Author Topic: Letters of Interest  (Read 6557 times)

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Nation of One

  • { }
  • { ∅, { ∅ } }
  • Posts: 4756
  • Life teaches me not to want it.
    • What Now?
Re: Letters of Interest
« Reply #30 on: June 18, 2021, 10:14:15 pm »
You are too generous, Holden.  Before the second year of high school, before "Geometry," "Trigonometry," and "Calculus" mathematics had come easy to me.  I loved Algebra, you see.  This was before I was aware that there are more than one Algebra - before I knew of Abstract Algebra.   So, there was tremendous fear and self-doubt.  I would go so far as to say I was experiencing an intense identity crisis.

Without the "mathematics coming easy," my little world seemed to be falling to peices.  I began to be drawn to other things, such as the Occult and "Eastern Philosophy."   By the time I graduated high school, I wished to study "Asian Studies" at a Catholic college, Seton Hall.  We used to call it Satan Hall.    Well, back then in 1985, there was so little interest in Asian Studies that there was just myself and a young Black woman sitting in an office being told that Seton Hall would not be able to offer Asian Studies due to lack of interest.   We must have been ahead of our time, I suppose.  I mean, just look at the shifts in "superpowers" ... China and India are the big giants, and it was not long ago that Japan was also quite an economic force to be reckoned with. 

And yet, I was not interested in Asian Studies for any political reason, but mainly because I found the Philosophy "of the East" to be far more spiritual than that of the Pure Logicians.  This was before I ever even heard of Arthur Schopenhauer.  Imagine how excited and fascinated I was to read Schopenhauer's appraisal of the world philosophical situation.  He clearly favored the worldviews of the Asiatics over those coming out of the Abrahamic religions ...

I would not become interested in mathematics again until around 1993 while working for the park service.  My live-in girlfriend and her friend were taking courses at a community college.  She had me helping her friend with her Trigonometry homework.   This got me interested again.  I taught myself as much Calculus as I could, then went to the same community college, starting with Calculus as first class.  I did extremely well.  It was nearly 10 years after graduating high school.   I remember also becoming interested in programming through the use of the programmable scientific calculators, which really helped me get through Physics and Physics 2.

I do not like to discuss too much about formal academics as I do not wish to alienate those who might be terrified of such things as "Calculus-based Physics."   I am 54 years old and will most likely never be granted gainful employment where I would be able to compute, calculate, or mathematize.   How was I to know that it was all spiritual exercises?

I do not wish to delude myself as to how much I have been able to retain.  I find exercises in most physics texts to be challenging.   I may have burnt my brains out.   I have become quite gruff and even foul mouthed.   ;D
Things They Will Never Tell YouArthur Schopenhauer has been the most radical and defiant of all troublemakers.

Gorticide @ Nothing that is so, is so DOT edu

~ Tabak und Kaffee Süchtigen ~

Holden

  • { ∅, { ∅ } }
  • Posts: 5070
  • Hentrichian Philosophical Pessimist
Joe Stack Audio Manifesto

The Insane Manifesto Of Austin Texas Crash Pilot Joseph Andrew Stack
-Herr Hauer

If I have been of any assistance to you,in whatever small way, I am truly glad to know that.
While I empathise with the author on a number of points, in the article he prescribes violence, and I suppose, thinks of himself as being extremely radical while he does that. Well, the gorts expect Leninist revolutions  and they know how to put them down.
No, I have not turned Gandhian overnight.
You told me once that you spent hours thinking about the square root(negative 1).That ,to me, is what is truly radical.

I once asked you,why must 2+2 always be equal to 4 and not, say,217. I extend the question further, why could 2+2 not be equal to  Emperor Augustus?
This, to my mind, is the truly radical stance.It leaves the gorts flummoxed.

They want us to “Plug and Chug”, use mathematics to solve logistics problems and maybe build e-commerce websites.They do not want you to think about the square root of negative one.

But you do think about it.In fact,I am quite sure that you are irresistibly drawn towards it and would not be able to help yourself even if you were paid a million dollars to keep away from it.

Now,that, Mein Philosop,is what I think( and I have learnt this from you),is what is truly radical.
« Last Edit: June 21, 2021, 02:45:46 am by Holden »
La Tristesse Durera Toujours                                  (The Sadness Lasts Forever ...)
-van Gogh.

Nation of One

  • { }
  • { ∅, { ∅ } }
  • Posts: 4756
  • Life teaches me not to want it.
    • What Now?
Re: Letters of Interest
« Reply #32 on: June 20, 2021, 08:37:37 pm »
Thank you for your thoughful reply.   I suppose I mention Joe Stacks just to point out the extent to which some people are fed up.

As I age, maybe I will gain enough insight into why I have led such an uneventful life, and I will able to count most of my failures as actual successes.

Failing to be content to plug and chug, discontent with my own undertanding, always returning to basics and fundamentals to bring deeper understanding ...

And also, yes, to reach a point when I may sometimes no longer even care to pretend to understand something that is inherently confounding.

Awhile back I was reading several books by Derrick Jensen.  This is an excerpt from Endgame.


Another excerpt:  From chapter "Pacifism, Part IV"

Thank you, Holden, for your input. 

I also found an article, Psychological Mechanisms Involved in Radicalization and Extremism. A Rational Emotive Behavioral Conceptualization

I wish there were a way for us to be able to prevent ourselves from being made out to be "just another radicalized conspiracy theorist."

I want to take it to a different level, to a level of actual coherency.
« Last Edit: June 21, 2021, 06:55:41 am by Deep Truth »
Things They Will Never Tell YouArthur Schopenhauer has been the most radical and defiant of all troublemakers.

Gorticide @ Nothing that is so, is so DOT edu

~ Tabak und Kaffee Süchtigen ~

Nation of One

  • { }
  • { ∅, { ∅ } }
  • Posts: 4756
  • Life teaches me not to want it.
    • What Now?
Re: Letters of Interest
« Reply #33 on: July 23, 2021, 07:24:51 am »
Quote from: Holden
They want us to “Plug and Chug”, use mathematics to solve logistics problems and maybe build e-commerce websites.They do not want you to think about the square root of negative one.

But you do think about it.  In fact,I am quite sure that you are irresistibly drawn towards it and would not be able to help yourself even if you were paid a million dollars to keep away from it.

One of the few benefits of being a man of no means living on government-relief-funds [social security], forever penniless due to cost-of-living, is that, there are some days and weeks that I am, as you state, irresistibly drawn towards learning.  In fact, one of life's major disappointments seems to be just how little of the surface one might scratch.

With all the pain and anxiety that goes along with living, I have enjoyed learning and studying.  That's why I consider myself a contradiction.   This is what make me so depressed when I become "lost in the sauce" --- it is confounding how there is not really a solid personality residing inside the skin, that we are living processes, lived experience.  We ourselves may be a tale told by an idiot inside our own heads.

Maybe we can learn to have compassion for our own Inner Idiot.   We can hug our own animal body.   We can hold its hand and give it "emotional support."

Things They Will Never Tell YouArthur Schopenhauer has been the most radical and defiant of all troublemakers.

Gorticide @ Nothing that is so, is so DOT edu

~ Tabak und Kaffee Süchtigen ~

Nation of One

  • { }
  • { ∅, { ∅ } }
  • Posts: 4756
  • Life teaches me not to want it.
    • What Now?
The Devil's Work
« Reply #34 on: October 31, 2021, 03:37:23 am »
This looks like something we don't want to miss.  It reads as though someone similar to Silenus wrote it:  The Devil's Work

It is only 34 pages, but check out the table of contents at the very least.

by Martin Butler
« Last Edit: October 31, 2021, 04:16:14 am by mike »
Things They Will Never Tell YouArthur Schopenhauer has been the most radical and defiant of all troublemakers.

Gorticide @ Nothing that is so, is so DOT edu

~ Tabak und Kaffee Süchtigen ~

Nation of One

  • { }
  • { ∅, { ∅ } }
  • Posts: 4756
  • Life teaches me not to want it.
    • What Now?
« Last Edit: February 15, 2022, 11:29:37 am by Kaspar Hauser »
Things They Will Never Tell YouArthur Schopenhauer has been the most radical and defiant of all troublemakers.

Gorticide @ Nothing that is so, is so DOT edu

~ Tabak und Kaffee Süchtigen ~

Nation of One

  • { }
  • { ∅, { ∅ } }
  • Posts: 4756
  • Life teaches me not to want it.
    • What Now?
Re: Letters of Interest (secret diaries)
« Reply #36 on: January 29, 2022, 01:15:31 am »
You will find Spandau:  The Secret Diaries by Albert Speer on Library Genesis, God willin' n' the crick don't rise.

From the forward by Sam Sloan: 

This is one of the most amazing books ever written. After being convicted in the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials, the prisoners were not allowed to have writing paper, were not allowed to write their memoirs and were allowed only limited visits from their relatives.

However, they were allowed to have toilet paper.

So, on thousands of squares of toilet paper, Albert Speer wrote his diary in tiny letters so small that they could hardly be seen, which he was then able to pass to his relatives when they visited him.

By the time Speer was released on September 30, 1966, twenty years later, there were more than twenty thousand pages of secret diaries just waiting to be edited and published, but it took him another ten years before he could bear to look at them.

 Albert Speer was a brilliant writer and the world should be forever grateful to him for leaving us this work, that addresses and attempts to answer questions the world will always be asking, including:

1. How was Adolph Hitler, an obvious madman, totally insane, able to attain and keep such great power?

2. Why did the German people not recognize what was happening and do something about it long before the destructive end?

3. Most importantly: Can this happen again? Could and will another Hitler arise, perhaps not in Germany again? Perhaps in the United States of America? What assurance do we have that a lunatic madman could not enter the White House and do much worse than Hitler ever did?

« Last Edit: January 29, 2022, 01:27:58 am by Kaspar Hauser »
Things They Will Never Tell YouArthur Schopenhauer has been the most radical and defiant of all troublemakers.

Gorticide @ Nothing that is so, is so DOT edu

~ Tabak und Kaffee Süchtigen ~

Nation of One

  • { }
  • { ∅, { ∅ } }
  • Posts: 4756
  • Life teaches me not to want it.
    • What Now?
Gunnar Ekelof: The Poet as Trickster
« Reply #37 on: February 15, 2022, 11:06:50 am »
“The non-mass-man is dead, long live the non-mass-man! 
Long live the man who has the courage to be dead, to be what he is: 
a third thing, something in between, but yet a nameless thing outside…” 

~ Gunnar Ekelöf

Of interest:  Gunnar Ekelof: The Poet as Trickster

Early on, in the first footnote, there is mention of Abraxas: A Motif of Hermann Hesse and Gunnar Ekelof by Gunilla Bergsten.  The problem is that it is in Swedish.

[Abraxas. Ett motiv hos Herman Hesse och Gunnar Ekelöf by Gunilla Bergsten Vol. 85, 1964, s. 5–18]

Abraxas is the name for the highest being of the gnostic creed.
___________________________________________________________________

At Björn Thegeby's translations, I found the following poem translated from Swedish.


Quote from: Björn Thegeby
In 1945, Sweden found itself having escaped the horrors of WWII. Relief was mixed with some smugness as the government started building the Swedish welfare state. Ekelöf, who had been both rich and poor revolted against the implied conformity. For him, who had been very early in identifying the threat of Nazism, the individual was at the heart. Non serviam means "I will not serve" and the “seit” is a stone holy to the Sami people in Lapland. I decided to keep the word negro in a poem written in 1945, recognising that Ekelöf identified with the oppressed and the outcasts.

Non serviam

Jag är en främling i detta land
men detta land är ingen främling i mig!
Jag är inte hemma i detta land
men detta land beter sig som hemma i mig!

Jag har av ett blod som aldrig kan spädas
i mina ådror ett dricksglas fullt!
Och alltid skall juden, lappen, konstnären i mig
söka sin blodsfrändskap: forska i skriften
göra en omväg kring seiten i ödemarken
i ordlös vördnad för någonting bortglömt
jojka mot vinden: Vilde! Neger! –
stångas och klaga mot stenen: Jude! Neger! –
utanför lagen och under lagen:
fången i deras, de vitas, och ändå
-lovad vare min lag! – i min!

Så har jag blivit en främling i detta landet
men detta landet har gjort sig bekvämt i mig!
Jag kan inte leva i detta landet
men detta landet lever som gift i mig!

En gång, i de korta, milda
de fattiga stundernas vilda Sverige
där var mitt land! Det var överallt!
Här, i de långa, välfödda stundernas
trånga, ombonade Sverige
där allting är stängt för drag… är det mig kallt.


Non Serviam

I am a stranger in this land
but this land is no stranger within me!
I am not at home in this land
but this land has made itself at home within me!

I have of a blood that is never diluted
there flows in my veins a beaker full!
And always the Jew, the Sami, the artist within me
will look for its blood mates: Research in the records
make a detour around the sacred stone in the wilderness
in wordless awe of something forgotten
chant against wind: Savage! Negro! –
to buck and wail against the stone: Jew! Negro! –
outside the law and under the law:
caught in theirs, the whites’, and still
-praise be to my law! – in mine!

So I have become a stranger in this land
but this land has made itself comfortable in me!
I cannot live in this land
but this land lives like venom in me!

Once, in the short, mild
poverty struck moments’ wild Sweden
there was my land. It was everywhere!
Here, in the long, well-fed moments’
constricted, cosy Sweden
where everything shuts out the draught.. It is cold to me.
____________________________________________________________________
Also from Björn Thegeby's translations: Gunnar Ekelöf – Guide to the Underworld and more.
« Last Edit: February 15, 2022, 12:32:18 pm by Kaspar Hauser »
Things They Will Never Tell YouArthur Schopenhauer has been the most radical and defiant of all troublemakers.

Gorticide @ Nothing that is so, is so DOT edu

~ Tabak und Kaffee Süchtigen ~