Joe Biden Continues to Refuse Secret Service Protection to Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

I posted on this topic about a week ago but I'm posting again because the behavior of the Biden White House is despicable. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.'s father and uncle were assassinated. RFK, Jr. was almost murdered last week. Presidents have always granted Secret service protection to opposing candidate, who requested it, until now. I'm to the point where there is no innocent explanation for the behavior of the White House. Please watch this short video. Don't skip over the beginning where Gavin de Becker describes his noteworthy credentials.

Continue ReadingJoe Biden Continues to Refuse Secret Service Protection to Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

You Are Your World

Niel Theise, via Maria Popova:

While we feel ourselves to be thinking, living beings with independent lives inside the universe, the complementary view is also true: we don’t live in the universe; we embody it. It’s just like how we habitually think of ourselves as living on the planet even as, in a complementary way, we are the planet.

[…]

You are this body, and you are these molecules, and you are these atoms, and you are these quantum entities, and you are the quantum foam, and you are the energetic field of space-time, and, ultimately, you are the fundamental awareness out of which all these emerge, Planck moment by Planck moment.

Continue ReadingYou Are Your World

Ressentiment Redux

Nietzsche, painted a vivid image of ressentiment that is applicable in modern times:

They monopolize virtue, these weak, hopelessly sick people, there is no doubt of it: "We alone are the good and just," they say, "we alone are homines bonae voluntatis.*" They walk among us as embodied reproaches, as warnings to us--as if health, well-constitutedness, strength, pride, and the sense of power were in themselves necessarily vicious things for which one must pay some day, and pay bitterly: how ready they themselves are at bottom to make one pay; how they crave to be hangmen. There is among them an abundance of the vengeful disguised as judges, who constantly bear the word "justice" in their mouths like poisonous spittle, always with pursed lips, always ready to spit upon all who are not discontented but go their way in good spirits. Nor is there lacking among them that most disgusting species of the vain, the mendacious failures whose aim is to appear as " beautiful souls" and who bring to market their deformed sensuality, wrapped up in verses and other swaddling clothes, as "purity of heart": the species of moral masturbators and "self-gratifiers." The will of the weak to represent some form of superiority, their instinct for devious paths to tyranny over the healthy--where can it not be discovered, this will to power of the weakest!

--Genealogy of Morals, Third Essay, Section 15 (1887)

Translation by Walter Kaufmann (1967)

*Men of good will

Continue ReadingRessentiment Redux

How to be a Human Animal: Chapter 29: How to Slow Down the Treadmill

[Note: I wrote this with an audience of college-aged young adults in mind, though I think the principles here are applicable to all human animals.]

Imagine putting 1,000 marbles into a big jar. Imagine removing one marble each month.

Those 1,000 marbles are the months you have. Those are all of the months you have, from the moment you are born until the day you die, on average, at age 80. That’s all you get. Time is non-replenishable, so you need to use it wisely or it will disappear in a flash without leaving you any notable memories.

And it’s worse than you might think because you need to pour 240 of those marbles out right now! You have already used them up because you are about 20 (x 12 month per year). Here’s more bad news: You might not make it to 80 in good shape. You might start showing signs of dementia at 65. You might be wheelchair bound at age 56 after getting into a car accident.

Did you remember to remove a marble from the jar on July 31? That was two weeks ago. That was the end point of another month. How quickly did July go by for you? Probably like a snap of your fingers, right? What did you accomplish in July? If you wrote down all the important and meaningful things you did in July, how many of those things could you write? When you get to be in your 40s or 50s, time will speed up dramatically. When you are middle-aged, which will happen soon, the marbles will be virtually pouring out of your jar.

The best way to slow down the treadmill is to create memories and meaning. This is not done by letting life merely happen to you. [More . . . ]

Continue ReadingHow to be a Human Animal: Chapter 29: How to Slow Down the Treadmill