Fully enjoy the fleeting while boundlessly loving the eternal.
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Whisper #379
The need for empowering the state as opposed to the individual grows with one’s declining trust in one’s neighbour and fellow individuals.
The power of the state seems to be inversely proportional to the trust we have in our fellow citizens and perhaps even in human beings themselves.
What does this say about the moral premises and moral history of the power of the state?
If only we could quantify such things…
Whisper #377
There is a visceral satisfaction in going to war with and exposing a false prophet. The sensation associated with that satisfaction is equal to that enjoyed by the false prophet herself — perhaps identical, but what do we know of such things?
Which pleasure I hear you ask? Ah, but that very same pleasure of conscience arising from the secret labyrinth of her soul where she admits to herself that indeed she is leading people astray, but where she justifies her actions on grounds that the people are happy despite themselves by the order she grants them or restores to them, an order which they long and pray for — the truth notwithstanding, of course.
But, I hear you philosophers ask: how can pleasure in a course of action serve as proof that the action itself, its reasons or its outcome are good?
Philosophers — I count on you to miss the wood for the trees for the pure, innocent, clear eyed pleasure in a good argument.
What you miss here is that prolonged disorder followed by a period of order is pleasurable and whether order in itself is good or bad is a question from a conceptual framework which is alien to life — and pleasure is sign-post of life, not of morals. And life is fundamentally amoral.
Whisper #376
It is often the guiltiest conscience which speaks the loudest and most often.
Whisper #375
A temporary hell of one’s own making is preferable to an eternal heaven resting on another’s whim.
Whisper #374
Sometimes, we are like onions, peeling the layers of previous and oncoming generations, moving towards the core that is the nothing we are.
Whisper #373
It is only human for someone who ascribes wholly to liberalism (as they understand it) to also be convinced that the alternatives are fascism, nazism, and communism. After all, we project ourselves on the world out of necessity.
And they are not necessarily wrong in their belief about the alternatives.
But when that conviction is so prevalent and entrenched as to become a blind spot, then you have the curious phenomenon of people who think that anything different to their point of view (liberalism notwithstanding), no matter how slight, necessarily leads to the alternative extremes.
This is what happens when an idea is conflated with the person (or people) who ascribe to it or opine to — when they think they embody it and so what they say about it is true, indubitable, perfect and incapable of objection.
Ideas are always spoilt by people and ever it was thus.
Why? — Because ideas organise people and people crave power.
