“In one of the most poignant moments in the Torah, after Isaac tells Esau, his son, that his brother Jacob has stolen the blessing, Esau burst into wild and bitter sobbing and said to his father,
“Have you but one blessing? Bless me too, my father” (Genesis 26:38) Continue reading
Category Archives: Art and Ideas
Francis Bacon On Errors In Reasoning
“The human understanding is no dry light, but receives an infusion from the will and affections; whence proceed sciences which may be called “sciences as one would’. For what a man had rather were true he more readily believes. Therefore he rejects difficult things for impatience of research; sober things, because they narrow hope; the deeper things of nature from superstition; the light of experience from arrogance and pride, lest his mind should seem occupied with things mean and transitory; things not commonly believed, out of deference to the opinions of the vulgar. Numberless, in short, are the ways, and sometime imperceptible, in which the affections color and infect the understanding.”
Francis Bacon, Novum Organum, in Works, ed. J. Spedding et al. (London, 1857-61), iv. 57, cited in “Passion and Action: The Emotions in Seventeenth Century Philosophy,” Susan James, Clarendon, 1997, p. 162.
Money – The Root Of All Good
“Money, The Root Of All Good,” Atlas Shrugged, (1957) by Ayn Rand:
“So you think that money is the root of all evil?” said Francisco d’Anconia. “Have you ever asked what is the root of money? Money is a tool of exchange, which can’t exist unless there are goods produced and men able to produce them. Money is the material shape of the principle that men who wish to deal with one another must deal by trade and give value for value. Money is not the tool of the moochers, who claim your product by tears, or of the looters, who take it from you by force. Money is made possible only by the men who produce. Is this what you consider evil? Continue reading
Albert J. Nock On The Criminality Of The State
Albert J. Nock in The Criminality of the State, March 1939:
“In this way, perhaps, our people might get into their heads some glimmering of the fact that the State’s criminality is nothing new and nothing to be wondered at. It began when the first predatory group of men clustered together and formed the State, and it will continue as long as the State exists in the world, because the State is fundamentally an anti-social institution, fundamentally criminal. Continue reading
The Cosmic Serpent And DNA
More on the symbolism of the serpent in various forms (dragon, caduceus, kundalini) and its parallel to the DNA structure in “Shopping for Spirit: The Search for Truth” (Equilibra.com):
“In Jeremy Narby’s excellent book “The Cosmic Serpent – DNA and the Origins of Knowledge” – he investigates shamanism and the indigenous peoples uncanny biochemical knowledge of the plant kingdom. Whilst studying Ashaninca ecology, Narby discovered that these honest people living almost unheard of in the Amazon forest insisted that their extensive botanical knowledge came from plant induced hallucinations. 26 These hallucinations happen in a trance state during which, Narby found shamans talked of a ladder or vine, a rope, a spiral staircase, or a twisted rope ladder that connects heaven and earth which they use to gain access to the world of spirits. These spirits present themselves to the Ayahuasquero (shamans) when they drink their special plant brew.27 Continue reading
Gurdjieff On Religion And Action
“Religion is doing; a man does not merely think his religion or feel it, he ”lives” his religion as much as he is able, otherwise it is not religion but fantasy or philosophy.”
— George Gurdjieff
Manly Hall: Reagan’s Occult Influence
Mitch Horowitz at The Washington Post (via Lew Rockwell)
“In spring of 1988, White House spokesman Marlin Fitzwater acknowledged publicly what journalists had whispered for years: Ronald and Nancy Reagan were devotees of astrology. A tell-all memoir had definitively linked the first lady to a San Francisco stargazer, confirming speculation that started decades earlier when Reagan, as California’s governor-elect, scheduled his first oath of office at the eyebrow-raising hour of 12:10 a.m. Many detected an effort to align the inaugural with promising heavenly signs. Fitzwater also confirmed the president’s penchant for “lucky numbers,” or what is sometimes called numerology. Continue reading
Nina Simone Sings “I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel To Be Free”
The artistic genius of Nina Simone found expression not only in piano playing, singing, and composing (she despised the term ‘jazz’ and always called herself a black classical pianist), but also in passionate activism for civil rights. Simone embodied an individualist and nonconformist spirit that was truly libertarian…. Continue reading
Universal Soldier
Alexander Solzhenitsyn: The Line Between Good And Evil
Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Russian dissident writer, in Part II of The Gulag Archipelago:
“It has granted me to carry away from my prison years on my bent back, which nearly broke beneath its load, this essential experience: how a human being becomes evil and how good. In the intoxication of my youthful successes I had felt myself to be infallible, and I was therefore cruel. In the surfeit of power I was a murderer, and an oppressor. In my most evil moments I was convinced that I was doing good, and I was well supplied with systematic arguments. And it was only when I lay there on rotting prison straw that I sensed within myself the first strivings of good. Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either—but right through every human heart—and then all human hearts… And even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained. And even in the best of all hearts, there remains… an unuprooted small corner of evil.”