully crafted sentences, but these worthwhile passages are spaced so widely with so many windy paragraphs about overly sentimental romance and society gossip in between that I just couldn't really dig into the book at all. I think that someone should write a condensed War and Peace—all the philosophical and gritty war bits and nothing else…
But I did want to keep:
It naturally seemed to Napoleon that the war was caused by England's intrigues... It naturally seemed to members of the English Parliament that the cause of the war was Napoleon's ambition; to the Duke of Oldenburg, that the cause of the war was the violence done to him; to businessmen that the cause of the war was the Continental System which was ruining Europe; to the generals and old soldiers that the chief reason for the war was the necessity of giving them employment... but to us... who view the thing that happened in all its magnitude and perceive its plain and terrible meaning, these causes seem insufficient... We cannot grasp what connection such circumstances have with the actual fact of slaughter and violence: why because the Duke was wronged, thousands of men from the other side of Europe killed and ruined the people of Smolensk and Moscow and were killed by them.
We are forced to fall back on fatalism as an explanation of irrational events (that is to say, events the reasonableness of which we do not understand). The more we try to explain such events in history reasonably, the more unreasonable and incomprehensible do they become to us.
When an apple has ripened and falls, why does it fall? Because of its attraction to the earth, because its stalk withers, because it is dried by the sun, because it grows heavier, because the wind shakes it, or because the boy standing below wants to eat it?
Seize the moments of happiness, love and be loved! That is the only reality in the world, all else is folly. It is the one thing we are interested in here.
You will die — and it will all be over. You will die and find out everything — or cease asking.
But I did want to keep:
It naturally seemed to Napoleon that the war was caused by England's intrigues... It naturally seemed to members of the English Parliament that the cause of the war was Napoleon's ambition; to the Duke of Oldenburg, that the cause of the war was the violence done to him; to businessmen that the cause of the war was the Continental System which was ruining Europe; to the generals and old soldiers that the chief reason for the war was the necessity of giving them employment... but to us... who view the thing that happened in all its magnitude and perceive its plain and terrible meaning, these causes seem insufficient... We cannot grasp what connection such circumstances have with the actual fact of slaughter and violence: why because the Duke was wronged, thousands of men from the other side of Europe killed and ruined the people of Smolensk and Moscow and were killed by them.
We are forced to fall back on fatalism as an explanation of irrational events (that is to say, events the reasonableness of which we do not understand). The more we try to explain such events in history reasonably, the more unreasonable and incomprehensible do they become to us.
When an apple has ripened and falls, why does it fall? Because of its attraction to the earth, because its stalk withers, because it is dried by the sun, because it grows heavier, because the wind shakes it, or because the boy standing below wants to eat it?
Seize the moments of happiness, love and be loved! That is the only reality in the world, all else is folly. It is the one thing we are interested in here.
You will die — and it will all be over. You will die and find out everything — or cease asking.
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