Hermitage

CBZ 2.0 - A Better Comic Book Archive

2023-07-12T03:26:54.000Z

CBZ (and derivatives) have been used as an e-book format for comic books for quite a long time. While they work well on larger screens, using them on smaller handheld devices is very hard.

Many e-book reader apps solve this problem differently. Some use features like panel zoom and bubble zoom. They work, but not perfectly.

This proposed second iteration of Comic Book Archive is an attempt to solve some, if possibly most, of these problems.

Structure

In structure, this format is similar to CBZ except for an additional content.xml file in the archive root. This allows these files to be backward compatible.

Content.xml

The content.xml file will contain several sections. A rudimentary example here:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<package version="2.0">
  <metadata xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" xmlns:opf="http://www.idpf.org/2007/opf">
    <dc:title>Title of the comic book</dc:title>
    ... Other metadata
  </metadata>
  <content>
    <panels>
      <panel id="panel-1" href="1.png" frame="5 5 30 30" />
      <panel href="1.png" frame="40 40 30 30" />
      ...more panels
      <panel href="5.png" frame="5 5 30 100" />
      ...
    </panels>
    <bubbles>
      <bubble href="1.png" frame="5 5 30 30" parent="#panel-1" />
      <bubble href="1.png" frame="40 40 30 30" />
      ...more bubbles
      <bubble href="5.png" frame="5 5 30 100">
        Optional content in the bubble for screen reader.
      </bubble>
    </bubbles>
  </content>
</package>

Let's dissect the content.xml

Metadata

The metadata section contains all the metadata of the comic book. I'm using IPDF's metadata convention here.

Content

Panels

This section defines all the panels in order. href points to the file from which we'll get the panel. frame contains values: x, y, width, and height.

Bubbles

Bubbles get defined here almost exactly like panels. Optionally, they can also have the content in them to allow the screen readers to read the comics, and with a parent key, a parent panel can be defined.

Usage

Using the structure defined above, e-book reader applications can develop the following features:

Apps can get panels from images by using the data from content.xml and allow users to navigate panel by panel. This allows users to read comics more easily on hand-held devices.

Bubble Zoom

Using the bubbles definitions apps can enable bubble-zoom more efficiently without any image recognition burden.

Additionally, It can be used to provide better accessibility for people with disabilities affecting their reading capabilities.

Steal My Look

2025-11-04T12:16:56.000Z

You visited my digital garden and are wondering how to replicate it (maybe partially)? I will try to guide you through it.

This is the repository containing my source code:

[!INFO] Having difficulties?
I understand if you are. But the sole reason for this note is to help non-technical people. If you are struggling, feel free to contact me (the email button on the bottom-right might come in handy), or comment here. I will try to help and update this note accordingly.

To Replicate Completely

If you are starting fresh and want my repository to use as a starting point, just clone it and delete all markdown files (ending with .md) from the notes directory.

Replicate Partially

Most of the customisations you see in my garden are done using the [Custom Component] feature available in Obsidian Digital Garden. All such components can be found in this folder.

All Components

Common:
1. Footer:
  1. Floating Controls: For the floating control at the bottom-right. It allows you to switch between dark/light modes, and allows you to start a conversation through email.
  2. Analytics: For Vercel analytics.
  3. Footnotes: For pop-up footnotes.
2. Head:
  1. OG Image For OpenGraph Image resolution based on note maturity.
Index:
1. Head:
  1. Google Meta: To add Google's meta tag for verification.
  2. Forest: To render the Forest on the home page.
Notes:
1. AfterContent:
  1. Series: To add series-related information.
2. BeforeContent:
  1. Tool Links: To show a section for Tool notes with links.
3. Footer:
  1. Comment: For Disqus comment.
  2. Slider: To show a note as a slider. See in action.
4. Header:
  1. Aliases: To show note aliases in the header.
  2. Reading Convention: for highlighting conventions of some of my older reading notes. I am adding it here for completeness' sake.

Forest

The aforementioned forest component requires a little more work than just adding components. To make it work, some site-wide calculation is needed. The relevant part can be found in the userUtils.js file

Cards

In The Threshold or in The Shelf, you may have noticed cards of notes. This is being achieved by a combination of:

Dataview Plugin: To render the tables.
Minimal Theme: To turn the tables to cards.

It means that to have the cards (until the base support lands), you have to set your Garden's theme to Minimal.

KOReader to Obsidian

2026-03-21T09:42:14.000Z

Previously, I used KOReader's notes and highlight export function to export as markdown and store them in my Obsidian vault (I've contributed to its development too). I export with styles so that they give me context later. It is very convenient. However, sometimes, it is also hard to read. In Obsidian, we have callouts which are not standard markdown, and therefore, are not a good candidate to add support for it in the KOReader directly. So I decided to export as JSON from KOReader and use that JSON to generate markdown the way I like.

I'm using the script below to achieve my goal. Save this as a template (remember to uncomment the first and the last line after saving it as markdown) and call it with the Templater plugin.

Lines 28-31 use a custom callout defined with the following CSS:

Note Supplements: A Faster Way to Write Longer Notes

KOReader has everything built-in, including the keyboard. It is slow to response in e-ink and honestly, writing a note more than 10 words wears me off. There's no ergonomic way to solve this. I made some compromises while crafting this solution.

The basic idea is, You keep another file in Obsidian for the book you're reading, in the Unprocessed folder to write long notes.

In that note, use the following template to generate a block for your note.

It will generate a block like this, here hj24v0 is the ID:

--- START: hj24v0 ---

--- END ---

You write your long note inside this:

--- START: hj24v0 ---
Your very very very long note that would take 2 hours to write in KOReader.
--- END ---

The next step is, in KOReader, in the highlight's note put the ID with # in front (#hj24v0 in this case), and save.

When running our template to import highlight, after pasting the JSON, there will be a prompt to select supplement file, you can select it or skip it if you don't have any. Those notes will be merged with your exported notes.

An Example

Here's an exported JSON file I used to generate a note from:

{
    "entries": [
        {
            "text": "He was wrong. Very understandably so, since reality, even if it is inevitable, is not completely predictable; those who learn some correct detail about the life of another promptly jump from it to quite incorrect conclusions and see in the newly discovered fact the explanation for things which in truth are completely unrelated to it.",
            "time": 1723464582,
            "color": "yellow",
            "sort": "highlight",
            "drawer": "underscore",
            "page": 22,
            "chapter": "The Prisoner"
        },
        {
            "text": "The things people joke about most are usually those which irritate them, but which they do not want to seem to be irritated by; there is perhaps, too, an unspoken hope of further advantage: that the person we are speaking to, hearing us admit something jokingly, will believe that it is not true.",
            "time": 1723464653,
            "color": "yellow",
            "sort": "highlight",
            "drawer": "underscore",
            "page": 38,
            "chapter": "The Prisoner"
        },
        {
            "text": "No, approaching the sonata from another point of view, looking at it in itself as the work of a great artist, I was carried back on the wave of sound towards the old days at Combray – I do not mean Montjouvain and the Méséglise way, but our walks towards Guermantes – when I myself had wanted to be an artist. Having in practice abandoned this ambition, had I given up something real? Could life make up to me for the loss of art, or was there in art a deeper reality where our true personality finds an expression that the actions of life cannot give it? Each great artist seems so different from all the others, and gives us such a strong sense of individuality, which we seek in vain in everyday life!",
            "time": 1724727692,
            "color": "blue",
            "sort": "highlight",
            "drawer": "underscore",
            "page": 131,
            "chapter": "The Prisoner"
        },
        {
            "text": "But despite the richness of these works, in which the contemplation of nature is found next to action, next to individuals who are not only the names of characters, I found myself thinking how strongly these works partake of the character of being – wonderfully, it is true – incomplete: that incompleteness which characterizes all the great works of the nineteenth century; the nineteenth century, whose greatest writers failed in their books, but, watching themselves at work as if they were both worker and judge, drew from this self-contemplation a new beauty, separate from and superior to their work, conferring on it retrospectively a unity, a grandeur which it does not have in reality.",
            "time": 1724727752,
            "color": "green",
            "sort": "highlight",
            "drawer": "underscore",
            "page": 132,
            "chapter": "The Prisoner"
        }
    ],
    "file": "/storage/emulated/0/Books/In Search of Lost Time/(In Search of Lost Time (Prendergast Edition) - 05) Marcel Proust - The Prisoner and The Fugitive.epub",
    "title": "The Prisoner and The Fugitive",
    "created_on": 1725171976,
    "version": "json/1.0.0",
    "number_of_pages": 568,
    "author": "Marcel Proust"
}

And it generated the following content:

---
title: "The Prisoner and The Fugitive"
aliases: ["Notes from The Prisoner and The Fugitive"]
author: "Marcel Proust"
---

# The Prisoner and The Fugitive
##### Marcel Proust

## The Prisoner

### Page: 22 (3.87%) @ 12 Aug 2024 06:09:42 PM

He was wrong. Very understandably so, since reality, even if it is inevitable, is not completely predictable; those who learn some correct detail about the life of another promptly jump from it to quite incorrect conclusions and see in the newly discovered fact the explanation for things which in truth are completely unrelated to it.

> [!quote] Quotable/Concept/General Idea

### Page: 38 (6.69%) @ 12 Aug 2024 06:10:53 PM

The things people joke about most are usually those which irritate them, but which they do not want to seem to be irritated by; there is perhaps, too, an unspoken hope of further advantage: that the person we are speaking to, hearing us admit something jokingly, will believe that it is not true.

> [!quote] Quotable/Concept/General Idea

### Page: 131 (23.06%) @ 27 Aug 2024 09:01:32 AM

No, approaching the sonata from another point of view, looking at it in itself as the work of a great artist, I was carried back on the wave of sound towards the old days at Combray – I do not mean Montjouvain and the Méséglise way, but our walks towards Guermantes – when I myself had wanted to be an artist. Having in practice abandoned this ambition, had I given up something real? Could life make up to me for the loss of art, or was there in art a deeper reality where our true personality finds an expression that the actions of life cannot give it? Each great artist seems so different from all the others, and gives us such a strong sense of individuality, which we seek in vain in everyday life!

> [!important] Striking/Intense

### Page: 132 (23.24%) @ 27 Aug 2024 09:02:32 AM

But despite the richness of these works, in which the contemplation of nature is found next to action, next to individuals who are not only the names of characters, I found myself thinking how strongly these works partake of the character of being – wonderfully, it is true – incomplete: that incompleteness which characterizes all the great works of the nineteenth century; the nineteenth century, whose greatest writers failed in their books, but, watching themselves at work as if they were both worker and judge, drew from this self-contemplation a new beauty, separate from and superior to their work, conferring on it retrospectively a unity, a grandeur which it does not have in reality.

> [!question] Thought Provoking

[!success] Output

The Prisoner and The Fugitive

Marcel Proust

The Prisoner

Page: 22 (3.87%) @ 12 Aug 2024 06:09:42 PM

He was wrong. Very understandably so, since reality, even if it is inevitable, is not completely predictable; those who learn some correct detail about the life of another promptly jump from it to quite incorrect conclusions and see in the newly discovered fact the explanation for things which in truth are completely unrelated to it.

[!quote] Quotable/Concept/General Idea

Page: 38 (6.69%) @ 12 Aug 2024 06:10:53 PM

The things people joke about most are usually those which irritate them, but which they do not want to seem to be irritated by; there is perhaps, too, an unspoken hope of further advantage: that the person we are speaking to, hearing us admit something jokingly, will believe that it is not true.

[!quote] Quotable/Concept/General Idea

Page: 131 (23.06%) @ 27 Aug 2024 09:01:32 AM

No, approaching the sonata from another point of view, looking at it in itself as the work of a great artist, I was carried back on the wave of sound towards the old days at Combray – I do not mean Montjouvain and the Méséglise way, but our walks towards Guermantes – when I myself had wanted to be an artist. Having in practice abandoned this ambition, had I given up something real? Could life make up to me for the loss of art, or was there in art a deeper reality where our true personality finds an expression that the actions of life cannot give it? Each great artist seems so different from all the others, and gives us such a strong sense of individuality, which we seek in vain in everyday life!

[!important] Striking/Intense

Page: 132 (23.24%) @ 27 Aug 2024 09:02:32 AM

But despite the richness of these works, in which the contemplation of nature is found next to action, next to individuals who are not only the names of characters, I found myself thinking how strongly these works partake of the character of being – wonderfully, it is true – incomplete: that incompleteness which characterizes all the great works of the nineteenth century; the nineteenth century, whose greatest writers failed in their books, but, watching themselves at work as if they were both worker and judge, drew from this self-contemplation a new beauty, separate from and superior to their work, conferring on it retrospectively a unity, a grandeur which it does not have in reality.

[!question] Thought Provoking

How to integrate Saleor JWT in Nuxt 3

2026-01-07T11:53:21.000Z

Saleor uses JWT Authentication, which is very easy to integrate in Nuxt. Call the login API, get the token, and call the onLogin in NuxtApollo. Straightforward, isn't it?

The real challenge is to secure the Refresh Token. Ideally, Refresh Tokens are sensitive and should be stored in secure HTTP cookies; they shouldn't be transported to the frontend JavaScript at all.

Implementation

We will start by implementing the login. The flow is roughly like this:

A user will attempt to log in with his credentials, but not directly to Saleor. The request will be made to /api/auth/login.
Our server's API handler will request on our behalf to Saleor's API.
Then it will strip the refreshToken from the response and return the Access Token and the additonalData to the user.

// server/api/auth/login.js

import { jwtDecode } from "jwt-decode";

const loginQuery = `
  mutation tokenCreate(
    $email: String
    $password: String!
  ) {
    tokenCreate(
      email: $email
      password: $password
    ) {
      token
      refreshToken
      <additionalFields>
      errors {
        message
        code
      }
    }
  }
`;

export default defineEventHandler(async (event) => {
  const body = await readBody(event);
  const { email, password, additionalFields } = body;

  if (!email) {
    throw createError({
      statusCode: 400,
      statusMessage: "Email is required",
      data: {
        errors: [
          {
            message: "Email is required",
            code: "MISSING_FIELD",
          },
        ],
      },
    });
  }
  if (!password) {
    throw createError({
      statusCode: 400,
      statusMessage: "Password is required",
      data: {
        errors: [
          {
            message: "Password is required",
            code: "MISSING_FIELD",
          },
        ],
      },
    });
  }

  const query = loginQuery.replace(
    "<additionalFields>",
    additionalFields ? additionalFields : ""
  );
  const config = useRuntimeConfig(event);
  const { data } = await $fetch(config.public.ecomApi, {
    method: "POST",
    body: {
      query,
      variables: { email, password },
    },
  });
  const { token, refreshToken, errors, ...additionalData } = data?.tokenCreate;
  const responseData = { ...additionalData, token, errors };
  if (data.tokenCreate?.token && data.tokenCreate?.refreshToken) {
    setCookie(event, "refreshToken", refreshToken, {
      httpOnly: true,
      secure: true,
      path: "/api/auth",
      expires: new Date(jwtDecode(refreshToken).exp * 1000),
    });
    return { data: responseData };
  } else {
    const error = responseData.errors[0].code;
    let code = 400;
    if (error === "INVALID_CREDENTIALS") {
      code = 401;
    } else if (error === "ACCOUNT_NOT_CONFIRMED") {
      code = 407;
    }
    throw createError({
      statusCode: code,
      data: responseData,
    });
  }
});

The support for supplying additonalFields parameter allows the user to get the user profile in one go with the tokens.

Notice that, we have set the path for the cookie to /api/auth. This will make the cookie accessible only to /api/auth routes. We have also set the expiry time to automatically expire the refreshToken.

From the frontend, the login request may look like this:

const USER_FIELDS = 'user { id email firstName lastName isActive isConfirmed metafields(keys: ["gender"])';

const { onLogin } = useApollo();
const payload = {
  email: "someemail@somedomain.com",
  password: "averyhardpassword",
  additionalFields: USER_FIELDS,
};
try {
  const { data } = await $fetch("/api/auth/login", {
    method: "POST",
    headers: {
      "Content-Type": "application/json",
    },
    body: JSON.stringify(payload),
  });
  onLogin(data.token);
} catch (error) {
  // ...handle errors
}

Refresh

The refresh flow is quite similar to the login flow. In this case, we're only getting the optional additionalFields. Then we get the refreshToken from the cookie and request a new accessToken from the Saleor's API.

// server/api/auth/refresh.js

const refreshQuery = `
    mutation RefreshToken($refreshToken: String) {
        tokenRefresh(refreshToken: $refreshToken) {
            token
            <additionalFields>
            errors {
                message
                code
            }
        }
    }
`;

export default defineEventHandler(async (event) => {
  const body = await readBody(event);
  const config = useRuntimeConfig(event);
  const cookies = parseCookies(event);
  const refreshToken = cookies.refreshToken;
  if (!refreshToken) {
    throw createError({
      statusCode: 400,
      statusMessage: "Refresh expired",
      data: {
        errors: [
          {
            message: "Refresh expired",
            code: "REFRESH_EXPIRED",
          },
        ],
      },
    });
  }
  const query = refreshQuery.replace(
    "<additionalFields>",
    body.additionalFields ? body.additionalFields : ""
  );

  const { data } = await $fetch(config.public.ecomApi, {
    method: "POST",
    body: {
      query,
      variables: { refreshToken },
    },
  });
  if (!data.tokenRefresh?.token) {
    setCookie(event, "refreshToken", "", {
      maxAge: 0,
      httpOnly: true,
      secure: true,
      path: "/api/auth",
    });
    return { data };
  }
  throw createError({
    statusCode: 400,
    data,
  });
});

Logout

Since Saleor doesn't provide a logout Mutation, we're just deleting the refreshToken from the cookies.

// server/api/auth/logout.js

export default defineEventHandler(async (event) => {
  setCookie(event, "refreshToken", "", {
    maxAge: 0,
    httpOnly: true,
    secure: true,
    path: "/api/auth",
  });
  return { status: true };
});

Conclusion

I tried finding a proper way to handle refreshToken in Nuxt 3's authentication flow, but the solutions found are unsatisfactory. Eventually, I came up with it while working on a project. The theory is general enough to be implemented for any JWT authentication flow regardless of the backend used.

How to Read Ebooks

2024-11-03T14:30:08.000Z

ফরম্যাট

বই বলতে আমাদের সাধারণত মাথায় আসে পৃষ্ঠায় পৃষ্ঠায় লেখা। স্বাভাবিকভাবেই PDF সবচেয়ে সরল মনে হয়। ইবুকের দুনিয়ায় পিডিএফ কিন্তু এখন ব্রাত্যে পরিণত হচ্ছে। যত আধুনিক ফরম্যাট সবই রিফ্লোয়েবল। অর্থাৎ কিনা, আপনার স্ক্রিনের সাইজ যাই-ই হোক না কেন, আর তাতে আপনি ফন্ট যেমন বড়-ছোটই করুন না কেন, লেখা রিফ্লো করে আরামদায়ক ভাবে এঁটে যাবে, একদম আধুনিক ওয়েবসাইটগুলোর মত। ফলত, ডিভাইস যেমনই হোক পড়তে আরামদায়ক হবে।

তো, এই বিষয়টা মাথায় রাখলে ফরম্যাট বেছে নেওয়া সহজ।

১। যদি কমিক্স, বা গ্রাফিক্স নভেল হয় তাহলে প্রথম পছন্দ CBR/CBZ, তারপর PDF
২। আর সব বইয়ের ক্ষেত্রে যথাক্রমে EPUB, AZW, এবং Mobi.

ডিভাইস

তোমাদের হাতের কাছে যে ডিভাইস আছে, তাই নিয়ে পড়ায় ঝাঁপিয়ে পড়তে হবে।

অনেকে ল্যাপটপে-ডেস্কটপে বই পড়েন, আমার তেমন সুবিধা হয় না। ফোনে-ট্যাবে পড়া যেতে পারে আরামে।

কিন্তু সবচেয়ে ভালো হয় একটা ইবুক রিডার কিনলে। ইবুক রিডারের বিশেষত্ব হচ্ছে এটার স্ক্রিনের জন্য LCD/LED ব্যবহার না করে E-paper ব্যবহার করা। ই-পেপার খানিকটা কাগজের মত কাজ করে, নিজের কোনো আলো নেই (অন্ধকারে পড়ার জন্য ফ্রন্টলাইট থাকে)। এজন্য চোখের ওপর চাপ কম পড়ে বলে দীর্ঘ সময় পড়া যায়। তাছাড়া, ই-পেপারের জন্য ব্যাটারি কম খরচ হয়।

বাজারে বিভিন্ন ব্র্যান্ডের বিভিন্ন দামের ইবুক রিডার আছে। সবচেয়ে জনপ্রিয় হচ্ছে কিন্ডেল। তা বাদে আছে Kobo, Boox, ইত্যাদি। আমি নিজে বুক্সের একটি ডিভাইস ব্যবহার করি, এবং এটাই রেকমেন্ড করবো। মূল কারণটা হচ্ছে, যদিও আপনি প্রচুর বই ফ্রি পেয়ে যাবেন, কিনতে হলে আমি খেয়াল করবেন যে কিন্ডেলের ক্ষেত্রে আপনাকে অ্যামাজন থেকেই কিনতে হচ্ছে। বুক্সের ক্ষেত্রে বিষয়টা সেরকম না। বুক্সে গুগল প্লে স্টোর দেওয়াই থাকে। ফলে আপনি যেকোনো অ্যাপ ইন্সটল করে যেকোনো কিছু করতে পারেন। অর্থাৎ, আপনি ভেন্ডর-লকড্ না, স্বাধীন।

অ্যাপ

কিন্ডেল কিনলে অ্যাপের বিশেষ চয়েজ নেই আপনার হাতে। Boox কিনলে যেকোনো অ্যান্ড্রয়েড অ্যাপ ইন্সটল করতে পারবেন। আমি দুটো অ্যাপ সাজেস্ট করছি:

KOReader

পাওয়ার ইউজার, বা ফরম্যাটিং নিয়ে খুঁতখুঁতে হলে এই অ্যাপের জুড়ি নেই। আমার কাছে প্রচুর ফিচারওয়ালা এই রিডিং অ্যাপের সবচেয়ে পছন্দের ফিচারগুলো হচ্ছে:

১। খুবই রিচ নোটস্ আর হাইলাইটস্ এক্সপোর্ট
২। চমৎকার ডিকশনারির রিপোজিটোরি
৩। রিডিং স্ট্যাটিসটিক্স

Google Play Books

বাংলাদেশে সরাসরি অ্যাপটা প্লেস্টোরে পাওয়া যায় না। তবে এপিকে ডাউনলোড করে ব্যবহার করতে পারবেন। আমার জানামতে এখন শুধু পিডিএফ আর ইপাব আপলোড করে পড়া যায়। হাইলাইট, নোটস্, টেক্সট-টু-স্পীচ, নাইটমোড সবই আছে।

এক্সট্রা যা আছে তা হচ্ছে সিঙ্ক। আপনার সব হাইলাইটস ও নোটস্ শুধু অ্যাপ বা ব্রাউজার থেকে এভেইলএবেল তাই-ই না, আপনার গুগল ড্রাইভে ওই বইয়ের নামে একটা ফাইলে সব কপি করা থাকে। তাছাড়া আপনি অ্যাপে বা ব্রাউজারে যেখানে খুশি পড়তে পারেন, রিডিং পজিশন সিঙ্ক করে নেবে। বইয়ের রেন্ডারিংও খুব ভালো।

গুগল প্লে বুকস্ সব মেজর প্লাটফর্মেই পাওয়া যায়। ব্রাউজার, এন্ড্রয়েড, ম্যাকওএস, আইওএস অ্যাপ সবই পাবেন।

পড়া

এবার আসি, যেজন্য এত আয়োজন, অর্থাৎ সেই পড়ার ব্যাপারে। যেমন বই, তার তেমনি পড়ার ধরণ। এই মনে করুন যখন মোটা মোটা বই পড়ে লোকে, তখন রেহালের ওপর রেখে পড়ে। বিদেশি ভাষার বই পড়তে গেলে হাতের কাছে রাখে ডিকশনারি। ক্লাসের বই পড়তে গেলে হাইলাইট করে, নোট রাখে।

ইবুক পড়ার সুবিধা হচ্ছে, বইটা যতই মোটা হোক, ডিভাইসের ওজন বাড়বে না। বিদেশি শব্দের জন্য অ্যাপেই থাকে ডিকশনারি। আবার যত ইচ্ছে নোট আর হাইলাইট করুন। চাইলে পরে সেগুলোকে একটা ফাইলে এক্সপোর্ট করে সংগ্রহে রাখুন।

আমি বলবো, এই ফিচারগুলোর সুযোগ নিন। আরামদায়ক ফন্টে, আরামদায়ক মার্জিনে আনন্দের সাথে পড়ুন। নতুন শব্দে হোঁচট খেলে দেখে নিন। যা কিছু ভালো লাগে হাইলাইট করে রাখুন। আর সবকিছু করুন মিনিমাল এফোর্টে।

How to Manage Multiple Git Credential for the Same Provider

2023-06-11T03:23:29.000Z

[!tip] A much better way!
Thanks to Sarim Khan, here's a much better way:
Thats a nice hack. Great to see people still writing bash script in 2023 (i'm not the only bash user left in the universe yay :D). Though git itself has better solution for this.

For example I have this in my ~/.gitconfig
[include]
path = .gitconfig-personal      

[includeIf "gitdir:~/macromanhq/**/.git"]
path = .gitconfig-mcm
So personal and company(can be multiple) have dedicated gitconfig. In those config you can set different name, email, gpg signing key, sshCommand and whatever else you need :)

Also If you use this, no need to manually fix your IDE to different git path :)

We often use multiple accounts from the same git provider (e.g. GitHub or GitLab). I myself, use different accounts for personal and official works in GitLab. Naturally, I set up ssh keys for both. It is much more convenient than typing a password on every interaction. Problem is I can't use one ssh key for all my accounts! There are solutions to this problem based on ssh config like this. One have to be careful while cloning. Also, submodules may need extra work.

Here's how I solved this problem. Once set up, you can forget about you ever set up this!

This solution is kind of opinionated and makes the assumption that you keep your work, and personal repositories separated in different directories.

Let's Proceed

Know Your Current Git Path

Simply by running:

which git

You can find where your git currently resides. In my case, it was in /usr/bin/git.

Create Your Shadow Git

In a local path of your user (e.g. ~/bin, make sure that it is added to the PATH) create a file named git with the following content with necessary adjustments:

#!/usr/bin/env bash

office_repos_regex="^(/Users/uroybd/repos|/Volumes/sources)/office-projects.*"

if [[ $PWD =~ $office_repos_regex ]]; then
  env GIT_SSH_COMMAND="ssh -i ~/.ssh/id_ed25519_official" /usr/bin/git $@
else
  /usr/bin/git $@
fi

[!warning] Points to Note

We're assuming that your Personal SSH key is the default one of your system. Therefore, we need to use the official key (~/.ssh/id_ed25519_official) when we are in the office-projects directory.

Notice the office_repos_regex. You should modify it based on your structure.

Replace /usr/bin/git with the git path you got from here.

Replace ~/.ssh/id_ed25519_official with your Official SSH key.

It is a simple script to identify if you're in an official repository and use official ssh key for all git commands.

Now give it the necessary permission with:

chmod u+x ~/bin/git

It's done!

Bonus: VS Code Setup

Visual Studio Code should pick up your shadowed git automatically. If not add one such entry in your settings.json:

{
...
"git.path": [
  "/Users/uroybd/bin/git", // Your shadow git [Don't add this comments]
  "/usr/bin/git" // The original git, just in case.

]
...
}

Boox to Obsidian_ Rich Annotation Export from Boox Cloud

2025-05-11T14:23:49.000Z

Many like me, have already noticed that annotations exported as text or HTML from Boox devices are inadequate at best. They lack context. Previously, I tried to make the situation better by adding some context in the notes. It works, but it is very cumbersome to handle.

But, I found a better way.

First, lets get the data from Boox Cloud as JSON. These JSON files will contain rich context. To do that we will use Tampermonkey

First, install the plugin in your browser and add the following script:

// ==UserScript==
// @name         Boox Annotations
// @namespace    http://tampermonkey.net/
// @version      2025-02-26
// @description  export Boox annotations as JSON
// @author       Utsob Roy
// @include        https://push.boox.com/*
// @icon         https://www.google.com/s2/favicons?sz=64&domain=mozilla.org
// @grant GM.registerMenuCommand
// ==/UserScript==

(function() {
    'use strict';

   async function getDBSpec() {
  const databases = await window.indexedDB.databases();
  return databases.find(db => db.name.startsWith("_pouch") && db.name.endsWith("-library"))
}

const validTypes = ["epub", "pdf", "cbz"]


function loadFromIndexedDB(storeName){
  return new Promise(
    function(resolve, reject) {
      var dbRequest = indexedDB.open(storeName);

      dbRequest.onerror = function(event) {
        reject(Error("Error text"));
      };

      dbRequest.onupgradeneeded = function(event) {
        // Objectstore does not exist. Nothing to load
        event.target.transaction.abort();
        reject(Error('Not found'));
      };

      dbRequest.onsuccess = function(event) {
        var content = [];
        var database = event.target.result;
        database.transaction("by-sequence").objectStore("by-sequence").openCursor().onsuccess = (event) => {
          const cursor = event.target.result;
          if (cursor) {
            content.push(cursor.value);
            cursor.continue();
          } else {
            console.log("No more entries!");
            resolve(content);
          }
        };
      };
    }
  );
}

async function getContent() {
  const db = await getDBSpec();
  const content = await loadFromIndexedDB(db.name);
  return content
}

var bookCommands = [];
var content = [];


function selectBook(content) {
  let books = content.filter((item) => item.progress != undefined && validTypes.includes(item.type))

  books = books.filter((item, index) => {
      return books.findIndex((otherItem) => otherItem.uniqueId == item.uniqueId && otherItem.updatedAt > item.updatedAt) == -1
  })
  console.log(books)
  // Create a modal with the list of books:
  const modal = document.createElement("div");
    // Position it to center
    modal.style.position = "fixed"
    modal.style.top = "50%"
    modal.style.left = "50%"
    modal.style.transform = "translate(-50%, -50%)"
    modal.style.padding = "20px"
    modal.style.backgroundColor = "white"
    modal.style.zIndex = "9999"
    modal.style.border = "1px solid black"
    modal.style.borderRadius = "10px"

    // Add a title
    const title = document.createElement("h3")
    title.textContent = "Select a book"
    modal.appendChild(title)

    // Add the list of books
    const list = document.createElement("ul")
    // Style it without bullets
    list.style.listStyle = "none"
    list.style.overflow = "scroll"
    list.style.maxHeight = "80vh"
    books.forEach((book) => {
      const btn = document.createElement("li")
      var title = book.title
      if (!title) {
          title = book.name
      }
      btn.textContent = title
      btn.addEventListener("click", () => {
        document.body.removeChild(modal)
        const ann = getAnnotations(book)
        download(ann)
      })
      // Style it like buttons
      btn.style.cursor = "pointer"
      btn.style.border = "1px solid green"
      btn.style.borderRadius = "10px"
      btn.style.padding = "10px"
      btn.style.marginBottom = "10px"
      list.appendChild(btn)
    })
    modal.appendChild(list)
    document.body.appendChild(modal)
    // Add a close button
    const close = document.createElement("button")
    close.textContent = "Close"
    modal.appendChild(close)
    close.addEventListener("click", () => {
      document.body.removeChild(modal)
    })
}

function integerToColorHex(num) {
num >>>= 0;
    var b = num & 0xFF,
        g = (num & 0xFF00) >>> 8,
        r = (num & 0xFF0000) >>> 16
  return "#" + ("00" + r.toString(16)).substr(-2) + ("00" + g.toString(16)).substr(-2) + ("00" + b.toString(16)).substr(-2);
}

function getAnnotations(book) {
  let annotations = content.filter((item) => item.documentId == book.uniqueId && item.status == 0 && item.pageNumber != undefined && item.color != undefined)
  annotations.sort((a, b) => {
      const pageDiff = a.pageNumber - b.pageNumber
      if (pageDiff == 0) {
          return a.createdAt - b.createdAt
      }
      return pageDiff
  })
  // Remove duplicate entries from annotiations. First, match by uniqueId, then keep the one with the highest updatedA
  annotations = annotations.filter((item, index) => {
      return annotations.findIndex((otherItem) => otherItem.uniqueId == item.uniqueId && otherItem.updatedAt > item.updatedAt) == -1
  })

  const rdata = {
    title: book.title,
    authors: book.authors,
    format: book.type,
    pageNumber: parseInt(book.progress.split("/")[1]),
    annotations: annotations.map((item) => {
        console.log(item);
      return {
        quote: item.quote,
        note: item.note,
        pageNumber: item.pageNumber,
        chapter: item.chapter,
        createdAt: item.createdAt,
        color: integerToColorHex(item.color)
      }
    })
  }
  return rdata
}

const formatedTimestamp = ()=> {
  const d = new Date()
  const date = d.toISOString().split('T')[0];
  const time = d.toTimeString().split(' ')[0].replace(/:/g, '-');
  return `${date}-${time}`
}

function download(annotations) {
  // Create blob and download
  const blob = new Blob([JSON.stringify(annotations, null, 4)], { type: "application/json" });
  const url = window.URL.createObjectURL(blob);
  const a = document.createElement("a");
  a.href = url;
  a.download = formatedTimestamp(new Date()) + "-annotations.json";
  document.body.appendChild(a);
  a.click();
  document.body.removeChild(a);
  console.log(annotations)
}



GM.registerMenuCommand("Download Book's Annotations", async (event) => {
  content = await getContent()
  selectBook(content)
});
})();

So, what are we doing here? We are registering a command. Buy clicking on that menu command, you will be presented with a list of book, click any of them, and the annotations will be downloaded as JSON. We are not violating any security or law. The data is already present in the browser, and essentially your data.

Once you got it exported as JSON, you will get something like this:

{
    "title": "House Of Leaves",
    "authors": "Mark Z. Danielewski",
    "format": "pdf",
    "pageNumber": 740,
    "annotations": [
        {
            "quote": "As I discovered, there were reams and reams of \nit. Endless snarls of words, sonetines twisting into \nmeaning, sometimes into nothing at all, frequently \nbreaking apart, always branching off into other pieces \nI'd come across later-on old napkins, the tattered \nedges of an envelope, once even on the back of a \npostage stamp; everything and anything but empty; each \nfragment completely covered with the creep of years \nand years of ink pronouncements; layered, crossed out,\namended; handwritten, typed; legible, illegible;\nimpenetrable, lucid; torn, stained, scotch taped; some \nbits crisp and clean, others faded, burnt or folded \nand refolded so many times the creases have \nobliterated whole passages of god knows what-sense?\ntruth? deceit? a legacy of prophecy or lunacy or \nnothing of the kind?, and in the end achieving,\ndesignating, describing, recreating-find your own \nwords; I have no more; or plenty more but why? and all \nto tellwhat?",
            "note": "",
            "pageNumber": 19,
            "chapter": "Introduction ",
            "createdAt": 1740509505032,
            "color": "#ee00ff"
        },
        {
            "quote": "Zampanò, I've come to recognize now, was a very \nfunny man. But his humor was that wry, desiccated \nkind soldiers whisper, all their jokes subsurface,\ntheir laughter amounting to little more than a tic in \nthe corner of the mouth, told as they wait together in \ntheir outpost, slowly realizing that help's not going \nto reach them in time and come nightfall, no matter \nwhat they've done or what they try to say, slaughter \nwill overrun them all. Carrion dawn for vultures",
            "note": "",
            "pageNumber": 22,
            "chapter": "Introduction ",
            "createdAt": 1740760531837,
            "color": "#ee00ff"
        },
        {
            "quote": "\"Irony? Irony can never be more than our own \npersonal Maginot Line; the drawing of it, for the most \npart, purely arbitrary.\"",
            "note": "",
            "pageNumber": 22,
            "chapter": "Introduction ",
            "createdAt": 1740760623457,
            "color": "#ee00ff"
        },
        {
            "quote": "Zampanò writes constantly about seeing. What we \nsee, how we see and what in turn we can't see. Over \nand over again, in one form or another, he returns to \nthe subject of light, space, shape, line, color,\nfocus, tone, contrast, movement , rhythm, perspective \nand composition. None of which is surprising \nconsidering Zampanò's piece centers on a documentary \nfilm called The Navidson Record made by a Pulitzer \nPrize-winning photojournalist who must somehow capture \nthe most difficult subject of all: the sight of \ndarkness itself.",
            "note": "",
            "pageNumber": 23,
            "chapter": "Introduction ",
            "createdAt": 1740760696601,
            "color": "#00b036"
        }
    ]
}

You can transform it anyway you want (if you know how to code)! Here I am formatting to Markdown using Templater. Here's the template I'm using:

<%*
const NOTE_STYLES = {
  lemon: {
	type: "quote",
	title: "Quotable/Concept/General Idea",
  },
  blue: {
	type: "important",
	title: "Striking/Intense",
  },
  red: {
	type: "danger",
	title: "In Discord",
  },
  green: {
	type: "question",
	title: "Thought Provoking",
  },
  chartreuse: {
    type: "sceptic",
    title: "Sceptic"
  },
  orange: {
    type: "warning",
    title: "Unsound"
  },
  violet: {
    type: "stylish",
    title: "Stylish"
  }
};

const COLOR_DICT = {
  "#000000": "black",
  "#404040": "dark-grey",
  "#808080": "grey",
  "#c0c0c0": "light-grey",
  "#ffffff": "white",
  "#ffc1c3": "red",
  "#00b036": "green",
  "#000084": "blue",
  "#00f0ff": "aqua",
  "#ee00ff": "violet",
  "#ffaa00": "orange",
  "#f0ff00": "lemon",
  "#008000": "chartreuse",
  "#9338be": "grape",
  "#00aaff": "sky-blue",
  "#ff4400": "orange-red"
}

function get_note_style(note) {
    const colorName = COLOR_DICT[note.color]
    if (colorName == undefined) {
        return NOTE_STYLES["lemon"]
    }
    const style = NOTE_STYLES[colorName]
    if (style == undefined) {
        return NOTE_STYLES["lemon"]
    }
    return style
}

function format_percentages(page, total) {
	if (page && total) {
		return `${((page / total) * 100).toFixed(2)}%`;
	}
	return "";
}

function format_quote(text, keepBreak) {
    if (!keepBreak) {
        return text.replaceAll(/\n\n/g, '__temp__').replaceAll(/\n/g, ' ').replaceAll('__temp__', '\n');
    }
    return text
}

async function format_json_highlights(content) {
	const data = JSON.parse(content);
    let keepBreak = false
	if (data.format == "pdf") {
    	keepBreak = await tp.system.suggester(["No", "Yes"], [false, true], false, "Keep line break?")
	}
    console.log("keepBreak: ", keepBreak)
    let output = `---\ntitle: "${data.title}"\naliases: ["Notes from ${data.title}"]\nauthor: "${data.authors}"\n---\n# ${data.title}\n##### ${data.authors}`;

	let current_chapter = "";
	for (const entry of data.annotations) {
	  if (entry.quote) {
		if (entry.chapter != current_chapter) {
		  output += `\n\n## ${entry.chapter}\n`;
		  current_chapter = entry.chapter;
		}
		output += `\n### Page: ${
		  entry.pageNumber
		} (${format_percentages(
		  entry.pageNumber,
		  data.pageNumber
		)}) @ ${window.moment(entry.createdAt).format("DD MMM YYYY hh:mm:ss A")}\n`;
		output += `\n${format_quote(entry.quote, keepBreak)}`;
		const note_type = get_note_style(entry);
		output += `\n\n> [!${note_type.type}] ${note_type.title}`;
		if (entry.note) {
		  if (entry.note.length > 50) {
			output += `\n> ${entry.note.replaceAll("\n", "\n> ")}`;
		  } else {
			output += `: ${entry.note}`;
		  }
		  output += "\n";
		}
		output += "\n";
	  }
	}
	return output;
}

const content = await tp.system.prompt("Paste the JSON content", null, true, true);
const output = await format_json_highlights(content);
let file = app.workspace.getActiveFile();
await app.vault.modify(file, output);
%>

Upon running this, the template will prompt you for the JSON, copy-paste it here. Then It may ask for pdfs if you want to keep the linebreaks. Here's the output:

---
title: "House Of Leaves"
aliases: ["Notes from House Of Leaves"]
author: "Mark Z. Danielewski"
created: 2025-03-25T20:08:37+06:00
updated: 2025-03-25T20:14:58+06:00
---
# House Of Leaves
##### Mark Z. Danielewski

## Introduction

### Page: 19 (2.57%) @ 26 Feb 2025 12:51:45 AM

As I discovered, there were reams and reams of it. Endless snarls of words, sonetines twisting into meaning, sometimes into nothing at all, frequently breaking apart, always branching off into other pieces I'd come across later-on old napkins, the tattered edges of an envelope, once even on the back of a postage stamp; everything and anything but empty; each fragment completely covered with the creep of years and years of ink pronouncements; layered, crossed out, amended; handwritten, typed; legible, illegible; impenetrable, lucid; torn, stained, scotch taped; some bits crisp and clean, others faded, burnt or folded and refolded so many times the creases have obliterated whole passages of god knows what-sense? truth? deceit? a legacy of prophecy or lunacy or nothing of the kind?, and in the end achieving, designating, describing, recreating-find your own words; I have no more; or plenty more but why? and all to tellwhat?

> [!stylish] Stylish

### Page: 22 (2.97%) @ 28 Feb 2025 10:35:31 PM

Zampanò, I've come to recognize now, was a very funny man. But his humor was that wry, desiccated kind soldiers whisper, all their jokes subsurface, their laughter amounting to little more than a tic in the corner of the mouth, told as they wait together in their outpost, slowly realizing that help's not going to reach them in time and come nightfall, no matter what they've done or what they try to say, slaughter will overrun them all. Carrion dawn for vultures

> [!stylish] Stylish

### Page: 22 (2.97%) @ 28 Feb 2025 10:37:03 PM

"Irony? Irony can never be more than our own personal Maginot Line; the drawing of it, for the most part, purely arbitrary."

> [!stylish] Stylish

### Page: 23 (3.11%) @ 28 Feb 2025 10:38:16 PM

Zampanò writes constantly about seeing. What we see, how we see and what in turn we can't see. Over and over again, in one form or another, he returns to the subject of light, space, shape, line, color, focus, tone, contrast, movement , rhythm, perspective and composition. None of which is surprising considering Zampanò's piece centers on a documentary film called The Navidson Record made by a Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist who must somehow capture the most difficult subject of all: the sight of darkness itself.

> [!question] Thought Provoking

This, if rendered, will look this:

House Of Leaves

Mark Z. Danielewski

Introduction

Page: 19 (2.57%) @ 26 Feb 2025 12:51:45 AM

As I discovered, there were reams and reams of it. Endless snarls of words, sonetines twisting into meaning, sometimes into nothing at all, frequently breaking apart, always branching off into other pieces I'd come across later-on old napkins, the tattered edges of an envelope, once even on the back of a postage stamp; everything and anything but empty; each fragment completely covered with the creep of years and years of ink pronouncements; layered, crossed out, amended; handwritten, typed; legible, illegible; impenetrable, lucid; torn, stained, scotch taped; some bits crisp and clean, others faded, burnt or folded and refolded so many times the creases have obliterated whole passages of god knows what-sense? truth? deceit? a legacy of prophecy or lunacy or nothing of the kind?, and in the end achieving, designating, describing, recreating-find your own words; I have no more; or plenty more but why? and all to tellwhat?

[!stylish] Stylish

Page: 22 (2.97%) @ 28 Feb 2025 10:35:31 PM

Zampanò, I've come to recognize now, was a very funny man. But his humor was that wry, desiccated kind soldiers whisper, all their jokes subsurface, their laughter amounting to little more than a tic in the corner of the mouth, told as they wait together in their outpost, slowly realizing that help's not going to reach them in time and come nightfall, no matter what they've done or what they try to say, slaughter will overrun them all. Carrion dawn for vultures

[!stylish] Stylish

Page: 22 (2.97%) @ 28 Feb 2025 10:37:03 PM

"Irony? Irony can never be more than our own personal Maginot Line; the drawing of it, for the most part, purely arbitrary."

[!stylish] Stylish

Page: 23 (3.11%) @ 28 Feb 2025 10:38:16 PM

Zampanò writes constantly about seeing. What we see, how we see and what in turn we can't see. Over and over again, in one form or another, he returns to the subject of light, space, shape, line, color, focus, tone, contrast, movement , rhythm, perspective and composition. None of which is surprising considering Zampanò's piece centers on a documentary film called The Navidson Record made by a Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist who must somehow capture the most difficult subject of all: the sight of darkness itself.

[!question] Thought Provoking

Boox to Obsidian_ Highlights and Annotations

2025-05-09T10:55:41.000Z

[!INFO] A better approach…
Although a little complicated, but better approach is to download the exported highlights as JSON from the Boox-cloud and use that to generate notes as we want (with rich context provided by the colour being used to highlight). You can find out how to do that in this note.

Problem

One can easily export highlights and annotations from NeoReader^[1] as txt file. However, it has some very important downsides:

It provides very minimal metadata, nothing more than page number, chapter, and time. One can choose between multiple highlighting styles while reading(e.g. highlight, wavy line, or straight underline), but these data are not being exported from NeoReader. Therefore, it goes nowhere near KOReader as long as exporting feature is concerned.
It's really a very ugly format.

Solution

Here's a workflow (basically a Templater template) that made my life a little easier. It assumes some practices and setup on my part:

Obsidian, and Templater plugins installed.
Except for normal quotes, I'm starting my notes with the following symbols for added context:
- ! for important notes.
- @ for disagreement.
- ? for thought-provoking things.
- / for ideas I am sceptic about.
- ~ for warning
- # for stylishly written content.

Only these symbols at the beginning will be treated differently.

With this setup and practices in place, copy the content of the gist below in a markdown file to use as a template for Templater:

To use this, all one has to do is:

Create an empty note.
Run that note as a template using templater.
A prompt will appear for the content. Copy the exported note's content into this prompt and proceed.
A prompt for total page number will appear. Input the total pages calculated in the NeoReader for accurate calculation then proceed.

It will replace the existing content with formatted content.

An Example

Before

Reading Notes | <<Proust, Marcel - Swann's Way>>Marcel Proust
PART II - Swann in Love
2023-09-28 13:11  |  Page No.: 166
It even seemed, for a moment, that this love for a phrase of music would have to open in Swann the possibility of a sort of rejuvenation. He had for so long given up directing his life toward an ideal goal and limited it to the pursuit of everyday satisfactions that he believed, without ever saying so formally to himself, that this would not change as long as he lived; much worse, since his mind no longer entertained any lofty ideas, he had ceased to believe in their reality, though without being able to deny it altogether.
【Annotation】? a common pitfall.
-------------------
2023-10-02 12:09  |  Page No.: 173
fix you up,” and with the conceited little laugh she would have given at some invention of her own, had settled behind Swann’s head, and under his feet, cushions of Japanese silk which she kneaded as if she were lavish with these riches and careless of their value. But when the valet came bringing one after another the many lamps which, nearly all enclosed in large Chinese vases, burned singly or in pairs, all on different pieces of furniture as though on altars, and which hadsummoned back to the already almost nocturnal again in her, nevertheless that resemblance conferred a certain beauty on her too, made her more precious. Swann reproached himself for having misunderstood the value of a creature who would have appeared captivating to the great Sandro, and he felt happy that his pleasure in seeing Odette could be justified by his own aesthetic culture. He told himself
-------------------
PART III - Place-Names: The Name
2023-10-02 12:09  |  Page No.: 288
AMONG THE BEDROOMS whose images I summoned up most often in my nights of insomnia, none resembled less the rooms at Combray, dusted with an atmosphere that was grainy, pollinated, edible, and devout, than the room at the Grand-Hôtel de la Plage, at Balbec, whose enamel-painted walls contained, like the polished sides of a swimming pool which tints the water blue, a pure azure salt sea air. The Bavarian decorator commissioned to furnish the hotel had varied the design schemes of the rooms and on three sides, along the walls, in the one I was occupying, had placed low bookcases, with glass panes, in which, depending on the spot they occupied, and by an effect he had not foreseen, one part or another of the changing picture of the sea was reflected, unfurling a frieze
-------------------
2023-10-02 12:10  |  Page No.: 289
geology—and just as completely outside human history as the Ocean itself or the Great Bear,4 with those wild fishermen for whom no more than for the whales had there been any Middle Ages—it had been a great delight for me to see it suddenly take its place in the sequence of the centuries, now that it had experienced theRomanesque period, and to know that the Gothic trefoil had come at the proper time topattern those wild rocks too, like the frail but hardy plants which, when spring comes, spangle here and there the polar snow
【Annotation】* a note of importance
-------------------
2023-10-02 12:11  |  Page No.: 290
perfumes, colors seemed to me of any value; forthis alternation of images had brought about a change of direction in my desire, and—as abrupt as those that occur now and then in music—a complete change of tone in my sensibility. Thus it came about that a simple variation in the atmosphere was enough toprovoke this modulation in me without any need to wait for the return of a season. Foroften, in one season, we find a day that has strayed from another and that immediatelyevokes its particular pleasures, lets us experience
【Annotation】! another one!
-------------------

After

[!success] Output

Proust, Marcel - Swann's Way

Marcel Proust

PART II - Swann in Love

Page: 166 (48.26%) @ 28 Sep 2023 01:11:00 PM

It even seemed, for a moment, that this love for a phrase of music would have to open in Swann the possibility of a sort of rejuvenation. He had for so long given up directing his life toward an ideal goal and limited it to the pursuit of everyday satisfactions that he believed, without ever saying so formally to himself, that this would not change as long as he lived; much worse, since his mind no longer entertained any lofty ideas, he had ceased to believe in their reality, though without being able to deny it altogether.

[!question] Thought Provoking: a common pitfall.

Page: 173 (50.29%) @ 02 Oct 2023 12:09:00 PM

fix you up,” and with the conceited little laugh she would have given at some invention of her own, had settled behind Swann’s head, and under his feet, cushions of Japanese silk which she kneaded as if she were lavish with these riches and careless of their value. But when the valet came bringing one after another the many lamps which, nearly all enclosed in large Chinese vases, burned singly or in pairs, all on different pieces of furniture as though on altars, and which hadsummoned back to the already almost nocturnal again in her, nevertheless that resemblance conferred a certain beauty on her too, made her more precious. Swann reproached himself for having misunderstood the value of a creature who would have appeared captivating to the great Sandro, and he felt happy that his pleasure in seeing Odette could be justified by his own aesthetic culture. He told himself

[!quote] Quotable/Concept/General Idea

PART III - Place-Names: The Name

Page: 288 (83.72%) @ 02 Oct 2023 12:09:00 PM

AMONG THE BEDROOMS whose images I summoned up most often in my nights of insomnia, none resembled less the rooms at Combray, dusted with an atmosphere that was grainy, pollinated, edible, and devout, than the room at the Grand-Hôtel de la Plage, at Balbec, whose enamel-painted walls contained, like the polished sides of a swimming pool which tints the water blue, a pure azure salt sea air. The Bavarian decorator commissioned to furnish the hotel had varied the design schemes of the rooms and on three sides, along the walls, in the one I was occupying, had placed low bookcases, with glass panes, in which, depending on the spot they occupied, and by an effect he had not foreseen, one part or another of the changing picture of the sea was reflected, unfurling a frieze

[!quote] Quotable/Concept/General Idea

Page: 289 (84.01%) @ 02 Oct 2023 12:10:00 PM

geology—and just as completely outside human history as the Ocean itself or the Great Bear,4 with those wild fishermen for whom no more than for the whales had there been any Middle Ages—it had been a great delight for me to see it suddenly take its place in the sequence of the centuries, now that it had experienced theRomanesque period, and to know that the Gothic trefoil had come at the proper time topattern those wild rocks too, like the frail but hardy plants which, when spring comes, spangle here and there the polar snow

[!quote] Quotable/Concept/General Idea: * a note of importance

Page: 290 (84.30%) @ 02 Oct 2023 12:11:00 PM

perfumes, colors seemed to me of any value; forthis alternation of images had brought about a change of direction in my desire, and—as abrupt as those that occur now and then in music—a complete change of tone in my sensibility. Thus it came about that a simple variation in the atmosphere was enough toprovoke this modulation in me without any need to wait for the return of a season. Foroften, in one season, we find a day that has strayed from another and that immediatelyevokes its particular pleasures, lets us experience

[!important] Striking/Intense: another one!

Raw

# Proust, Marcel - Swann's Way
##### Marcel Proust

## PART II - Swann in Love
### Page: 166 (48.26%) @ 28 Sep 2023 01:11:00 PM

It even seemed, for a moment, that this love for a phrase of music would have to open in Swann the possibility of a sort of rejuvenation. He had for so long given up directing his life toward an ideal goal and limited it to the pursuit of everyday satisfactions that he believed, without ever saying so formally to himself, that this would not change as long as he lived; much worse, since his mind no longer entertained any lofty ideas, he had ceased to believe in their reality, though without being able to deny it altogether.

> [!question] Thought Provoking: a common pitfall.


### Page: 173 (50.29%) @ 02 Oct 2023 12:09:00 PM

fix you up,” and with the conceited little laugh she would have given at some invention of her own, had settled behind Swann’s head, and under his feet, cushions of Japanese silk which she kneaded as if she were lavish with these riches and careless of their value. But when the valet came bringing one after another the many lamps which, nearly all enclosed in large Chinese vases, burned singly or in pairs, all on different pieces of furniture as though on altars, and which hadsummoned back to the already almost nocturnal again in her, nevertheless that resemblance conferred a certain beauty on her too, made her more precious. Swann reproached himself for having misunderstood the value of a creature who would have appeared captivating to the great Sandro, and he felt happy that his pleasure in seeing Odette could be justified by his own aesthetic culture. He told himself

> [!quote] Quotable/Concept/General Idea

## PART III - Place-Names: The Name
### Page: 288 (83.72%) @ 02 Oct 2023 12:09:00 PM

AMONG THE BEDROOMS whose images I summoned up most often in my nights of insomnia, none resembled less the rooms at Combray, dusted with an atmosphere that was grainy, pollinated, edible, and devout, than the room at the Grand-Hôtel de la Plage, at Balbec, whose enamel-painted walls contained, like the polished sides of a swimming pool which tints the water blue, a pure azure salt sea air. The Bavarian decorator commissioned to furnish the hotel had varied the design schemes of the rooms and on three sides, along the walls, in the one I was occupying, had placed low bookcases, with glass panes, in which, depending on the spot they occupied, and by an effect he had not foreseen, one part or another of the changing picture of the sea was reflected, unfurling a frieze

> [!quote] Quotable/Concept/General Idea

### Page: 289 (84.01%) @ 02 Oct 2023 12:10:00 PM

geology—and just as completely outside human history as the Ocean itself or the Great Bear,4 with those wild fishermen for whom no more than for the whales had there been any Middle Ages—it had been a great delight for me to see it suddenly take its place in the sequence of the centuries, now that it had experienced theRomanesque period, and to know that the Gothic trefoil had come at the proper time topattern those wild rocks too, like the frail but hardy plants which, when spring comes, spangle here and there the polar snow

> [!quote] Quotable/Concept/General Idea: * a note of importance


### Page: 290 (84.30%) @ 02 Oct 2023 12:11:00 PM

perfumes, colors seemed to me of any value; forthis alternation of images had brought about a change of direction in my desire, and—as abrupt as those that occur now and then in music—a complete change of tone in my sensibility. Thus it came about that a simple variation in the atmosphere was enough toprovoke this modulation in me without any need to wait for the return of a season. Foroften, in one season, we find a day that has strayed from another and that immediatelyevokes its particular pleasures, lets us experience

> [!important] Striking/Intense: another one!

The default reading app for Onyx Boox Devices. ↩︎

Unlived Lives of Ours

2025-06-05T18:10:46.000Z

SL	Title	Location
#⁣1	The Encounter	Badda, Dhaka
#⁣2	The Accusitions	Badda, Dhaka

অপলাপ ০১ আমার শহর

2023-07-11T19:39:52.000Z

পৃথিবীর আর দশটা দেশের মাপকাঠিতে যাকে শহর বলা চলে খুলনা বোধহয় তা না। বিভাগীয় এই শহরটিকে মফস্বল বললে খুব একটা মানহানি হয় না তার। এর গুরুত্বপূর্ণ কেন্দ্রগুলোর মধ্যে দূরত্ব সময়ের হিসেবে ঘন্টা পেরোয় না।

আমি এই শহরে জন্মেছি ও বেড়ে উঠেছি। শহরটা আমার মজ্জাগত, আমার নাগরিকতা এই শহরের ছাঁচে ঢালা। ব্রিটিশ ভারতে কোলকাতার 'ভদ্র' বাবু এবং দুষ্টু সাহেবরা আসতেন ভৈরবের তীরে বড়বাজার সংলগ্ন এলাকায়, দেহপসারিণীদের কাছে। বাবু সমাজে একজন-দুজন রক্ষিতা রাখা নৈমিত্তিক হলেও একটা জাত ছিল শুনেছি যারা এটা রাখতে লজ্জা পেতেন। তাই এই গ্রাম্য নগরে তাদের পদধূলি পড়ত। সেই থেকে বড়বাজারের পত্তন, শহরের প্রসার। সে আমার যুগ না। আমি জন্মেছি বিংশ শতাব্দীর একেবারে শেষ সীমান্তে। পৃথিবীর প্রবল ঘুর্ণনে ছিটকে পড়েছি একবিংশের গোড়ায়। আমার চেতনায় বিংশ আছে ছায়া হয়ে, একবিংশ ভাস্বর।

জন্ম থেকে কৈশোর কেটেছে দক্ষিণ খালিশপুরে। খালিশপুর খুলনার মূল শিল্প এলাকা ছিল। আমার শৈশবেই খালিশপুরের মিলগুলো একটা একটা করে বন্ধ হয়ে গেলো কয়েকদিনের মধ্যেই। কর্মহীন মানুষ ক্রমে সম্বল হারিয়ে নিরন্ন হলো। কোনো একটা সময় কেউ লঙ্গরখানাও খুলেছিল বলে শুনেছি। আস্তে আস্তে শহরটা ফাঁকা হয়ে গেলো। একটা জমজমাট ভাব, সর্বদাই একটা শহুরে গুঞ্জন বন্ধ হয়ে গেলো। ওই এলাকায় যাতায়াত ছিল কম। তাই, মিলগুলোর মোড়ে ছুটির সময়কার জনসমুদ্র আমার কাছে কেবল শোনা কথা। একটু বড় হয়ে শুধু তার ধ্বংসাবশেষ দেখেছি। মিল, চিত্রালি এবং হাউজিং বাজার। তাও জমজমাটির কমতি নেই।

পড়তাম রোটারী স্কুলে, খালিশপুর এলাকায় নামডাকওয়ালা স্কুল বলা চলে। সংলগ্ন একটা সরকারি গ্যারেজ ও অন্য আরেকটি স্থাপনা, কয়েকটা গুদামঘরের মত দেখতে। গ্যারেজে সারিসারি নষ্ট জীপ, ক্রেন, রোলার, পাশে সিমেন্টের পাইপ, পীচের ড্রাম এবং গুদামের পাশে কোনো একটি ম্যানহোলে একটি মেয়ে কবে পড়ে মারা গিয়েছিল তার অতৃপ্ত আত্মা (অতৃপ্তি বোধহয় আইসক্রিম বা চটপটির) এইসব নিয়ে বেশ একটা রোমাঞ্চকর ছিল পরিবেশ।

আমার সময়ে শহরের মূল উপজীব্য জীর্ণতা। সময় এবং ইমারত দুটোরই। পরিচিতদের মুখে শোনা এই সেদিন শেয়াল দৌড়নো মাঠে বা বড় পুকুর ভরাট করে দালান তোলার কাহিনী। কোনোকিছুই ঠিক সাজানো-গোছানো নয়, কোনো কিছুই এমন নেই যাকে ঠিকঠাক সুশ্রী বলা চলে। নতুন স্থাপনাগুলোও বুঝি কয়েকদিনেই শহরের ধূসরতা গা ঢাকা দেয়। মানুষগুলোও তেমন, অগোছালো। এমনকি গুছিয়ে ওঠার তাগিদ বা ইচ্ছা কোনোটাই বুঝি নেই। তারা গাছাড়া রকমের উদারও বটে। পাঁচটাকার ভাড়ায় তিনটাকা নিয়ে নেন এমন নিস্পৃহতায় যেন জাগতিক সকল দায় থেকে নির্বাণ লাভ করেছেন। বস্তুত, গরীবেরও গরীব তারা। আমার কৈশোর তেমন সময়েই কেটেছে। সারি সারি অনুচ্চ ভবন, মাঝেমধ্যে কোনোটা খুব বেশি পুরনো, গত শতাব্দীর বনেদিয়ানার ভগ্নাবশেষ। মিল বন্ধ হওয়ার পর অল্পই মানুষ শহরে। চলতে গেলে গায়ে ধাক্কা লাগে না, দ্রুত চলার তাগিদ নেই, কিছু করার স্পৃহা নেই। পুরো শহরটা যেন তন্দ্রার ভেতর।

শহরের সংস্কৃতির পতাকাবাহীরা আর সব জায়গার মতই। দিবস ধরে ধরে তারা প্রোগ্রাম করেন। একটা বইমেলাও হয় ফেব্রুয়ারিতে, প্রতিবছর বইয়ের দোকান কমে কমে কসমেটিকসের দোকান বাড়ে। মানুষের কাছে বেশ মজার একেকটা ব্যাপার এসব। মজাটা কেটে গেলে আবার ঢিমে তালে জীবন চলে।

যে সময়টার কথা বলছি, অর্থাৎ আমার শৈশব ও কৈশোর, সেসময়ে আমার এমনটা লাগেনি। কেননা তুলনীয় কিছু ছিল না। চাকরিসূত্রে কিছুদিন ঢাকায় থেকে এসে আমি শহরের এই দিকগুলো আবিষ্কার করেছি একরকম। পামুকের মত এক উজুন ভর করেছে আমার ওপর। এবং ইস্তানবুলের মত এই উজুন আমার ব্যক্তিগত নয়। এই শহর আমায় এমন হতে বাধ্য করছে এ আমি নির্দ্বিধায় বলতে পারি। আমার শৈশবে বা কৈশোরে নয়, ঠিক এখন আমি স্মৃতিকাতর।

আমি আর দশজনের মত ব্যক্তিগত স্মৃতিকাতরতার কথা বলছি না। এ শহরকেন্দ্রিক। আমার স্মৃতির অগোছালো শহরটা এখন গুছিয়ে নিচ্ছে নিজেকে। পদ্মায় একটা সেতু হবে এই গুঞ্জন শুরু হতে না হতে ব্যবসায়ীদের চোখ পড়ছে এদিকে। শহরের উন্নতি হচ্ছে, স্কাইস্ক্র্যাপার উঠছে, হালফ্যাশানের বিপণি, রেস্তোরাঁ, জাতীয় ও আন্তর্জাতিক ব্র্যান্ডগুলোর আউটলেট, রাস্তায় অনেক বেশি গাড়ি সব মিলে শহরটা যাচ্ছে বদলে। বছরদশেক পর শহরটার সাথে কিছুতেই তার দরিদ্রবেশের মিল পাওয়া যাবে না।

এ তো গেলো স্মৃতি ও ভবিষ্যতের পার্থক্য, কাতরতাটুকু অন্যখানে। এই দরিদ্র শহরের সাথে আমার এক গভীর প্রেম ছিল। মনে পড়ে, সদ্য কৈশোরে এক যন্ত্রণা অকারণেই মাথায় চেপে বসত। আবছা আলোর বা আলোহীন রাস্তাগুলোয় আমার বহু সন্ধ্যা কেটেছে। আমি নিজেকে চিনতে চেয়েছি। বাজার, মানুষজন পেরিয়ে একেকটা ফাঁকা রাস্তায় সোডিয়াম বাতির নীচে দাঁড়িয়েছি আর প্রতারক আলো আমার রঙ দিয়েছে বদলে। উপহাস করেছে। বহুদিন আমি সকালে শুধু রোদ মাখতে রাস্তায় নেমেছি। সবকিছুতেই একরকম স্বাচ্ছন্দ্য ভর করত। তবু সবকিছুতেই এক মনখারাপি। সেই বুঝি প্রেমিক হয়ে ওঠা। বুকের ভেতর একটা তার বাঁধা হলো কোমলগান্ধারে।

মনে পড়ে, তবু স্নেহার্দ্র শহরটা তার মলিনতা নিয়ে, সাদামাটা মানুষজন আর নিস্তরঙ্গতার ইশারায় বারবারই বোধিবৃক্ষের নীচে বসিয়েছে। আমি কবিতা লিখতে শিখেছি। সেইসব দিনে অগোছালো দোকানে ঢুকে আধ-নোংরা গ্লাসে জল খেতে অগোছালো আমাকে মোটেও অদ্ভুত ঠেকতো না। ঝা-চকচকে নতুন শহর তার পুরনো প্রেমিককে দেখে যদি না দেখার ভান করে তা আমার কাছে যতই ব্যথার হোক না কেন, তার কাছে বেঁচে থাকার প্রশ্ন। পরিষ্কার টাইলস্ বাঁধানো ফ্লোরে আমার পদধূলি কাম্য নয়।

আমি আমার পরিচিত শহরটাকে আমার "শহরনামা" সংকলনে ধরে রাখতে চেয়ে ব্যর্থ হয়েছি। তবুও এই লেখাটার চেয়ে সেগুলোর ব্যর্থতা বোধহয় কম। কেননা, যা বলতে চাই তা গদ্যে কিছুতেই বলতে পারি না আর কবিতায় তা না বলেই আভাসটা দেওয়া যায়। বস্তুতঃ শহরটা আমার কাছে নারীর রূপে ধরা দিয়েছে বারবার। মানিনী, মোহময়ী, চিরপরিচিতা। যেমনটা ছিল শহরনামার প্রথম কবিতায়:

রক্তজবার মত ব্যাকুলতা বয়ে
আমি খুব রাঙা আর
ছাতিমের মত
বুকভরা কামনা-সুবাস
আমাকে জাগিয়ে রাখে প্রহরে প্রহর।
সারি সারি ল্যাম্পপোস্ট-প্লাজা-ক্যাফে-নিয়ন সাইনে
অভিমানী নিঃশ্বাস-
জেগে আছে নগরী আমার।

এই শহরেই, এই শহরের মতই একজন নারীকে আমি ভালোবেসেছি। সেও আমার সময়ের মানুষ। অথচ, শহরের মত একটু প্রাচীনপন্থীও হয়তবা। তারও অনেক পরিবর্তন এসেছে সময়ের সাথে। এই শহরেই আমি তাকে প্রণয়ের কথা বলেছি,

বাতিগুলো মেপে মেপে
সাজালো কে আমার শহরে?
ফাঁকে ফাঁকে জমে আছে ঘন
ততটা অন্ধকার
যতটা আমার প্রয়োজন
বলে দিতে প্রণয়ের কথা
এঁকে দিতে কাতরতা-গ্রাফিটি আমার

তার সাথে ভাগ করে নিয়েছি শহরটা। বহু সন্ধ্যা এবং ভোর, অনেকগুলো দিন আমরা শহরটার অলি-গলি, পার্ক-ক্যাফেতে, রিকশায় কাটিয়েছি। কত বৃষ্টি-ঝড়, হঠাৎ আবিষ্কৃত পুকুরপাড়… শহরটা সঙ্গেই ছিল। একসময়, তাকে জীবনের প্রয়োজনে দূরে যেতে হয়েছে। আমি চেষ্টা করেছি শহরটা তার কাছে পৌঁছে দিতে:

শহর কি ততটাই যতটুকু চোখে দেখা যায়?
ছুঁলে হাত
সেও বয়ে নিয়ে যায় আমার শহর।
মাঝরাতে যদি
চিবুকে গড়ায় তার জল,
মুছতে না মুছতেই চেয়ে দেখি
মহাপ্লাবনের বেগে ভেসে গেছে
শহর ও শরীরের গলিঘুঁজি পথ।
আমি নুহ নই, তাই ডুবি
বেছে নিই নির্বাণ সর্বনাশের। (বৃষ্টি)

একটাকার 'পেপসি' আইসক্রিম বা দুটাকার চটপটি পালিয়েছে বহুদিন হলো‌(রবীন্দ্রনাথের গোলাপি রেউড়ির মত)। হতদরিদ্র, অগোছালো শহরটাও তার খোলস বদলে ফেললো বলে। আমার মত মানুষ যারা সহজে ভালোবাসা বদলাতে পারে না তারা কাতর হবে। পৃথিবীর মহাযজ্ঞে তারা সংখ্যালঘু। শহরটা তার আলুথালু চুলের মত সরুসরু রাস্তাঘাট আর আবছা আলো নিয়ে সরে পড়বার আগে আমি রোজ তার কাছে যেতে চাই। খুব চেনা এই শহরটাকে আরেকটু চিনতে চাই:

আটপৌরে অন্ধকার সদাগরি হিসেবের মত
আমার সে জানা আছে।
আমার কী জানা আছে সবটাই তার?
উত্তাপ, হিম।
প্রদোষে পথের কাছে যাই
কুয়াশায় জুবুথুবু ল্যাম্পপোস্ট-পাশে
যদি থাকে দাঁড়িয়ে আঁধার?

02 The Accusitions

2023-02-09T06:12:25.000Z

"Recall the point of division— from when you started to live and I became the unlived one," said he.

"Was it the moment when I thought that poverty is unbearable?", I asked.
"Or, when I badly required freedom.
Wasn't I already free?
There is no single point. Is there?"

"There isn't.", he agreed. "You see, I accumulated over time. There is no single point from where I started to exist. I, the unlived one, lived through everything you have chosen not to live. You could have written something, something that comes from the deepest of our convictions and serenity. Look at my face, I know that serenity. You could have been a tramp to travel through the mountain passes. Look at my sandals, they are worn on many travels. You've treaded the sunrise by the sea with feather-bedded sleep. In short, you chose security for life over life itself."

"Isn't that normal?", I asked.

"Normal it is, surely. But can life be reduced to the norms alone? What is normal about life, statistically speaking?", retorted the unlived one back. "It is normal to drown, life is in the swimming. The norms are limiting."

01 The Encounter

2023-02-09T06:11:59.000Z

On an ordinary day a few months back, I first met a person who is not me. That is NOT to say that it is another person— for I met many other persons throughout my life. This person who is not me could have been who I am, but our temporality robbed his reality.

Or, that is how I thought reality stands until on an ordinary day I met a person who is not me.

Let's call this person the unlived one.

If you're annoyed by this rhetorical tint in my writing (and justifiably so) let me assure you that this is necessary. I could've written this monologue in Lojban for all I care. However, these curves and crooks of this style are essential— for the unlived one cannot live but this exaggeration.

One doesn't live by bread alone. We live by pretty places to live, dresses to were, gadgets to show off. Surely, we live by avoiding pain and maximising happiness.

But the unlived one, by definition, does not live. Therefore, he unlives by the texture of croissants. He unlives in a dark cave or under the open sky, naked to the root of his existence. He thrives on suffering.

It is not possible to shake hands with the unlived one once you meet him, no. It will destroy you— in the likeness of the event of anti-matter colliding with the matter. The safest thing to do is to stare at him, from a distance, to measure him as you would do in a duel.

And so I measured him. He is thin to the point of being malnourished. And energetic like a fiend for his existence (or the lack of it to be more precise) does not put any weight to slow him down. He is not the one who cares. Contempt is all he is accustomed to. He is not the one who fights. For him, the duel is a dance.

The unlived one sat, so did I. He talked, and I listened before the utterances.

ভাড়া

2024-03-12T03:14:45.000Z

সন্ধ্যা নামলে অফিসগুলো থেকে হুড়মুড়িয়ে মানুষজন বেরিয়ে আসে। তারপর প্রাইভেট কার, রিক্সা, বাস…, ফুটপাথে হকার, তারপাশে হাইরাইজগুলো থেকে বেরনো আরো আরো মানুষ… সামগ্রিক ক্যাকোফনি… রাস্তায় পা ফেলার জায়গা থাকে না।

এমন সময় বের হলে মূল তাড়াটা থাকে এই রাস্তা ছেড়ে পালানো। কিন্তু সমস্যাটা এই যে অফিস পাড়ায় ছুটির সময়টায় মাঝারি দূরত্বেও রিকশা পাওয়া দুষ্কর। একে তো সোসাইটির রিকশা ছাড়া গুলশান যাবে না, তার উপর জ্যাম ঠেলে কেউ যেতেও চায় না। কিছুক্ষণ রিকশার খোঁজে এদিক-ওদিক ঘুরে একটা সোসাইটির রিকশা পেয়ে ডাক দিলাম, "মামা যাবেন! গুলশান এক!"

— আসেন মামা।
— কত?
— যা ভাড়া দিয়েন।

রিকশা গুলশান গেলো, যেমন যায়। সারাদিন পরিশ্রম ও ক্যাকোফনিতে রিকশাওয়ালারা ক্রমে মানুষ থেকে ভুত হয়ে ওঠে, আর ভুতের মত রিকশা টানে প্রাইভেট কারগুলোর ফাঁকফোকর গলে, লেন ছেড়ে ওভারটেক করে, সুযোগ পেলে ফুটপাথের ওপর দিয়ে। গুলশানে থামলো রবি অফিসের সামনের রিকশার লাইনের শেষে। মানিব্যাগ থেকে আমি পঞ্চাশ টাকা বের করে তার দিকে বাড়িয়ে দিলাম, নিলো না। আমি আরো দশ টাকা বাড়িয়ে দিলাম। তবুও নিলো না। রিকশাওয়ালা বললো, "টাকা চাই না।"

বিরক্তিকর। বললাম, "তবে?"

— আপনার ইহকাল-পরোকালের আনুগত্য দেন।
— কীহ্!
— আপনার ইহকাল-পরোকালের আনুগত্য দেন।
— মানে?
— ওইটা আমার ভাড়া!

আমি থতমত খেয়ে গেলাম।

— আপনি ভাড়া ঠিক করে উঠছিলেন?
— না।
— তাইলে তো আমি যা চাই দেওয়া উচিত।
— মামা, ইয়ার্কি মারেন?
— অবশ্যই। আমি শয়তান। মানুষের সাথে তো আমার ইয়ার্কিরই সম্পর্ক। এখন আনুগত্য দেন, শপথ করেন।
— আপনি শয়তান?
— কে না? হা হা! কিন্তু আমি আদি শয়তান, সাপ, বিতাড়িত।
— বিপদে ফেললেন। আপনারে মানলে তো ভগবানরেও মানতে হয়।
— হ, তা হয়। আমি হইলাম ভগবানের খুঁত, ব্লাইন্ডস্পট, তার ফ্যাটালিটির প্যাথোস। আমারে মানলে ভগবানরে স্বীকার করা লাগে, তয় মানা লাগে না। না মানার নাম শয়তান।
— আচ্ছা, দুইজনরেই স্বীকার করলাম, দুইজনরেই মানলাম না। আনুগত্য দেবো না, এখন কী উপায় বলেন।
— না দিলে আপনি কথা রাখলেন না, পাপী। অবশ্য আপনি পাপে ডরান না। ডরান নিজের ইগোর থেইকা ছোট হয়ে যাওয়া। এইটা আপনারে ভোগাবে।
— আর যদি দিই?
— দিলে ধরেন… আমার একটা চন্দনকাঠের সিন্দুক আছে, সেইটায় আটকায় রাখবো আপনার আত্মা।
— লাভ কী!
— জাজমেন্ট ডে'র আগের রাতে ধরেন সব ছাইড়া দিমু। আত্মার জোনাকিরা ফুরফুর করে উড়ে বেড়াবে।
— এই করার জন্য সৃষ্টি থেকে লোকজনরে জ্বালাচ্ছেন?
— অবশ্যই! তা বাদে আপনার আত্মায় আমার কী প্রয়োজন?

নয়াপুরাণ

2024-03-12T03:14:30.000Z

প্রজাপতি ব্রহ্মা তখনও প্রজাহীন। এমতবস্থায় প্রায় সকল পুরাণে মানুষের সৃষ্টি করা হয়। ব্রহ্মা একটির বদলে তিনটি প্রজাতি সৃষ্টি করলেন: দেব, মানব, দানব। তারপর শুরু হলো শিক্ষাকার্য।

গুণে পরাকাষ্ঠা দেবতাদের শিক্ষাকার্য শেষ হলো সবার আগে। সমাবর্তনে উপদেশ চাইলে ব্রহ্মা বললেন শুধুমাত্র একটি অক্ষর, "দ"। জিগেস করলেন, "কী বুঝলে?" দেবতারা থাকবে স্বর্গরাজ্যে, যেখানে অনন্ত বসন্ত বিরাজে। ভোগের শেষ নেই। দেবতারা বুঝলেন তাদের রিপু দমন করতে বলা হয়েছে। প্রণাম, অতঃপর প্রস্থান।

মানবেরা সমাবর্তনে এলে, ব্রহ্মা আবারও বললেন, "দ"। মানবেরা বুঝলো তাদের দান করতে বলা হয়েছে। কেবলই সঞ্চয়ের বাহানা কিনা! তারাও চলে গেলো মর্ত্যলোকে সেই উপদেশ নিয়ে।

প্রকট দানবেরা এলো, ব্রহ্মা বললেন, "দ"। তারা বুঝলো তাদের দয়া করতে বলা হয়েছে। তারাও চলে গেলো।

তেমনটাই বলা আছে পুরাণে।

দেবতাদের স্খলন ও পতন হলো অসংখ্যবার, মানুষেরা কেবল সঞ্চয়ই করে চললো, দানবেরা বহুবার স্বর্গ-মর্ত্য দখলে প্রবৃত্ত হলো।

এইসব সৃষ্টিযজ্ঞের পরে ব্রহ্মা সৃষ্টি করলেন একটা জাত যারা ঠিক মানুষ না। যা শেখালেন তা কর্মও না, অপকর্ম না, বরং অকর্ম। অকর্মের কোনো উদ্দেশ্য থাকে না, থাকে স্বাধীনতা। তারা দেবত্বকে করলো উপহাস, মনুষ্যত্বকে করলো প্রশ্ন, দানবকে একটুও ভয় করলো না। সমাবর্তনে ব্রহ্মা যথারীতি বললেন, "দ"।

এমন কিছু তো নেই যা ছাড়া তাদের চলেই না, দমনের শিক্ষার বিশেষ দরকার নেই তাই। সঞ্চয়ের প্রবৃত্তি নেই, নেই দানের প্রয়োজন। আগ্রাসীও নয় তারা। তারা বুঝলো তাদের দুঃখ করতে বলা হচ্ছে। তারা কেবলই দুঃখ করলো। সুরে-সিম্ফনিতে, ভাস্কর্যে-ছবিতে, কবিতায়-গল্পে তারা কেবল দুঃখই করে চললো।

আত্মার সৃষ্টি

2024-03-12T03:14:20.000Z

ইশ্বর (খুব একটা মানবীয় নয়) মহাবিশ্ব সৃষ্টি করলেন, হয়ত নিজের ভেতর থেকেই, এবং ঈশ্বর হয়ে উঠলেন।

ঈশ্বর কি খুশি ছিলেন? আমরা খুশি হওয়া বলতে যা বুঝি, ঈশ্বর সম্ভবত তাকে পাত্তাই দেন না, তবে সেটা বোঝা তার জন্য নিশ্চয়ই অসম্ভব না। ঈশ্বর কি একা ছিলেন? ঈশ্বর সবকিছুই ধারণ করেন, তার বাইরে কিছুই নেই। একা থাকা-না থাকার প্রশ্নই আসে না।

তিনি নিজের ভেতরে তারকাপুঞ্জ দেখেন, তারাদের জন্ম, জ্বলে যাওয়া, মৃত্যু দেখেন। সব নিজের মধ্যেই, শুধু সম্ভবনাই অসীম। ঈশ্বর প্রথমবারের মত অদ্ভুত এক নির্লিপ্ততার মুখোমুখি হলেন। এক স্থিরতা যা হয়ত সকল কাজের সমষ্টি। ঈশ্বরের দুঃখবোধ হলো।

ঈশ্বর তো কার্য-কারণ সম্পর্কের অনুগত নন। ফলত, তার দুঃখবোধের কোনো কারণ খুঁজে পাওয়া গেলো না। তিনি এই 'অকারণ'-কে মুড়ে দিলেন দুঃখবোধে। নাম দিলেন 'আত্মা'। মানুষের কিছু দুঃখবোধের তাই তল পাওয়া যায় না। ভেতরে গেলে কেবল এক অনিবার্য 'অকারণ'-এর দেখা মেলে।

Amar Singh Chamkila_ A Mirror

2024-05-17T10:41:52.000Z

সম্প্রতি ইমতিয়াজ আলির 'অমর সিং চমকিলা' দেখলাম। সাধারণত, মুভি রিভিউ আমি লিখি না, লেখার বুৎপত্তিও আমার নেই। এই মতামত বা নিরীক্ষাগুলো ব্যক্তিগত ধারণা হিসেবে নেওয়াই ভালো।

যে বিষয়টি নিয়ে বলার জন্য লিখতে বসলাম তার আগে ২টি গৌণ বিষয়ে কথা বলে নিই।

প্রথমত, কলাকুশলী ও অভিনেতাদের নিষ্ঠা আমায় মুগ্ধ করেছে। একটি সাক্ষাৎকারে 'বিদা কারো' গানটির যে ক্রিয়েটিভ প্রসেসের আভাস মিললো তাতে বোঝা যায় যে সাধারণ বাণিজ্যিক কাজের মত এটি নয়।

দ্বিতীয়ত, ইমতিয়াজ আলির ইতিহাসনিষ্ঠতা প্রশংসনীয়। গল্পের প্রয়োজনে ইতিহাস বেঁকিয়ে-চুরিয়ে মিথ্যার সমকক্ষ করে তোলা সিনেমায় নতুন কিছু নয়। জন ন্যাশের বায়োপিক 'A beautiful mind' এ তার প্রথম প্রেমিকার কথা বেমালুম চেপে যাওয়া নিয়ে বেশ হাঙ্গামা হয়েছিলো।^[1] ইমতিয়াজ আলি খুব সুক্ষ্মভাবে সেই সমস্ত জায়গাতেই তার সৃষ্টিশীলতার নিদর্শন রেখেছেন যেখানে কোনোভাবেই ইতিহাস বিকৃতির দায় দেওয়া যায় না।

শিল্প যদি শিল্পীর সবচেয়ে ব্যক্তিগত সত্যভাষণ হয় তবে অমর সিং একজন শিল্পী। যেটি অমর সিং-এর ছিল না সেটি হলো artistic sophistication. তাই অমর সিং-এর গানগুলো যতটা ভালো সমাজের চালচিত্র, ততটা ভালো শিল্প নয়। বলা যেতে পারে, fine art-এর বিপরীতে এগুলো 'coarse art'. এই দিকটা মুভিতে বেশ ভালোভাবে উঠে এসেছে দুটি ঘটনায়। চমকিলা তার সাক্ষাৎকারে তো বলেছেনই তার গান সম্পর্কে নিজের ধারণা, তা বাদে কানাডায় তার শো ম্যানেজার যখন জানায় যে অমিতাভ বচ্চনের চেয়ে তার জন্য বেশি অতিরিক্ত সীট যুক্ত করতে হয়েছে তাতে চমকিলা ব্যথিত হন। তার শিল্পের সম্পর্কে যথেষ্ট নির্মোহ ধারণা তিনি রাখতেন।

কিন্তু তার শিল্পমান যেমনই হোক, তাকে মেরে ফেলার জন্য তা কি যথেষ্ট? পাঞ্জাবের আপামর জনতা তাকে শুনতেন। পামরে শুনত সন্ধ্যায় মদ খেয়ে, সুধীজন লুকিয়ে লুকিয়ে। সবাই যাকে শুনতো তাকেই কেন মেরে ফেলা? অমর সিং আসলে যতটা শিল্পী তারচেয়েও ভালো আয়না। তাতে পাঞ্জাবের সমাজের নোংরা দিকটা বেশ ভালোভাবে প্রতিফলিত হয়। যে নোংরাকে আমরা নোংরা বলেই জানি, কিন্তু কোনো বিকারের বশে রোজ গায়ে মেখে বসে থাকি, সেই নোংরাসমেত নিজেকে আয়নায় দেখতে কার-ই বা ভালো লাগে? পাঞ্জাবেরও ভালো লাগেনি। যখন লাগেনি তখন নোংরা পরিষ্কারের চেয়ে আয়নাটা ভেঙে ফেলাই বরং সহজ ও যুক্তিযুক্ত মনে হল। সামষ্টিক ইগো-তে আঘাত করলে তাকে হত্যা করা কিন্তু নতুন কিছু নয়। সক্রেটিস ও যীশুখৃষ্ট তার দুটি জনপ্রিয় উদাহরণ। সক্রেটিস, বা খৃষ্ট তাঁদের দর্শন বা ধর্মপ্রচারের জন্য মরেননি। মরেছিলেন ক্ষেপিয়ে তোলার জন্য, চমকিলাও তাই।

In 1951, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) hired Nash as a C. L. E. Moore instructor in the mathematics faculty. About a year later, Nash began a relationship with Eleanor Stier, a nurse he met while admitted as a patient. They had a son, John David Stier, but Nash left Stier when she told him of her pregnancy. (Full Article) ↩︎

হেমন্তের হাইকু

2024-03-12T05:34:05.000Z

2021-10-24T18:18:00+06:00

স্বচ্ছ বাতাসে
শঙ্খচাঁদ শিশির ঝরায়:
হেমন্তের রাত।

2021-10-25T10:15:32+06:00

অকাল বর্ষায়
নবান্নের মত এই প্রেম!
কই, কোজাগরী?

2021-10-26T09:51:41+06:00

হঠাৎ অতিথি
শহরের সঙ্ঘারামে:
সুমন্দ বাতাস।

2021-10-27T08:13:42+06:00

শিশির-জনমে
এই ক্ষীণ ধ্যান, এই স্নিগ্ধতা
কার্তিকের রাতে।

2021-10-30T10:00:07+06:00

কয়েকটি তারা,
পথ ভুলে আসা হাওয়া—
আহা রে জীবন!

বৃষ্টি

2023-07-11T11:26:24.000Z

ভিজলো অন্ধকার।
ভিজে গেলো পথ আর
ঘাসের শরীরে দ্যুতি ছড়ায় বরষা।
বুনোফুল, চারুলতা স্নান সেরে এলো।
এলোচুলে ঘ্রাণ তার সর্বনাশের।
সর্বনাশ ভিজলো,
সোঁদা মাটি বৃক্ষবীর্যে গরবিনী।
জানি তুমি বলবেই,
শহরনামায় নেই এই কবিতার স্থান কোনো।
চোখ মেলো, দেখো রোজ কংক্রিট ফুঁড়ে
অশ্বত্থ-বালক রাখে একথার সাক্ষ্যপ্রমাণ।
আমি জানি গাঢ় কালো ভেজা ভেজা পীচের শরীরে
অধর ছুঁইয়ে ধুলো প্রেমরসে ভিজে হলে কাদা
ছেনালপনায় তার কেটে যায় দিন,
বোকামানুষের জিন্সপ্যান্ট
কলুষিত হয় রোজ তার ছেনালিতে।
এসব শুনতে চাও?
অথবা বলতে পারি
একদিন বৃষ্টিতে ভিজে ভিজে জ্বর হলো যার
কপালে রাখলে হাত
আড়ষ্ঠ বিমূঢ় হলো যার দেহখানি
সেই চায় সবচেয়ে বেশি ছুঁতে,
ভিজে যেতে স্পর্শে আমার।
আমার উঠোন আর তার কারাগার
মাঝখানে অনেক যোজন।
মাঝখানে
ভিজলো তেপান্তর।
ভিজলো গ্রামের পথ।
বুকচিরে এভিনিউ হলো হাইওয়ে
হাইওয়ে, ট্রেনপথ, স্লিপার, পাথর
পাথর ও পথজুড়ে কথার পাহাড়,
পাহাড়টা ভেঙে ভেঙে চুপ করে ফের সমতল।
তার ঘর ব্যালকনি।
ব্যালকনি ভিজে,
ভিজিয়েছে
কাঁদিয়েছে
ফের ভিজিয়েছে তার দেহ।
শহর কি ততটাই যতটুকু চোখে দেখা যায়?
ছুঁলে হাত
সেও বয়ে নিয়ে যায় আমার শহর।
মাঝরাতে যদি
চিবুকে গড়ায় তার জল,
মুছতে না মুছতেই চেয়ে দেখি
মহাপ্লাবনের বেগে ভেসে গেছে
শহর ও শরীরের গলিঘুঁজি পথ।
আমি নুহ নই, তাই ডুবি
বেছে নিই নির্বাণ সর্বনাশের।

৯:৫১ pm, এপ্রিল ২৫, ২০১৫
খুলনা

প্রদোষ

2023-07-11T11:26:47.000Z

প্রদোষে পথের কাছে যাই।
পথের তো লন্ঠন নেই,
তার আছে দীপাবলি-
জ্বেলে বসে থাকে।
প্রদোষে পথের কাছে যাই
আমাদের সখ্য ভীষণ।

সে এক নগণ্য কবি
যার বোধি ডুবে গেছে শীতের প্রদোষে।
আঙুলের ফাঁক গলে চেতনার গভীর নিনাদ
স্থিত সুর, মধুর খেয়াল পড়ে যায়।
মসলিন বুনটে আবেগ
কোথাও কি ধরা পড়ে? আঙুল জানেনা।
প্রদোষে পথের কাছে যাই অন্ধকারে।
ধৃতরাষ্ট্রের মত-
কখনো যে দেখে নাই
নিজভূমে স্বর্ণাভ ফসলের রঙ।

নিস্তার

2024-10-30T14:57:34.000Z

[!quote-with-source] জীবনানন্দ দাশ
হে সময়গ্রন্থি, হে সূর্য, হে মাঘনিশীথের কোকিল, হে স্মৃতি, হে হিম হাওয়া,
আমাকে জাগাতে চাও কেন।

মরে গেলে কবিরা অনিন্দ্যসুন্দর হয়।
কবিরা হয় প্লেটোনিক আইডিয়াল,
পিথাগোরিয়ান সলিডস্।

মরে গেলে কবিরা বাতিঘরের মত
মহাকাশে জ্বলতে থাকে নিউট্রন স্টার।
মরে গেলে, শুনেছি, অত্যুজ্জ্বল হয়েছে কবিরা আগেও।

মরে গেলে কবিরা হয় অর্ধনারীশ্বর।
নয়ত, হঠাৎ নৃসিংহের মত কালের স্ফটিক ভেঙে
হেঁচকায় তুলে ফেলে আত্মা সমূল।

তথাপি, পৃথিবীর সাথে কবিদের দারুণ দ্বৈরথ।
কেবল সংঘাত, গতি, আর কোটি কোটি শূকরীর প্রসববেদনা…

কবিদের সাথে পৃথিবীর এতই বিবাদ
কেবল আলোর পথ
কেবল ইন্সটাগ্রাম
কেবল ভাইরাল দিন…
কেবল নিভৃতি নেই।

শেষমেশ কোলকাতা ট্রাম তুলে দিলো।
ট্রামের ক্যাচারে কন্ঠরোধ, ভেঙে যাওয়া উরু ও পাঁজর নিয়ে
কবিরা যে অবহেলে মরে যাবে— সে পথও বন্ধ হলো আজ।

নারী ও নগর

2023-07-11T11:26:03.000Z

শহর গিলছি প্রাণপণে
এবং মজ্জাগত অস্থিরতায়
টাওয়ারের বাতির মত লাল চোখে দেখি
চলে যায় কিছু মুখ,
যারা আর ফেরত আসেনা।

এখানে এ কথাগুলো
অভিধান থেকে ছেঁড়া শব্দে গাঁথিনি।
নাগরিক স্থবিরতা
গতি ব্যথা প্রণয়ের কথকতা
গ্রাফিটি এঁকেছি।
ল্যাম্পপোস্ট-বর্শায় আঁধারের পিঠ ফুঁড়ে
দাঁড়িয়েছে যোদ্ধা যুবতী
আমার শহর!

এভিনিউ-স্ট্রীটগুলো প্রগলভ তরুণীর মত
উচ্চারণে অনর্গল
শহরের বিপরীত কোণ থেকে গল্প সাজায়।
আমি শুনি,
আমি খুঁজি খুব,
কারো আদলের মুখ,
কারো ঘ্রাণ খুব পরিচিত।

বাতিগুলো মেপে মেপে
সাজালো কে আমার শহরে?
ফাঁকে ফাঁকে জমে আছে ঘন
ততটা অন্ধকার
যতটা আমার প্রয়োজন
বলে দিতে প্রণয়ের কথা
এঁকে দিতে কাতরতা-গ্রাফিটি আমার,
কানে কানে বলে দিতে
আমি বুকে বয়ে চলি আরেক নগর,
স্কাইস্ক্র্যাপারের সারি
বেদনা-আকাশ ছুঁয়ে দিলে
বিষাদের ছায়া পড়ে
রাজপথে তার।
মেহগনি বীজগুলো
ঘুরে ঘুরে ঝরে যেই মসৃণতায়
রাতজাগা আলোগুলো
যেভাবে কেটেছে দাগ পেলব আঁধারে
সেভাবে ব্রাশের স্ট্রোকে দেয়ালে দেয়াল
জমা রাখি আমার বেদনা,
যেভাবে জমিয়ে রাখে শহর আমার।

২০১৪-০৭-২৯ ১৭:৩৫
খুলনা

আশ্বিনের রাত

2024-10-28T18:14:45.000Z

[!quote-with-source] Vincent Van Gogh
Be clearly aware of the stars and infinity on high. Then life seems almost enchanted after all.

আশ্বিনের রাতের আকাশ নীল—
সেখানে তারারা
আরো কাছে ভেসে আসে।

আশ্বিনের রাতের আকাশ ঠিক কালো নয়— নীল।
বাতাস শান্ত নদ,
তারারা সারাটা রাত ভেসে থাকে বাতাসে বাতাসে,
আকাশের নীলে? আমাদের নীলে?

আশ্বিনের রাত দূরত্ব কমিয়ে আনে মানুষ ও আকাশে।
মানুষের থেকে দূরে থাকা মানুষেরা
আশ্বিনের রাতে—
আকাশের কাছাকাছি হয়,
নীল হয়,
ক্রমশ আকাশ হয়ে যায়।

The Shelf

2026-05-05T14:19:45.000Z

These are all the books (and notes) I've been mentioning in this garden.

Title	Notes	Tags
"Differance"	Notes: Differance by Jacques Derrida	#philosophy #Phenomenology
1984	Notes: -	#book #dystopian #novel #fascism
21 Lessons for the 21st Century	Notes: -	#history #pop
A History of Reading	Notes: A History of Reading by Alberto Manguel	#bestreads #history
A Little Larger Than the Entire Universe	Notes: -	#book #Poetry
A Musical Offering	Notes: A Musical Offering by Luis Sagasti	#art #european #history #music #russian #western-art #wwii #bestreads
A People's History of the United States	Notes: A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn	#america #history #politics #colonialism #vietnam
A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies	Notes: A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies	#america #european #history
Admiring Silence	Notes: Admiring Silence by Gurnah Abdulrazak	#african #colonialism #european #novel
Against Interpretation and Other Essays	Notes: Against Interpretation and Other Essays by Susan Sontag	#america #art #european #literature #cinema #plays #criticism #language
Animal Farm	Notes: Animal Farm by George Orwell	#book #dystopian
Annihilation of Caste: The Annotated Critical Edition	Notes: Annihilation of Caste by B.R. Ambedkar	#bestreads
Barabbas	Notes: Barabbas by Par Lagerkvist	#novel #christianity
Barracoon: The Story of the Last "Black Cargo"	Notes: Barracoon by Zora Neale Hurston	#african #anthropology
Being and Time	Notes: Being and Time by Martin Heidegger	#existentialism #ontology #philosophy
Between the World and Me	Notes: Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates	#african #america #bestreads
Cosmos	Notes: Notes from Cosmos by Carl Sagan	#bestreads #science #pop
Fahrenheit 451	Notes: Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury	#dystopian #book #fiction
From Hell	Notes: -	#book #comics #graphic-novel #Novels
General System Theory	Notes: General System Theory: Foundations, Development, Applications	#book #Political #Science
Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid	Notes: Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas R. Hofstadter	#book #computer-science #ai #mathematics #philosophy #art #music #system-theory #logic #formal-logic #biology
Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego	Notes: Group Psychology and The Analysis of The Ego	#psychology
Homage to Catalonia	Notes: Homage to Catalonia	#anarchism #politics #spanish-civil-war
House of Leaves	Notes: Notes from House Of Leaves	#book #fiction
How Religion Evolved: And Why It Endures	Notes: How Religion Evolved by Robin Dunbar	#book
In the world	Notes: In the World	#bestreads
Istanbul	Notes: -	#bestreads
Man's Search for Meaning	Notes: Man’s Search For Meaning by Viktor E Frankl	#psychology #WWII
Manto: Selected Stories	Notes: -	#bestreads
Meditations: The Annotated Edition	Notes: Notes from Meditations: The Annotated Edition by Marcus Aurelius, Robin Waterfield (editor)	#greek #philosophy #roman #stoicism
My Name Is Red	Notes: My Name Is Red
Narrow Road to the Interior: And Other Writings	Notes: Narrow Road to the Interior and Other Writings	#history #japanese #travel #poetry #medieval #bestreads
On Photography	Notes: On Photography by Susan Sontag	#book #photography #art
On the Origin of Species	Notes: On the origin of species: by means of natural selection	#book #Evolution #biology
Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space	Notes: Pale Blue Dot	#science
Permanent Record	Notes: Permanent Record	#bestreads #autobiography
Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors	Notes: Notes from Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors	#book #science #pop
Silence	Notes: Silence by Shūsaku Endō	#Christianity #Japanese #novel
Spinoza's Ethics	Notes: Spinoza's Ethics by George Elliot	#philosophy #ethics #theology #classic
SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome	Notes: SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome	#european #history #politics #pop #roman
Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs	Notes: -	#book
Swann's Way	Notes: Swann's Way by Marcel Proust	#book #fiction
The Anarchy: The East India Company, Corporate Violence, and the Pillage of an Empire	Notes: The Anarchy	#colonialism #history #indian-subcontinent #politics #european
The Book of Disquiet: The Complete Edition	Notes: The Book of Disquiet by Fernando Pessoa
The Conference of the Birds	Notes: The Conference of the Birds by Attar	#book #poetry
The Craft of Dying	Notes: The Craft of Dying	#book #thanatology #sociology
The Denial of Death	Notes: The Denial of Death	#death #philosophy #psychology
The Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way: Nāgārjuna's Mūlamadhyamakakārikā	Notes: The Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way	#existentialism #Philosophy #Buddhism #bestreads
The God Delusion	Notes: The God Delusion	#atheism #science #theology
The Handmaid's Tale	Notes: -
The Hero With a Thousand Faces	Notes: The Hero With a Thousand Faces	#anthropology #myth #psychology
The Lord of the Rings	Notes: The Lord of the Rings	#book #fiction #high-fantasy #fantasy
The Message	Notes: The Message by Ta-Nehisi Coates	#book #Social #Science
The Ministry of Truth: The Biography of George Orwell's 1984	Notes: The Ministry of Truth, The Biography of George Orwell's 1984	#bestreads #history #politics
The Noble Eightfold Path: Way to the End of Suffering	Notes: The Noble Eightfold Path by Bhikkhu Bodhi	#buddhism #religion
The Poetry of Zen	Notes: The Poetry of Zen by Sam Hamill, J.P. Seaton	#buddhism #japanese #medieval #poetry
The Power of Myth	Notes: The Power of Myth	#bestreads
The Remains of the Day	Notes: -	#book #fiction
The Riddler: Year One	Notes: -	#book #Supervillains
The Sea	Notes: The Sea by John Banville
The Setting Sun	Notes: The Setting Sun
The Society of the Spectacle	Notes: The Society of the Spectacle by Guy Debord	#sociology #economics #marxism
The Souls of Black Folk	Notes: The Souls of Black Folk by W. E. B. Du Bois
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions	Notes: The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas S Kuhn	#book #Science #history
The Three-Body Problem	Notes: The Three-Body Problem	#book #science-fiction
The Water Dancer	Notes: -	#bestreads #african #america
Thought is Your Enemy	Notes: Notes from Thought is Your Enemy	#book #Biography #Autobiography #metaphysics #philosophy
Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus	Notes: Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus by Ludwig Wittgenstein	#logic #philosophy #bestreads
Treat It Gentle	Notes: Treat it Gentle by Sidney Bechet	#autobiography #history #music
Tristes Tropiques	Notes: Tristes Tropiques by Claude Lévi-Strauss	#anthropology #america #indian-subcontinent #european
V for Vendetta	Notes: -	#bestreads
Walking	Notes: Walking by Thomas Bernhard	#fiction
Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy	Notes: Weapons of Math Destruction	#ai #computer-science #programming #science
What I Believe	Notes: What I Believe	#law #philosophy #science #sociology #morality
What Is Real?: The Unfinished Quest for the Meaning of Quantum Physics	Notes: What is Real by Adam Becker	#science #physics #pop #quantum-physics #controversy #history
What is the Fourth Dimension?	Notes: What is the Fourth Dimension by Charles Howard Hinton	#book #philosophy #physics #scientific-romance
Why Men Fight	Notes: Why Men Fight by Bertrand Russell	#book #Philosophy #sociology #politics
বিষয় চলচ্চিত্র‌	Notes: -	#book #motion-pictures #criticism #essay

V for Vendetta_ Mentioned Works

2024-11-05T15:35:04.000Z

V for Vendetta is littered with literary and cultural references. These are the ones I have identified by far.

Issue 01

01 (Page 14-15)

The multiplying villanies of nature
Do swarm upon him.
…
And Fortune, on his damned quarry smiling,
Showed like a rebel's whore. But all's too weak,
For brave Macbeth — well he deserves that name
Disdaining fortune with his brandished steel
Which smoked with bloody execution,
Like Valor's minion carved out his passage
Till he faced the slave,
Which ne'er shook hands, nor bade farewell to him,

Source: William Shakespeare (Macbeth Act 1 Scene 2)

02 (Page 17)

Remember, remember, the 5th of November,
Gunpowder, treason and plot.
I see no reason
Why gunpowder treason
Should ever be forgot.

Source: Traditional Poem

03 (Page 22)

Dancing in the Street by Martha Reeves & The Vandellas

Issue 02

04 (Page 53)

O beauty, Till now I never knew thee!

Source: William Shakespeare (Henry VIII, Act 1 Scene 4)

05 (Page 56)

Vi veri veniversum vivus vici

Alternate version: Vi veri universum vivus vici
Translation: By the power of truth, I, while living, have conquered the universe.

Source: Robert Nye (Foust)

06 (Page 61)

Bring me my Bow of burning gold:
Bring me my arrows of desire:
Bring me my Spear: O clouds unfold!
Bring me my Chariot of fire!

I will not cease from Mental Fight,
Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand:
Till we have built Jerusalem,
In Englands green & pleasant Land.

Source: William Blake (Jerusalem)

07 (Page 68)

Please allow me to introduce myself
I'm a man of wealth and taste

Source: Rolling Stone (Sympathy for the Devil)

08 (Page 71)

1 The Lord is my shepherd : therefore can I lack nothing.
2 He shall feed me in a green pasture : and lead me forth beside the waters of comfort.
3 He shall convert my soul : and bring me forth in the paths of righteousness, for his Name's sake.
4 Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil : for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff comfort me.

Source: Psalm 23

09 (Page 74)

10 (Page 75)

I am the devil and I am here to do the devil’s work.

Source: Rob Zombie (The Devil’s Rejects, spoken by Otis Driftwood)

Issue 03

11 (Page 87)

There is more behind and inside V. than any of us had suspected. Not who, but what is she.

Source: Thomas Pynchon (V: Chapter 2)

12 (Page 91)

"Let's dig an enormous castle!" cried Moon-Face. "Then we can all sit on the top of it when the sea comes in."

"We can't," said Silky, suddenly looking sad.

"Why not?" cried Jo in surprise. "Isn't this the land of do-as-you-please?"

"Yes," said Silky. "But it's time we went back to the faraway tree. The land will soon be moving on- And nice as it is, we don't want to live here forever."

"Gracious No." Said Jo. "Our mother and father couldn't possibly do without us…"

Source: Enid Blyton (The Magic Faraway Tree)

13 (Page 97)

Delia Surridge explains Milgram experiment

Issue 04

14 (Page 122)

The first line of This Vicious Cabaret nods to the song "There's a Broken Heart for Every Light on Broadway" by Marin Mazzie and Zach Braff.

You can also listen to This Vicious Cabaret:

Issue 08

15 (Page 264)

It will all be over by the Christmas

People used to believe that the World War I will be finished by the Christmas of 1914.

16 (Page 279)

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

Source: W.B. Yeats (The Second Coming)

Issue IX

17 (Page 307)

Everytime we say goodbye
I die a little

Source: Song by Ella Fitzgerald

18 (Page 311)

Evey refers to Ray Bradbury's The Scythe, a short story.

19 (Page 313)

I'm waiting for the man.

Source: Song by Velvet Underground

20 (Page 325)

So, how can you tell me you're lonely
And say for you that the sun don't shine?
Let me take you by the hand
And lead you through the streets of London
Show you something to make you change your mind

Source: Streets of London, Song by Ralph McTell

Reading Note Convention

2023-12-26T04:33:27.000Z

This is the convention being followed for all reading notes exported after January 31, 2023 (and some previous exports):

KOReader/Exported	Kindle	Meaning
Lighten/Normal	Yellow	Quotables, concepts, and general ideas.
Underline	Orange	Further thought is required on this for clarity.
Highlighted/Bold	Blue	Something strikingly novel/Deeply moving/Highly thought-provoking.
~~Strikeout~~	Pink	In discord with this opinion.

Why Men Fight by Bertrand Russell

2023-12-28T06:42:01.000Z

Why Men Fight

Russell, Bertrand

INTRODUCTION

Page: 13 (8.50%) @ 23 Dec 2023 04:24:57 PM

The war poet Arthur Graeme West expressed this admiration eloquently. A few months before he was killed on the Western Front in June 1917 he wrote to Russell from the trenches near the Somme after reading Principles of Social Reconstruction:
It is only on account of thoughts such as yours that it seems worth while surviving the war … what we feared until your book came was that we would find no one in England who would build with us. Remember, then, that we are to be relied upon to do twice as much as we have done during the war, and it is after reading your book that the determination grew intenser than ever; it is for you that we would wish to live on.

[!important] Striking/Intense

1 THE PRINCIPLE OF GROWTH

Page: 16 (10.46%) @ 24 Dec 2023 01:56:42 PM

Unfounded beliefs are the homage which impulse pays to reason;

[!important] Striking/Intense

Page: 19 (12.42%) @ 25 Dec 2023 12:57:15 PM

It is not the weakening of impulse that is to be desired, but the direction of impulse towards life and growth rather than towards death and decay.

[!quote] Quotable/Concept/General Idea

Page: 19 (12.42%) @ 25 Dec 2023 12:58:49 PM

Industrialism and organization are constantly forcing civilized nations to live more and more by purpose rather than impulse. In the long run such a mode of existence, if it does not dry up the springs of life, produces new impulses, not of the kind which the will has been in the habit of controlling or of which thought is conscious. These new impulses are apt to be worse in their effects than those that have been checked.

[!question] Thought Provoking

Page: 19 (12.42%) @ 25 Dec 2023 12:59:39 PM

man’s impulses are not fixed from the beginning by his native disposition: within certain wide limits, they are profoundly modified by his circumstances and his way of life. The nature of these modifications ought to be studied, and the results of such study ought to be taken account of in judging the good or harm that is done by political and social institutions.

[!question] Thought Provoking

Page: 20 (13.07%) @ 25 Dec 2023 01:04:30 PM

In spite of all the destruction which is wrought by the impulses that lead to war, there is more hope for a nation which has these impulses than for a nation in which all impulse is dead. Impulse is the expression of life, and while it exists there is hope of its turning towards life instead of death; but lack of impulse is death, and out of death no new life will come.

[!important] Striking/Intense

Page: 21 (13.73%) @ 25 Dec 2023 01:26:04 PM

The conventional conception of what constitutes success leads most men to live a life in which their most vital impulses are sacrificed, and the joy of life is lost in listless weariness. Our economic system compels almost all men to carry out the purposes of others rather than their own, making them feel impotent in action and only able to secure a certain modicum of passive pleasure. All these things destroy the vigour of the community, the expansive affections of individuals, and the power of viewing the world generously.

[!quote] Quotable/Concept/General Idea

Page: 26 (16.99%) @ 25 Dec 2023 04:08:49 PM

is no use to attempt any bolstering up of institutions based on authority, since all such institutions involve injustice, and injustice once realized cannot be perpetuated without fundamental damage both to those who uphold it and to those who resist it.

[!important] Striking/Intense

Page: 28 (18.30%) @ 25 Dec 2023 05:11:21 PM

If men’s natural growth is to be promoted and not hindered by their environment, if as many as possible of their desires and needs are to be satisfied, political institutions must, as far as possible, embody common purposes and foster instinctive liking. These two objects are interconnected, for nothing is so destructive of instinctive liking as thwarted purposes and unsatisfied needs, and nothing facilitates co-operation for common purposes so much as instinctive liking. When a man’s growth is unimpeded, his self-respect remains intact, and he is not inclined to regard others as his enemies. But when, for whatever reason, his growth is impeded, or he is compelled to grow into some twisted and unnatural shape, his instinct presents the environment as his enemy, and he becomes filled with hatred. The joy of life abandons him, and malevolence takes the place of friendliness. The malevolence of hunchbacks and cripples is proverbial; and a similar malevolence is to be found in those who have been crippled in less obvious ways. Real freedom, if it could be brought about, would go a long way towards destroying hatred.

[!important] Striking/Intense

Page: 30 (19.61%) @ 25 Dec 2023 05:17:28 PM

In any serious attempt at political reconstruction, it is necessary to realize what are the vital needs of ordinary men and women. It is customary, in political thought, to assume that the only needs with which politics is concerned are economic needs. This view is quite inadequate to account for such an event as the present war, since any economic motives that may be assigned for it are to a great extent mythical, and its true causes must be sought for outside the economic sphere. Needs which are normally satisfied without conscious effort remain unrecognized, and this results in a working theory of human needs which is far too simple. Owing chiefly to industrialism, many needs which were formerly satisfied without effort now remain unsatisfied in most men and women. But the old unduly simple theory of human needs survives, making men overlook the source of the new lack of satisfaction, and invent quite false theories as to why they are dissatisfied. Socialism as a panacea seems to me to be mistaken in this way, since it is too ready to suppose that better economic conditions will of themselves make men happy. It is not only more material goods that men need, but more freedom, more self-direction, more outlet for creativeness, more opportunity for the joy of life, more voluntary co-operation, and less involuntary subservience to purposes not their own. All these things the institutions of the future must help to produce, if our increase of knowledge and power over Nature is to bear its full fruit in bringing about a good life.

[!question] Thought Provoking

2 THE STATE

Page: 41 (26.80%) @ 25 Dec 2023 06:02:45 PM

And although law is better than force, law is still not the best way of settling disputes. Law is too static, too much on the side of what is decaying, too little on the side of what is growing. So long as law is in theory supreme, it will have to be tempered, from time to time, by internal revolution and external war.

[!question] Thought Provoking

3 WAR AS AN INSTITUTION

Page: 52 (33.99%) @ 25 Dec 2023 07:39:44 PM

But security, once achieved, brings a Nemesis of ennui.

[!important] Striking/Intense

Page: 62 (40.52%) @ 27 Dec 2023 01:16:33 AM

We have learnt gradually to free our God from the savagery with which the primitive Israelites and the Fathers endowed Him: few of us now believe that it is His pleasure to torture most of the human race in an eternity of hell-fire. But we have not yet learnt to free our national ideals from the ancient taint. Devotion to the nation is perhaps the deepest and most widespread religion of the present age. Like the ancient religions, it demands its persecutions, its holocausts, its lurid heroic cruelties; like them, it is noble, primitive, brutal, and mad. Now, as in the past, religion, lagging behind private consciences through the weight of tradition, steels the hearts of men against mercy and their minds against truth. If the world is to be saved, men must learn to be noble without being cruel, to be filled with faith and yet open to truth, to be inspired by great purposes without hating those who try to thwart them. But before this can happen, men must first face the terrible realization that the gods before whom they have bowed down were false gods and the sacrifices they have made were vain.

[!question] Thought Provoking

4 PROPERTY

Page: 65 (42.48%) @ 27 Dec 2023 11:36:54 AM

Men’s souls have exchanged the wilderness for the drawing-room: they have become cramped and pretty and deformed, like Chinese women’s feet.

[!important] Striking/Intense

Page: 75 (49.02%) @ 27 Dec 2023 12:38:55 PM

The whole wage-earning system is an abomination, not only because of the social injustice which it causes and perpetuates, but also because it separates the man who does the work from the purpose for which the work is done.

[!question] Thought Provoking

8 WHAT WE CAN DO

Page: 117 (76.47%) @ 28 Dec 2023 11:26:41 AM

In seeking a political theory which is to be useful at any given moment, what is wanted is not the invention of a Utopia, but the discovery of the best direction of movement. The direction which is good at one time may be superficially very different from that which is good at another time. Useful thought is that which indicates the right direction for the present time. But in judging what is the right direction there are two general principles which are always applicable.

The growth and vitality of individuals and communities is to be promoted as far as possible.
The growth of one individual or one community is to be as little as possible at the expense of another.

[!question] Thought Provoking

Page: 121 (79.08%) @ 28 Dec 2023 11:43:52 AM

The State and Property are the great embodiments of possessiveness; it is for this reason that they are against life, and that they issue in war. Possession means taking or keeping some good thing which another is prevented from enjoying; creation means putting into the world a good thing which otherwise no one would be able to enjoy.

[!important] Striking/Intense

What is the Fourth Dimension by Charles Howard Hinton

2024-06-24T04:50:15.000Z

What is the Fourth Dimension?

Charles Howard Hinton

Limitations of Our

Page: 3 (13.04%) @ 23 Jun 2024 10:28:59 AM

There are two ways of passing beyond the domain of practical certainty, and of looking into the vast range of possibility. One is by asking, "What is knowledge? What constitutes experience?" If we adopt this course we are plunged into a sea of speculation. Were it not that the highest faculties of the mind find therein so ample a range, we should return to the solid ground of facts, with simply a feeling of relief at escaping from so great a confusion and contradictoriness.

The other path which leads us beyond the horizon of actual experience is that of questioning whatever seems arbitrary and irrationally limited in the domain of knowledge. Such a questioning has often been successfully applied in the search for new facts.

[!question] Thought Provoking

Properties of Matter in the Fourth Dimension

Page: 14 (60.87%) @ 23 Jun 2024 04:54:37 PM

Let us now assume that instead of lines, very thin threads were attached to the framework: they on passing through the fluid plane would give rise to very small spots. Let us call the spots atoms, and I regard them as constituting a material system in the plane. There are four conditions which must be satisfied by these spots if they are to be admitted as forming a material system such as ours. For the ultimate properties of matter (if we eliminate attractive and repulsive forces, which may be caused by the motions of the smallest particles), are—1, Permanence; 2, Impenetrability; 3, Inertia; 4, Conservation of energy.

[!question] Thought Provoking

Page: 15 (65.22%) @ 23 Jun 2024 10:31:59 PM

We can imagine these threads as weaving together to form connected shapes, each complete in itself, and these shapes as they pass through the fluid plane give rise to a series of moving points. Yet, inasmuch as the threads are supposed to form consistent shapes, the motion of the points would not be wholly random, but numbers of them would present the semblance of moving figures. Suppose, for instance, a number of threads to be so grouped as to form a cylinder for some distance, but after a while to be pulled apart by other threads with which they interlink. While the cylinder was passing through the plane, we should have in the plane a number of points in a circle. When the part where the threads deviated came to the plane, the circle would break up by the points moving away. These moving figures in the plane are but the traces of the shapes of threads as those shapes pass on. These moving figures may be conceived to have a life and a consciousness of their own.

[!question] Thought Provoking

Page: 16 (69.57%) @ 23 Jun 2024 10:33:41 PM

Or, if it be irrational to suppose them to have a consciousness when the shapes of which they are momentary traces have none, we may well suppose that the shapes of threads have consciousness, and that the moving figures share this consciousness, only that in their case it is limited to those parts of the shapes that simultaneously pass through the plane. In the plane, then, we may conceive bodies with all the properties of a material system, moving and changing, possessing consciousness. After a while it may well be that one of them becomes so disassociated that it appears no longer as a unit, and its consciousness as such may be lost. But the threads of existence of such a figure are not broken, nor is the shape which gave it origin altered in any way. It has simply passed on to a distance from the plane. Thus nothing which existed in the conscious life on the plane would cease. There would in such an existence be no cause and effect, but simply the gradual realization in a superficies of an already existent whole. There would be no progress, unless we were to suppose the threads as they pass to interweave themselves in more complex shapes.

[!important] Striking/Intense

Page: 16 (69.57%) @ 23 Jun 2024 10:35:08 PM

Can a representation, such as the preceding, be applied to the case of the existence in space with which we have to do? Is it possible to suppose that the movements and changes of material objects are the intersections with a three-dimensional space of a four-dimensional existence? Can our consciousness be supposed to deal with a spatial profile of some higher actuality?

[!question] Thought Provoking

Evidence of a Fourth Dimension

Page: 21 (91.30%) @ 23 Jun 2024 10:54:54 PM

If a fourth dimension exists there are two possible alternatives.

One is, that there being four dimensions, we have a three-dimensional existence only. The other is that we really have a four-dimensional existence, but are not conscious of it. If we are in three dimensions only, while there are really four dimensions, then we must be relatively to those beings who exist in four dimensions, as lines and planes are in relation to us. That is, we must be mere abstractions. In this case we must exist only in the mind of the being that conceives us, and our experience must be merely the thoughts of his mind—a result which has apparently been arrived at, on independent grounds, by an idealist philosopher.

The other alternative is that we have a four-dimensional existence. In this case our proportions in it must be infinitely minute, or we should be conscious of them. If such be the case, it would probably be in the ultimate particles of matter, that we should discover the fourth dimension, for in the ultimate particles the sizes in the three dimensions are very minute, and the magnitudes in all four dimensions would be comparable.

[!important] Striking/Intense

Page: 22 (95.65%) @ 23 Jun 2024 11:00:13 PM

The course of knowledge is like the flow of some mighty river, which, passing through the rich lowlands, gathers into itself the contributions from every valley. Such a river may well be joined by a mountain stream, which, passing with difficulty along the barren highlands, flings itself into the greater river down some precipitous descent, exhibiting at the moment of its union the spectacle of the utmost beauty of which the river system is capable. And such a stream is no inapt symbol of a line of mathematical thought, which, passing through difficult and abstract regions, sacrifices for the sake of its crystalline clearness the richness that comes to the more concrete studies. Such a course may end fruitlessly, for it may never join the main course of observation and experiment. But, if it gains its way to the great stream of knowledge, it affords at the moment of its union the spectacle of the greatest intellectual beauty, and adds somewhat of force and mysterious capability to the onward current.

[!important] Striking/Intense

What is Real by Adam Becker

2023-01-23T09:20:53.000Z

What Is Real?

Adam Becker

Introduction

Page 10 @ 22 December 2022 11:02 PM

Schrödinger’s concerns about his cat weren’t allayed by these arguments. He thought that his colleagues had missed the point: quantum physics lacked an important component, a story about how it lined up with the things in the world. How does a phenomenal number of atoms, governed by quantum physics, give rise to the world we see around us? What is real, at the most fundamental level, and how does it work? Yet Schrödinger’s opponents carried the day, and his concerns about what was actually happening in the quantum world were dismissed. The rest of physics simply moved on.

Page 11 @ 22 December 2022 11:13 PM

Simply dismissing questions about reality as “unscientific,” as some of Schrödinger’s opponents did, is an untenable position based on outdated philosophy. And some dissenters from the majority have developed alternative approaches to quantum physics that clearly explain what is going on in the world without sacrificing any of the theory’s accuracy.

Page 12 @ 22 December 2022 11:15 PM

As Einstein pointed out, “The theory decides what we can observe.”
The history of science bears this out over and over again. Galileo didn’t invent the telescope—but he was the first to think of pointing a good one at Jupiter, because he believed that Jupiter was a planet, like Earth, that went around the Sun. After that, telescopes were used regularly to look at everything from comets to nebulae to star clusters. But nobody bothered to use a telescope to find out whether the Sun’s gravity bent starlight during a solar eclipse—not until Einstein’s theory of general relativity predicted just such an effect, over three centuries after Galileo’s discovery. The practice of science itself depends on the total content of our best scientific theories—not just the math but the story of the world that goes along with the math. That story is a crucial part of the science, and of going beyond the existing science to find the next theory.

1 The Measure of All Things

Page 16 @ 22 December 2022 11:28 PM

Von Neumann published his proof as part of his textbook on quantum physics in 1932. There’s no evidence that Einstein was even aware of this proof, but many other physicists were—and for them, merely the idea of a proof from the mighty von Neumann was enough to settle the debate.

This is an uncritical attitude surprisingly dominant in the world of science even now.

Page 18 @ 22 December 2022 11:36 PM

Bell asked, “Was the world wavefunction waiting to jump for thousands of millions of years until a single-celled living creature appeared? Or did it have to wait a little longer for some more highly qualified measurer—with a Ph.D.?”

4 Copenhagen in Manhattan

Page 49 @ 25 December 2022 06:35 PM

Von Neumann and Wigner were two of a brilliantly gifted group of Hungarian Jewish scientists of their generation. Their astounding mathematical abilities and diverse scientific talents led their colleagues to jokingly suggest that Hungary was merely a cover story obscuring their true origin. “These people were really visitors from Mars,” said their colleague Otto Frisch. “For them… it was difficult to speak without an accent that would give them away and therefore they chose to pretend to be Hungarians whose inability to speak any language without accent is well known; except Hungarian, and [these] brilliant men all lived elsewhere.” Von Neumann in particular seemed almost inhuman in his brilliance. His colleagues at Princeton said that he “was indeed a demigod, but he had made a thorough, detailed study of human beings and could imitate them perfectly.” Von Neumann and the Martians did often think about things differently from their colleagues—including the foundations of quantum physics.

HA HA!

Page 55 @ 25 December 2022 07:54 PM

Heisenberg “had agreed to sup with the devil,” wrote Peierls years later, “and perhaps he found that there was not a long enough spoon.”

Page 60 @ 25 December 2022 08:32 PM

Heisenberg’s lies were, after all, rather minor compared to some. Pascual Jordan maintained that he had never truly supported the Nazi cause, despite his publications extolling the virtues of a National Socialist approach to science. He even had the audacity to send a letter to Max Born, his mentor who had been forced out by Hitler’s racist policies, explaining that he hadn’t really been a Nazi and asking for a character reference for his “de-Nazification.” Born replied with a list of his friends and family members murdered by the Nazis.

8 More Things in Heaven and Earth

Page 111 @ 05 January 2023 11:52 AM

“When I met Einstein for the first time,” Bohr recalled, “I said to him, what is he really after, what is it that he is trying to do? Does he think that, if he could prove [quantum objects] were particles, he could induce the German police to enforce a law to make it illegal to use diffraction gratings or, opposite, if he could maintain the wave picture, would he simply make it illegal to use photo-cells?” Einstein had never denied the importance of both particles and waves to quantum physics—in fact, he had been an early champion of both ideas.

Typical Bohr.

11 Copenhagen Versus the Universe

Page 174 @ 22 January 2023 09:01 PM

H. L. Mencken once said, “There is always a well-known solution to every human problem—neat, plausible, and wrong.”

Generated at: 2023-01-23-13-18-03

What I Believe

2023-01-30T17:48:39.000Z

What I Believe

Bertrand Russell

Preface to the Routledge Classics

Page 9 @ 21 October 2022 11:09 PM

Rightly or wrongly, Russell agreed with Mill that Socrates dissatisfied is a better man than the fool satisfied. What I Believe defends the disinterested pursuit of the truth as one element in the good life, and Russell’s most passionate complaint against religion is that it is a cowardly response to the bleakness of the universe.

Page 11 @ 21 October 2022 11:28 PM

Rightly enough, Russell thought morality plays a very small part in life. Nobody looks up the rules about parental duty when caring for a sick child, for instance; they are motivated by love — or not — and in either event morality plays no role. If they lack proper affection, they will not be moralized into it, and if they feel it, the moral standpoint is redundant.

Nature and Man

Page 15 @ 25 October 2022 09:58 PM

Electrons and protons, like the soul, are logical fictions; each is really a history, a series of events, not a single persistent entity. In the case of the soul, this is obvious from the facts of growth. Whoever considers conception, gestation, and infancy cannot seriously believe that the soul in any indivisible something, perfect and complete throughout this process.

Page 15 @ 25 October 2022 09:59 PM

Metaphysicians have advanced innumerable arguments to prove that the soul must be immortal. There is one simple test by which all these arguments can be demolished. They all prove equally that the soul must pervade all space. But as we are not so anxious to be fat as to live long, none of the metaphysicians in question have ever noticed this application of their reasonings. This is an instance of the amazing power of desire in blinding even very able men to fallacies which would otherwise be obvious at once. If we were not afraid of death, I do not believe that the idea of immortality would ever have arisen.

Page 15 @ 25 October 2022 10:02 PM

Religion is an attempt to overcome this antithesis. If the world is controlled by God, and God can be moved by prayer, we acquire a share in omnipotence. In former days, miracles happened in answer to prayer; they still do in the Catholic Church, but Protestants have lost this power.

Page 16 @ 25 October 2022 10:04 PM

Happiness is none the less true happiness because it must come to an end, nor do thought and love lose their value because they are not everlasting. Many a man has borne himself proudly on the scaffold; surely the same pride should teach us to think truly about man’s place in the world. Even if the open windows of science at first make us shiver after the cosy indoor warmth of traditional humanising myths, in the end the fresh air brings vigour, and the great spaces have a splendour of their own.

Page 16 @ 25 October 2022 10:05 PM

The philosophy of nature is one thing, the philosophy of value is quite another. Nothing but harm can come of confusing them. What we think good, what we should like, has no bearing whatever upon what is, which is the question for the philosophy of nature. On the other hand, we cannot be forbidden to value this or that on the ground that the non-human world does not value it, nor can we be compelled to admire anything because it is a law of nature’.

Page 16 @ 25 October 2022 10:06 PM

The philosophy of nature must not be unduly terrestrial; for it, the earth is merely one of the smaller planets of one of the smaller stars of the Milky Way. It would be ridiculous to warp the philosophy of nature in order to bring out results that are pleasing to the tiny parasites of this insignificant planet. Vitalism as a philosophy, and evolutionism, show, in this respect, a lack of sense of proportion and logical relevance. They regard the facts of life, which are personally interesting to us, as having a cosmic significance, not a significance confined to the earth’s surface. Optimism and pessimism, as cosmic philosophies, show the same naive humanism; the great world, so far as we know it from the philosophy of nature, is neither good nor bad, and is not concerned to make us happy or unhappy. All such philosophies spring from self-importance, and are best corrected by a little astronomy.

The Good Life

Page 18 @ 25 October 2022 10:08 PM

The good life is one inspired by love and guided by knowledge.

Salvation

Page 30 @ 26 October 2022 09:29 PM

I do not wish to suggest that revolutions are never necessary, but I do wish to suggest that they are not short cuts to the millennium. There is no short cut to the good life, whether individual or social. To build up the good life, we must build up intelligence, self-control and sympathy. This is a quantitative matter, a matter of gradual improvement, of early training, of educational experiment. Only impatience prompts the belief in the possibility of sudden improvement. The gradual improvement that is possible, and the methods by which it may be achieved, are a matter for future science.

Science and Happiness

Page 33 @ 26 October 2022 10:38 PM

But courage in fighting is by no means the only form, nor perhaps even the most important. There is courage in facing poverty, courage in facing derision, courage in facing the hostility of one’s own herd. In these, the bravest soldiers are often lamentably deficient. And above all there is the courage to think calmly and rationally in the face of danger, and to control the impulse of panic fear or panic rage.

Generated at: 2022-10-26-22-53-33

Weapons of Math Destruction

2023-07-11T09:24:14.000Z

Weapons of Math Destruction

By Cathy O'Neil

Chapter 2: Shell Shocked: My Journey of Disillusionment

Page 55 @ November 9, 2019

I started out building models to anticipate the behavior of visitors to various travel websites. The key question was whether someone showing up at the Expedia site was just browsing or looking to spend money. Those who weren’t planning to buy were worth very little in potential revenue. So we would show them comparison ads for competing services such as Travelocity or Orbitz. If they clicked on the ad, it brought in a few pennies, which was better than nothing. However, we didn’t want to feed these ads to serious shoppers. In the worst case, we’d gain a dime of ad revenue while sending potential customers to rivals, where perhaps they’d spend thousands of dollars on hotel rooms in London or Tokyo. It would take thousands of ad views to make up for even a few hundred dollars in lost fees. So it was crucial to keep those people in house.

Wah!

Chapter 3: Arms Race: Going to College

Page 71 @ November 9, 2019

The response to this crackdown on cheating was volcanic. Some two thousand stone-throwing protesters gathered in the street outside the school. They chanted, “We want fairness. There is no fairness if you don’t let us cheat.”

Chapter 5: Civilian Casualties: Justice in the Age of Big Data

Page 104 @ November 12, 2019

So fairness isn’t calculated into WMDs. And the result is massive, industrial production of unfairness . If you think of a WMD as a factory, unfairness is the black stuff belching out of the smoke stacks. It’s an emission, a toxic one.

Conclusion

Page 210 @ November 12, 2019

Like doctors, data scientists should pledge a Hippocratic Oath, one that focuses on the possible misuses and misinterpretations of their models. Following the market crash of 2008, two financial engineers, Emanuel Derman and Paul Wilmott, drew up such an oath. It reads:

I will remember that I didn’t make the world, and it doesn’t satisfy my equations.
Though I will use models boldly to estimate value, I will not be overly impressed by mathematics.
I will never sacrifice reality for elegance without explaining why I have done so.
Nor will I give the people who use my model false comfort about its accuracy. Instead, I will make explicit its assumptions and oversights.
I understand that my work may have enormous effects on society and the economy, many of them beyond my comprehension.

Walking by Thomas Bernhard

2025-04-04T09:38:31.000Z

Walking: A Novella

Thomas Bernhard

Copyright Page

Page 11 @ 08 April 2023 04:35:58 PM

Nature does not need thought, says Oehler, only human pride incessantly thinks into nature its thinking.

Page 12 @ 08 April 2023 04:39:51 PM

There is no doubt that the art lies in bearing what is unbearable and in not feeling that what is horrible is something horrible. Of course we have to label this art the most difficult of all. The art of existing against the facts, says Oehler, is the most difficult, the art that is the most difficult.

Page 22 @ 11 April 2023 01:47:56 AM

If we strike a balance between the beauty of the country and the baseness of the state, says Oehler, we arrive at suicide.

Generated at: 2023-04-12-03-27-14

Tristes Tropiques by Claude Lévi-Strauss

2023-01-30T17:48:28.000Z

Tristes Tropiques

Claude Lévi-Strauss

Introduction and Notes by Patrick Wilcken

Time: 2021-12-13 00:00

When we travel around the world, we see not the pristine landscapes promised us through bogus explorers’ tales, he wrote, but rather ‘our own filth,thrown into the face of mankind’ (p. 38). Even in the interior of Brazil, a region at that point still relatively isolated, the indigenous groups he encountered were wracked by disease and alcoholism, their material culture degraded by cheap industrial goods, their campsites littered with rusted petrol drums, tin cans and broken bottles. In the final chapters Lévi-Strauss wrote of anthropology as ‘an attempt at redemption’; the anthropologist ‘the symbol of atonement’ (p. 389), as if all that was left to do was to bear witness and repent.

3. The West Indies

Time: 2021-12-13 23:57

One day, I went into the assize court, which happened to be in session; this was my first,and has to date remained my only, visit to a law court. The person on trial was a peasant,who had bitten off a piece of one of his opponent’s ears during a quarrel. The accused, the plaintiff and the witnesses expressed themselves volubly in the Creole dialect, the crystalline freshness of which seemed positively uncanny in such surroundings. Their statements were translated for three judges, who were suffering from the heat, since they were wrapped in red, fur-trimmed robes which had lost their crispness in the humid atmosphere. The grotesque garments hung limply round their bodies like bloodstained bandages. It took exactly five minutes to pass a sentence of eight years’ imprisonment on the hot-tempered peasant. Justice always has, and always will be, associated in my mind with doubt, scrupulousness and respect. That the fate of a human being could be settled in so short a time and in such an offhand manner filled me with amazement. I could not bring myself to believe that what I had just witnessed had actually happened. Even today, no dream, however fantastic or far-fetched, can inspire me with such a feeling of incredulity.

Time: 2021-12-14 00:01

I was able – thanks to this final piece of manœuvering on the part of the police – to enjoy some unforgettable walks across the island, which seemed so much more classically exotic than the South American mainland. It was like a deep arborized agate set in a ring of black, silver-flecked beaches, and in the valleys, which were brimful with a milk-white mist, one could only just sense the presence – more perceptible to the ear, through the sound of dripping moisture, than to the eye – of the huge, soft, feathery fronds of the tree-ferns, rising above the living fossils of their trunks.

Time: 2021-12-14 00:08

The accidents of travel often produce ambiguities such as these. Because I spent my first weeks on United States soil in Puerto Rico, I was in future to find America in Spain. Just as,several years later, through visiting my first English university with a campus surrounded by Neo-Gothic buildings at Dacca in Western Bengal, I now look upon Oxford as a kind of India that has succeeded in controlling the mud, the mildew and the ever-encroaching vegetation.

4. The Quest for Power

Time: 2021-12-14 00:14

Journeys, those magic caskets full of dreamlike promises, will never again yield up their treasures untarnished. A proliferating and overexcited civilization has broken the silence of the seas once and for all. The perfumes of the tropics and the pristine freshness of human beings have been corrupted by a busyness with dubious implications, which mortifies our desires and dooms us to acquire only contaminated memories.

Time: 2021-12-14 00:15

Now that the Polynesian islands have been smothered in concrete and turned into aircraft carriers solidly anchored in the southern seas, when the whole of Asia is beginning to look like a dingy suburb, when shanty-towns are spreading across Africa, when civil and military aircraft blight the primeval innocence of the American or Melanesian forests even before destroying their virginity, what else can the socalled escapism of travelling do than confront us with the more unfortunate aspects of our history? Our great Western civilization, which has created the marvels we now enjoy, has only succeeded in producing them at the cost of corresponding ills. The order and harmony of the Western world, its most famous achievement, and a laboratory in which structures of a complexity as yet unknown are being fashioned, demand the elimination of a prodigious mass of noxious by-products which now contaminate the globe. The first thing we see as we travel round the world is our own filth, thrown into the face of mankind.

6. The Making of an Anthropologist

Time: 2021-12-15 23:40

It was in that class that I first began to learn that every problem, whether serious or trifling, may be solved by the application of an always identical method, which consists in contrasting two traditional views of the question; the first is introduced by means of a justification on common-sense grounds, then the justification is destroyed with the help of the second view; finally, both are dismissed as being equally inadequate, thanks to a third view which reveals the incomplete character of the first two; these are now reduced by verbal artifice to complementary aspects of one and the same reality: form and subject-matter, container and content, being and appearance, continuity and discontinuity, essence and existence, etc. Such an exercise soon becomes purely verbal, depending, as it does, on a certain skill in punning, which replaces thought: assonance, similarity in sound and ambiguity gradually come to form the basis of those brilliantly ingenious intellectual shifts which are thought to be the sign of sound philosophizing.

Time: 2021-12-15 23:43

Philosophy was not ancilla scientiarum, the servant and auxiliary of scientific exploration, but a kind of aesthetic contemplation of consciousness by itself.

Time: 2021-12-17 23:31

As it happened, the revelation did not occur until 1933–4, when by chance I came across Robert H. Lowie’s Primitive Society, which was by no means a recent work. The point was that instead of presenting me with ideas taken from books and immediately changed into philosophical concepts, it described the writer’s actual experience of native societies, and presented the significance of that experience through his involvement. My mind was able to escape from the claustrophobic, Turkish-bath atmosphere in which it was being imprisoned by the practice of philosophical reflection. Once it had got out into the open air, it felt refreshed and renewed. Like a city-dweller transported to the mountains, I became drunk with space, while my dazzled eyes measured the wealth and variety of the objects surrounding me.

7. Sunset

Time: 2021-12-18 01:43

Remembering is one of man’s great pleasures, but not in so far as memory operates literally, since few individuals would agree to relive the fatigues and sufferings that they nevertheless delight in recalling. Memory is life itself, but of a different quality.

8. The Doldrums

Time: 2021-12-22 17:32

it is not surprising that they should have been taken for mermaids, especially at a period when people went as far as to describe (and even draw) the cotton plant as a sheep tree, that is a tree bearing not fruit but whole sheep hanging by their backs with wool ready to be shorn.

9. Guanabara

Time: 2021-12-25 16:32

Travel is usually thought of as a displacement in space. This is an inadequate conception. A journey occurs simultaneously in space, in time and in the social hierarchy.Each impression can be defined only by being jointly related to these three axes, and since space is itself three-dimensional, five axes are necessary if we are to have an adequate representation of any journey.

10. Crossing the Tropic

Time: 2021-12-25 17:00

When one tries now to find the trails along the espigões,the line of ridges, it is difficult to imagine that the traffic was so heavy that the recovery of the shoes lost on the way by the animals constituted a special occupation.

13. Pioneer Zone

Time: 2021-12-27 00:03

So it is not in any metaphorical sense that we are justified in comparing – as has so often been done – a town with a symphony or a poem; they are objects of a similar nature. The town is perhaps even more precious than a work of art in that it stands at the meeting point of nature and artifice. Consisting, as it does, of a community of animals who enclose their biological history within its boundaries and at the same time mould it according to their every intention as thinking beings, the town, in both its development and its form, belongs simultaneously to biological procreation, organic evolution and aesthetic creation. It is at one and the same time an object of nature and a subject of culture; an individual and a group; reality and dream; the supremely human achievement.

14. The Magic Carpet

Time: 2021-12-28 23:06

I once – oh, Arabian Nights! – ate a dinner full of succulent ancestral savours, picking up the food with my fingers: first,Khichuri, rice and the small lentils which are called pulses in English, and the multicoloured varieties of which can be seen standing in sackfuls in the markets. Then nimkorma, broiled chicken; chingri cari, an oily fruity stew of giant shrimps, and another stew with hard-boiled eggs called dimer tak, accompanied by cucumber sauce, shosha; finally the dessert, firni,made of rice and milk.

15. Crowds

Time: 2022-01-03 23:58

Here again, it is the other person’s attitude which compels you to deny him those human qualities you would so much like to acknowledge in him. All the primary situations which establish relationships between people are distorted; the rules of the social game are falsified and one doesn’t know where to begin. If one tried to treat these unfortunate wretches as equals, they would protest against the injustice of one’s doing so; they do not want to be equal; they beg, they entreat you to crush them with your pride, since it is from the widening of the gap between you and them that they expect their mite, * which will be greater in proportion to the width of the yawning gulf; the higher they place me, the greater will be their hopes that the trifle they are soliciting will turn out to be something substantial. They do not claim any right to live; the mere fact of survival seems to them undeserved alms, barely justified by the homage they render to the mighty.

Time: 2022-01-04 00:00

This debasement of human relationships at first appears incomprehensible to the European mind. We look upon class differences in terms of struggle or tension, as if the initial – or ideal – situation corresponded to the resolution of these antagonisms. But here,the word tension has no meaning. Nothing is tense, since everything that might have been in a state of tension snapped long ago. The break was there at the start, and the non-existence of ‘good times’, to which people might refer either to discover traces of them or to long nostalgically for their return, leaves you with one conviction only: that all these people you see in the street are doomed. Even if you divested yourself of all your possessions, you could not be sure of delaying that doom for one moment.

Time: 2022-01-04 23:58

Very little is needed in order to exist: little space, little food, little joy, few utensils or tools; it is life on a pocket-handkerchief scale. But, on the other hand, there seems to be no lack of soul; one is aware of it in the bustle of the streets, the intensity of the look in people’s eyes, the passion which marks the most trifling discussion, and the courteous smiles with which passing strangers are greeted, and – in Moslem territory – the accompanying ‘salaam’, a low bow in which the palm of the right hand is placed on the forehead. Only quality of soul can explain the ease with which these people fit into the cosmos.

16. Markets

Time: 2022-01-07 11:50

Even country districts can provide equally striking spectacles. Once when I was making a trip by motor-boat along the Bengal rivers, we landed on an island in the middle of the Buliganga, a river lined with banana plants and palm trees, sheltering white-tiled mosques which seem to float on the surface of the water. A thousand or more boats and sampans moored in the vicinity indicated that a hat, or country market, was in progress. Although no permanent building was visible, a veritable town had sprung up for one day only, and the crowd of inhabitants had set up their stalls in the mud, with a clearly defined area for each particular kind of trade: paddy, livestock, boats, bamboo poles, wooden planks, pottery,fabrics, fruit, betel nuts and fishing-nets. The river traffic was so dense in the channels around the island that they were like liquid streets. Newly bought cows were being taken away without any fuss, each one standing up in its boat and sailing blankly past the landscape, which watched it go by.The whole countryside in this area is extraordinarily soft and mild. There is something soothing and soporific in the greenery, tinged with the blue of water-lilies, and in the swamps and rivers with their gliding sampans; one is tempted to let oneself rot away like the old red-brick walls, which have been pushed out of shape by banyan trees.

Time: 2022-01-07 15:06

Freedom is neither a legal invention nor a philosophical conquest, the cherished possession of civilizations more valid than others because they alone have been able to create or preserve it.

Time: 2022-01-07 15:21

Men can coexist on condition that they recognize each other as being all equally,though differently, human, but they can also coexist by denying each other a comparable degree of humanity, and thus establishing a system of subordination.

22. Virtuous Savages

Time: 2022-01-11 22:00

When one is faced with a society which is still alive and faithful to its traditions, the impact is so powerful that one is quite taken aback: which strand in the multicoloured skein should one first try to unwind and disentangle? In thinking back to the Bororo, with whom I had my first experience of this kind, I rediscover feelings which assailed me again during the most recent such experience, in a Kuki village on the Burmese frontier, when I reached the summit of a high hill, after hours spent scrambling on all fours up slopes which had been transformed into slippery mud by the unceasing monsoon rains: physical exhaustion, hunger, thirst and mental confusion, certainly; but the organic giddiness was shot through with perceptions of forms and colours: the houses were majestic in size in spite of their fragility, and were the result of the utilization of materials and techniques which we in the West are acquainted with in small-scale forms: they were not so much built as knotted together, plaited, woven,embroidered and mellowed by use; instead of crushing the occupants under an indifferent mass of stones, they adapted to their presence and their movements; they were the opposite of our houses in that they remained always subordinate to man. The village rose round its occupants like a light, flexible suit of armour, closer to Western women’s hats than to Western towns; it was a monumental adornment retaining something of the living bowers and foliage whose natural gracefulness the builders had skilfully reconciled with the rigorous demands of their plan.

Time: 2022-01-11 22:17

Secondly, there lived in Kejara a native who was to be my interpreter and chief informant. This man, who was about thirty-five years old, spoke Portuguese fairly well. He said that he had once been able to read and write the language (although he could no longer do so), having been a pupil at the mission. The Fathers, proud of their success, had sent him to Rome, where he had been received by the Holy Father. On his return, there had apparently been an attempt to make him go through a Christian marriage ceremony,without regard for the traditional native rules. This had brought on a spiritual crisis during which he was reconverted to the old Bororo ideal: he then settled in Kejara where, for the last ten or fifteen years, he had been living an exemplary savage life. This papal Indian, who was now stark naked, befeathered, smeared with red paint and wearing the pin and the lip-plug in his nose and lower lip, was to prove a wonderful guide to Bororo sociology.

23. The Living and the Dead

Time: 2022-01-11 23:33

I even suspect that our irara was promptly appropriated to replace the missing animal. The natives would not admit that this was so, which was a pity: if it were the case, I could have claimed to be the uiaddo, the leader of the hunt representing the dead man’s soul. I would have received from his family the armband made of human hair and the poari, a mystical clarinet consisting of a small feathered gourd acting as an amplifier for a bamboo reed which is sounded over the captured animal, before being attached to its dead body. According to the prescribed rules, I would have shared out the flesh, hide, teeth and claws among the dead man’s relatives, who would have given me in exchange a ceremonial bow with arrows, another clarinet in commemoration of my duties and a necklace made of shell discs. I would also no doubt have had to paint myself black, so as not to be recognized by the maleficent soul responsible for the death, which would be obliged by the law of the mori to enter into the body of the dead animal – and thus offer itself as compensation for the harm done – but would still be full of vindictive hatred towards the person who had constrained it to do so. In a sense, nature in this destructive form is seen as being human. It operates through a special category of souls,which depend directly on it and not on society.

26. On the Line

Time: 2022-01-14 23:00

Completely virgin landscapes have a monotony which deprives their wildness of any significant value. They withhold themselves from man; instead of challenging him, they disintegrate under his gaze. But in this scrubland, which stretches endlessly into the distance, the incision of the picada, the contorted silhouettes of the poles and the arcs of wire linking them one to another seem like incongruous objects floating in space, such as can be seen in Yves Tanguy’s paintings. Being evidence of man’s former presence and of the futility of his efforts, they mark the extreme limit he has tried to exceed, making it more obvious than it would have been without them. The erratic nature of his enterprise and the failure by which it has been punished confirm the authenticity of the surrounding wilderness.

27. Family Life

Time: 2022-01-15 19:34

The Nambikwara’s attitude towards love can be summed up in their expression, tamindige mondage, the literal, though not very elegant, translation of which is, ‘Making love is nice.’

Time: 2022-01-15 19:35

During the amorous fondling in which couples indulge so freely and so publicly, and which is often quite uninhibited, I never once noticed even an incipient erection. The pleasure aimed at would seem to relate less to physical satisfaction than to love-play and demonstrations of affection. This perhaps explains why the Nambikwara do not wear the penis sheath, which is common to almost all the communities of central Brazil.Indeed, the purpose of this accessory may be, if not to prevent an erection, at least to indicate that the wearer is not sexually aggressive. People who live in a state of complete nudity are not unaware of what we call modesty: they define it differently. Among the Indians of Brazil, as in certain regions of Melanesia, the distinction between modesty and immodesty does not depend on different degrees of bodily exposure but on the difference between quiescence and excitement.

Time: 2022-01-15 19:57

On the dark savannah, the camp fires sparkle. Near their warmth, which offers the only protection against the growing chill of the night; behind the frail screens of palm-fronds and branches, hurriedly set up on the side from which rain and wind are expected; next to the baskets filled with the pathetic possessions which constitute the community’s earthly wealth; lying on the bare ground which stretches away in all directions and is haunted by other equally hostile and apprehensive bands, husbands and wives, closely intertwined, are aware of being each other’s support and comfort,and the only help against day-to-day difficulties and that brooding melancholy which settles from time to time on the souls of the Nambikwara. The visitor camping with the Indians in the bush for the first time, is filled with anguish and pity at the sight of human beings so totally bereft; some relentless cataclysm seems to have crushed them against the ground in a hostile land, leaving them naked and shivering by their flickering fires. He gropes his way through the scrub, taking care not to knock against the hands, arms or chests that he glimpses as warm reflections in the glow of the flames. But the wretchedness is shot through with whisperings and chuckles. The couples embrace as if seeking to recapture a lost unity, and their caresses continue uninterrupted as he goes by. He can sense in all of them an immense kindness, a profoundly carefree attitude, a naive and charming animal satisfaction and – binding these various feelings together – something which might be called the most truthful and moving expression of human love.

28. A Writing Lesson

Time: 2022-01-15 20:27

To establish a correlation between the emergence of writing and certain characteristic features of civilization, we must look in a quite different direction. The only phenomenon with which writing has always been concomitant is the creation of cities and empires, that is the integration of large numbers of individuals into a political system, and their grading into castes or classes. Such, at any rate, is the typical pattern of development to be observed from Egypt to China, at the time when writing first emerged: it seems to have favoured the exploitation of human beings rather than their enlightenment. This exploitation, which made it possible to assemble thousands of workers and force them to carry out exhausting tasks, is a much more likely explanation of the birth of architecture than the direct link referred to above. My hypothesis, if correct, would oblige us to recognize the fact that the primary function of written communication is to facilitate slavery. The use of writing for disinterested purposes, and as a source of intellectual and aesthetic pleasure, is a secondary result, and more often than not it may even be turned into a means of strengthening,justifying or concealing the other.

29. Men, Women and Chiefs

Time: 2022-01-17 17:34

The Nambikwara also solve the problem in another way – by homosexual relationships,for which they have the poetic term, tamindige kihandige, that is, l’amour-mensonge, ‘lying love’. Such relationships are frequent between young men and take place far more publicly than normal relationships. The two partners do not withdraw into the bush like adults of opposite sexes. They settle down near the camp fire, while their neighbours look on with amusement. Such incidents are a source of jokes, which generally remain discreet;homosexual relationships are considered to be childish pastimes and little attention is paid to them. It remains an open question whether the partners achieve complete satisfaction or restrict themselves to sentimental demonstrations, accompanied by caresses, similar to the demonstrations and caresses characteristic of conjugal relationships. Homosexual relationships are only allowed between adolescents who are ‘cross-cousins’, that is, who would normally marry each other’s sisters, so that the brother is acting as a temporary substitute for the girl. When the natives are asked about relationships of this kind, they invariably reply: ‘They are cousins [or brothers-in-law] making love.’ On reaching adulthood, the brothers-in-law continue to express their feelings quite openly. It is not uncommon to see two or three men, who are both husbands and fathers, walking together in the evening with their arms affectionately around each other.

Time: 2022-01-17 17:42

There is a first point that can be rapidly disposed of. The Nambikwara data, taken in conjunction with other evidence, contradicts the old sociological theory, temporarily revived by psychoanalysis, according to which the prototype of the primitive chief was a symbolic father, so that the elementary forms of the state were a development of the family.We have seen that, underlying the most rudimentary forms of power, there is an essential feature which is something new in comparison with biological phenomena: this new element is consent. Power both originates in consent and is bounded by it. Apparently unilateral relationships, such as those characteristic of gerontocracy, autocracy or any other form of government, can arise in groups with an already complex structure. They are out of the question in simple forms of social organization, such as the one I have tried to describe here. In such cases, on the contrary, political relationships boil down to a kind of arbitration between, on the one hand, the ability and authority of the chief and, on the other, the size, cohesion and goodwill of the group; these various factors exert a reciprocal influence on each other.

Time: 2022-01-17 17:55

In another form, this was undoubtedly the ‘miracle’ referred to by Leibnitz in connection with the American savages, whose customs, as recorded by the early travellers,had taught him ‘never to accept the hypotheses of political philosophy as proven truths’. As for myself, I had gone to the ends of the earth to look for what Rousseau calls ‘the almost imperceptible stages of man’s beginnings’. Behind the veil of the over-complicated laws of the Caduveo and Bororo, I had continued my search for a state which – as Rousseau also says – ‘no longer exists, has perhaps never existed, and probably will never exist, and of which it is nevertheless essential to form a correct notion in order rightly to judge our present state’. I believed that, having been luckier than Rousseau, I had discovered such a state in a moribund society, about which there was no point in wondering whether or not it was vestigial. Whether traditional or degenerate, this society offered one of the most rudimentary forms of social and political organization that could possibly be imagined. I did not need to refer back to the particular sequence of historical events which had kept it in, or more probably had brought it back to, this elementary state. It was enough to observe the sociological experience before me.

30. A Canoe Trip

Time: 2022-01-17 23:24

There is no more thrilling prospect for the anthropologist than that of being the first white man to visit a particular native community. Already in 1938, this supreme reward could only be obtained in a few regions of the world – few enough indeed to be counted on the fingers of one hand. Since then, the possibilities have diminished still further. I was about to relive the experience of the early travellers and, through it, that crucial moment in modern thought when, thanks to the great voyages of discovery, a human community which believed itself to be complete and in its final form suddenly learned, as if through the effect of a counter-revelation, that it was not alone, that it was part of a greater whole, and that, in order to achieve self-knowledge, it must first of all contemplate its unrecognizable image in this mirror, of which a fragment, forgotten by the centuries, was now about to cast, for me alone, its first and last reflection.

31. Robinson Crusoe

Time: 2022-01-18 00:45

I had wanted to reach the extreme limits of the savage; it might be thought that my wish had been granted, now that I found myself among these charming Indians whom no other white man had ever seen before and who might never be seen again. After an enchanting trip up-river, I had certainly found my savages. Alas! they were only too savage. Since their existence had only been revealed to me at the last moment, I was unable to devote to them the time that would have been essential to get to know them. The limited resources at my disposal, the state of physical exhaustion in which my companions and I now found ourselves – and which was to be made still worse by the fevers of the rainy season – allowed me no more than a short busman’s holiday. * instead of months of study. There they were, all ready to teach me their customs and beliefs, and I did not know their language. They were as close to me as a reflection in a mirror; I could touch them, but I could not understand them. I had been given, at one and the same time, my reward and my punishment. Was it not my mistake, and the mistake of my profession, to believe that men are not always men? that some are more deserving of interest and attention because they astonish us by the colour of their skin and their customs? I had only to succeed in guessing what they were like for them to be deprived of their strangeness: in which case, I might just as well have stayed in my village. Or if, as was the case here, they retained their strangeness, I could make no use of it,since I was incapable of even grasping what it consisted of. Between these two extremes,what ambiguous instances provide us with the excuses by which we live? Who, in the last resort, is the real dupe of the confusion created in the reader’s mind by observations which are carried just far enough to be intelligible and then are stopped in mid-career, because they cause surprise in human beings similar to those who take such customs as a matter of course? Is it the reader who believes in us, or we ourselves who have no right to be satisfied until we have succeeded in dissipating a residue which serves as a pretext for our vanity?

38. A Little Glass of Rum*

Time: 2022-01-19 16:12

Societies which seem savage to us in some respects may appear humane and kindly when considered from another angle. Let us take the case of the Plains Indians of North America,who are doubly significant in this connection, because they practised certain moderate forms of cannibalism and at the same time offer one of the rare instances of a primitive community with an organized police system. It would never have occurred to their police (who were also a judicial body) to make the culprit’s punishment take the form of a breaking of social ties. If a native had infringed the laws of the tribe, he was punished by having all his possessions destroyed, including his tent and horses. But at the same time, the police contracted a debt towards him: it was their duty to organize collective reparation for the losses sustained by the culprit as his punishment. This put him under an obligation to the group, and he had to show his gratitude to them by means of presents that the whole community – including the police – helped him to assemble, so that this once again reversed the relationships; and so on and so forth until, after a whole series of gifts and counter-gifts,the disorder introduced by the crime was gradually neutralized and there was a return to the pristine state of order. Not only are such customs more humane than ours, they are also more coherent, even if the problem is formulated in terms of modern European psychology;logically, the ‘infantilization’ of the culprit implied by the notion of punishment demands that he should have a corresponding right to a reward, in the absence of which the initial procedure will prove ineffective and may even lead to results contrary to those that were hoped for. Our system is the height of absurdity, since we treat the culprit both as a child, so as to have the right to punish him, and as an adult, in order to deny him consolation; and we believe we have made great spiritual progress because, instead of eating a few of our fellow-men, we subject them to physical and moral mutilation.

39. Taxila

Time: 2022-01-19 22:49

If one were looking for a barrack-room religion, Islam would seem to be the ideal solution: strict observance of rules (prayers five times a day, each prayer necessitating fifty genuflexions); detailed inspections and meticulous cleanliness (ritual ablutions); masculine promiscuity both in spiritual matters and in the carrying out of the organic functions; and no women.

40. The Kyong

Time: 2022-01-19 23:29

Mankind has made three major religious attempts to free itself from persecution by the dead, the malevolence of the Beyond and the anguish of magic. Over intervals of approximately five hundred years, it originated in turn Buddhism, Christianity and Islam;it is a striking fact that each stage, far from constituting an advance on the previous one,should be seen rather as a regression.

Time: 2022-01-20 00:01

What else, indeed, have I learned from the masters who taught me, the philosophers I have read, the societies I have visited and even from that science which is the pride of the West, apart from a few scraps of wisdom which, when laid end to end, coincide with the meditation of the Sage at the foot of the tree?

Time: 2022-01-20 00:07

As he moves about within his mental and historical framework, man takes along with him all the positions he has already occupied, and all those he will occupy. He is everywhere at one and the same time; he is a crowd surging forward abreast, and constantly recapitulating the whole series of previous stages. For we live in several worlds, each truer than the one it encloses, and itself false in relation to the one which encompasses it. Some are known to us through action; some are lived through in thought; but the seeming contradiction resulting from their coexistence is solved in the obligation we feel to grant a meaning to the nearest and to deny any to those furthest away; whereas the truth lies in a progressive dilating of the meaning, but in reverse order, up to the point at which it explodes.

Time: 2022-01-20 00:10

From the time when he first began to breathe and eat, up to the invention of atomic and thermonuclear devices, by way of the discovery of fire – and except when he has been engaged in self-reproduction – what else has man done except blithely break down billions of structures and reduce them to a state in which they are no longer capable of integration?

Treat it Gentle by Sidney Bechet

2024-09-06T19:15:52.000Z

Treat it Gentle

Sidney Bechet

Treat it Gentle

Time: 2021-08-24 02:07

"This music is your music," he said. But, you know, no music is my music. It's everybody's who can feel it. You're here… well, if there's music, you feel it—then it's yours too. You got to be in the sun to feel the sun. It's that way with music too.

Time: 2021-08-24 02:10

There's two kinds of music. There's classic and there's ragtime. When I tell you ragtime, you can feel it, there's a spirit right in the word. It comes out of the Negro spirituals, out of Omar's way of singing, out of his rhythm. But Jazz — Jazz could mean any damn thing: high times, screwing, ball-room. It used to be spelled Jass, which was screwing. But when you say ragtime, you're saying the music.

Time: 2021-08-24 02:13

But if you have a feeling for the music, you can understand him, and that's why he keeps it so important to himself. And he's always been trying. The black man, he's been learning his way from the beginning. A way of saying something from inside himself, as far back as time, as far back as Africa, in the jungle, and the way the drums talked across the jungle, the way they filled the whole air with a sound like the blood beating inside himself.

Time: 2021-08-24 02:17

I can remember when I was young. I didn't have toys like others. I never had a toy to play with. I wouldn't have known what to do with a toy if you gave me one. I started once to write a song for a boy like that. The song, it was called Sans Amis. He had nothing to play with and no one to play with.But he had a song. He kept making that song over and over out of himself, changing it around, making it fit. That boy, he had this song about being lonely, and as soon as he had the song, he wasn't lonely any more. He was lucky. He was real well off; he had this thing he could trust, and so he could trust himself.

Time: 2021-08-25 03:04

You take when a high note comes through—lifting and going and then stopping because there's no place else for it to go. That's stepping music—it's got to rush itself right off your voice or your horn because it's so excited. You can feel it. People, they go looking for music, you know, needing it. And the music—it's any damn' thing; it's whatever it is you need.

Time: 2021-08-25 03:08

Maybe that's not easy to understand. White people, they don't have the memory that needs to understand it. But that's what the music is… a lost thing finding itself. It's like a man with no place of his own. He wanders the world and he's a stranger wherever he is; he's a stranger right in the place where he was born. But then something happens to him and he finds a place, his place. He stands in front of it and he crosses the door, going inside. That's where the music was that day—it was taking him through the door; he was coming home.

Time: 2021-08-26 02:36

And then there was those swamps I used to go into after black fish. We called them Shoe Picks. We used to believe if you caught them and kept them in moss, put moss all over them, they'd turn into snakes… all those crazy things a kid takes into his head. But all that was nothing but the kind of fooling around a kid will do, the kind of thing a kid has to do. It's a kind of memory-making thing every kid has in his own way and puts away inside him, and years later it calls a man far back into himself, every man his own way. It's nothing important in itself, but it's there and it makes itself important… it's the first things you found out about and somehow those things, they stay on at the bottom of everything else.

Time: 2021-08-27 17:06

And it was while I was in jail there that I played the first blues I ever played with a lot of guys singing and no other instruments, just the singing. And, oh my God, what singing that was! It was my first experience that way, hearing some-one right next to me start up singing … Got a life full of so much punishment, Got me a feeling. Come down Jesus. Oh, why don't they put God on this earth where you can find Him easier. Hearing someone else come in after a minute, just hearing his voice in the dark and knowing right away his life has a long way to go. Seeing someone hungry and beat-up, seeing his face all bloody and knowing he can't speak your language to tell you what it is, knowing that the only way he has to explain himself is being human, suffering and waiting….

Time: 2021-08-27 22:53

I got a feeling inside me, a kind of memory that wants to sing itself… I can give you that. I can send it out to where it can be taken, maybe, if you want it. I can try to give it to you. But if all I've got is a contract, I've got nothing to give. How'm I going to give you a contract?

And maybe there's another thing why so many of these musicianers ended up so bad. Maybe they didn't know how to keep up with all this commercializing that was happening to ragtime. If it could have stayed where it started and not had to take account of the business it was becoming—all that making contracts and signing options and buying and selling rights — maybe without that it might have been different. If you start taking what's pure in a man and you start putting it on a bill of sale, somehow you can't help destroying it. In a way, all that business makes it so a man don't have anything left to give.

Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus by Ludwig Wittgenstein

2023-07-11T05:17:21.000Z

Page 13

The fact that nothing can be deduced from an atomic proposition has interesting applications, for example, to causality. There cannot, in Wittgenstein’s logic, be any such thing as a causal nexus. “The events of the future,” he says, “cannot be inferred from those of the present. Superstition is the belief in the causal nexus.” That the sun will rise to-morrow is a hypothesis. We do not in fact know whether it will rise, since there is no compulsion according to which one thing must happen because another happens.

Page 14

The rejection of identity removes one method of speaking of the totality of things, and it will be found that any other method that may be suggested is equally fallacious: so, at least, Wittgenstein contends and, I think, rightly. This amounts to saying that “object” is a pseudo-concept. To say “x is an object” is to say nothing. It follows from this that we cannot make such statements as “there are more than three objects in the world,” or “there are an infinite number of objects in the world.” Objects can only be mentioned in connexion with some definite property. We can say “there are more than three objects which are human,” or “there are more than three objects which are red,” for in these statements the word object can be replaced by a variable in the language of logic, the variable being one which satisfies in the first case the function “x is human”; in the second the function “x is red.” But when we attempt to say “there are more than three objects,” this substitution of the variable for the word “object” becomes impossible, and the proposition is therefore seen to be meaningless.

Page 15

According to this view we could only say things about the world as a whole if we could get outside the world, if, that is to say, it ceased to be for us the whole world. Our world may be bounded for some superior being who can survey it from above, but for us, however finite it may be, it cannot have a boundary, since it has nothing outside it. Wittgenstein uses, as an analogy, the field of vision. Our field of vision does not, for us, have a visual boundary, just because there is nothing outside it, and in like manner our logical world has no logical boundary because our logic knows of nothing outside it.

Page 24

In order to be a picture a fact must have something in common with what it pictures.

2.161

In the picture and the pictured there must be something identical in order that the one can be a picture of the other at all.

2.17

What the picture must have in common with reality in order to be able to represent it after its manner—rightly or falsely—is its form of representation.

Page 25

The picture agrees with reality or not; it is right or wrong, true or false.

2.22

The picture represents what it represents, independently of its truth or falsehood, through the form of representation.

2.221

What the picture represents is its sense.

2.222

In the agreement or disagreement of its sense with reality, its truth or falsity consists.

2.21

The picture agrees with reality or not; it is right or wrong, true or false.

2.22

The picture represents what it represents, independently of its truth or falsehood, through the form of representation.

2.221

What the picture represents is its sense.

2.222

In the agreement or disagreement of its sense with reality, its truth or falsity consists.

Page 26

Objects I can only name. Signs represent them. I can only speak of them. I cannot assert them. A proposition can only say how a thing is, not what it is.

Page 27

An expression is thus presented by a variable, whose values are the propositions which contain the expression.

Page 34

Every proposition must already have a sense; assertion cannot give it a sense, for what it asserts is the sense itself. And the same holds of denial, etc.

Page 35

Philosophy is not one of the natural sciences.

(The word “philosophy” must mean something which stands above or below, but not beside the natural sciences.)

4.112

The object of philosophy is the logical clarification of thoughts.

Philosophy is not a theory but an activity.

A philosophical work consists essentially of elucidations.

The result of philosophy is not a number of “philosophical propositions”, but to make propositions clear.

Philosophy should make clear and delimit sharply the thoughts which otherwise are, as it were, opaque and blurred.

Page 44

The events of the future cannot be inferred from those of the present.

Superstition is the belief in the causal nexus.

5.1362

The freedom of the will consists in the fact that future actions cannot be known now. We could only know them if causality were an inner necessity, like that of logical deduction.—The connexion of knowledge and what is known is that of logical necessity.

Page 45

Probability is a generalization.

It involves a general description of a propositional form. Only in default of certainty do we need probability.

If we are not completely acquainted with a fact, but know something about its form.

Page 53

Roughly speaking: to say of two things that they are identical is nonsense, and to say of one thing that it is identical with itself is to say nothing.

Page 63

We cannot compare any process with the “passage of time”—there is no such thing—but only with another process (say, with the movement of the chronometer).

Hence the description of the temporal sequence of events is only possible if we support ourselves on another process.

It is exactly analogous for space. When, for example, we say that neither of two events (which mutually exclude one another) can occur, because there is no cause why the one should occur rather than the other, it is really a matter of our being unable to describe one of the two events unless there is some sort of asymmetry. And if there is such an asymmetry, we can regard this as the cause of the occurrence of the one and of the non-occurrence of the other.

The Three-Body Problem

2025-01-22T16:43:21.000Z

The Three-Body Problem

Cixin Liu

2. Silent Spring

Page: 19 (6.09%) @ 07 Dec 2024 10:27:24 AM

Is it possible that the relationship between humanity and evil is similar to the relationship between the ocean and an iceberg floating on its surface? Both the ocean and the iceberg are made of the same material. That the iceberg seems separate is only because it is in a different form. In reality, it is but a part of the vast ocean.…
It was impossible to expect a moral awakening from humankind itself, just like it was impossible to expect humans to lift off the earth by pulling up on their own hair. To achieve moral awakening required a force outside the human race.

[!question] Thought Provoking

16. The Three-Body Problem

Page: 139 (44.55%) @ 11 Jan 2025 11:49:40 PM

The abbot said, “This place isn’t really peaceful. There are lots of tourists, and many pilgrims too. The truly peaceful can find peace in a bustling city. And to attain that state, you need to empty yourself.” I said, “I’m empty enough. Fame and fortune are nothing to me. Many of the monks in this temple are worldlier than me.” The abbot shook his head and said, “No, emptiness is not nothingness. Emptiness is a type of existence. You must use this existential emptiness to fill yourself.”

[!question] Thought Provoking

32. Trisolaris: The Listener

Page: 256 (82.05%) @ 14 Jan 2025 04:10:42 AM

“I am tired of Trisolaris. We have nothing in our lives and spirit except the fight for survival.”
“What’s wrong with that?”
“There’s nothing wrong, of course. Existence is the premise for everything else. But, Princeps, please examine our lives: Everything is devoted to survival. To permit the survival of the civilization as a whole, there is almost no respect for the individual. Someone who can no longer work is put to death. Trisolaran society exists under a state of extreme authoritarianism. The law has only two outcomes: The guilty are put to death, and the not guilty are released. For me, the most intolerable aspects are the spiritual monotony and desiccation. Anything that can lead to spiritual weakness is declared evil. We have no literature, no art, no pursuit of beauty and enjoyment. We cannot even speak of love.… Princeps, is there meaning to such a life?”

[!important] Striking/Intense

The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas S Kuhn

2024-06-24T04:53:16.000Z

Notes From The Structure of Scientific Revolutions

Kuhn, Thomas S.

II The Route to Normal Science

Page 33 @ 31 January 2023 12:37:21 AM

In this essay, ‘normal science’ means research firmly based upon one or more past scientific achievements, achievements that some particular scientific community acknowledges for a time as supplying the foundation for its further practice.

Page 33 @ 31 January 2023 01:01:11 AM

Their achievement was sufficiently unprecedented to attract an enduring group of adherents away from competing modes of scientific activity. Simultaneously, it was sufficiently open-ended to leave all sorts of problems for the redefined group of practitioners to resolve.
Achievements that share these two characteristics I shall henceforth refer to as ‘paradigms,’ a term that relates closely to ‘normal science.’ By choosing it, I mean to suggest that some accepted examples of actual scientific practice—examples which include law, theory, application, and instrumentation together—provide models from which spring particular coherent traditions of scientific research.

Page 33 @ 31 January 2023 01:02:36 AM

Men whose research is based on shared paradigms are committed to the same rules and standards for scientific practice. That commitment and the apparent consensus it produces are prerequisites for normal science, i.e., for the genesis and continuation of a particular research tradition.

III The Nature of Normal Science

Page 41 @ 05 February 2023 07:12:55 PM

There are, I think, only three normal foci for factual scientific investigation, and they are neither always nor permanently distinct. First is that class of facts that the paradigm has shown to be particularly revealing of the nature of things. By employing them in solving problems, the paradigm has made them worth determining both with more precision and in a larger variety of situations.

Page 41 @ 05 February 2023 07:13:05 PM

A second usual but smaller class of factual determinations is directed to those facts that, though often without much intrinsic interest, can be compared directly with predictions from the paradigm theory.

Page 42 @ 05 February 2023 07:19:33 PM

A third class of experiments and observations exhausts, I think, the fact-gathering activities of normal science. It consists of empirical work undertaken to articulate the paradigm theory, resolving some of its residual ambiguities and permitting the solution of problems to which it had previously only drawn attention. This class proves to be the most important of all, and its description demands its subdivision. In the more mathematical sciences, some of the experiments aimed at articulation are directed to the determination of physical constants.

Page 46 @ 06 February 2023 11:51:06 PM

These three classes of problems—determination of significant fact, matching of facts with theory, and articulation of theory—exhaust, I think, the literature of normal science, both empirical and theoretical. They do not, of course, quite exhaust the entire literature of science. There are also extraordinary problems, and it may well be their resolution that makes the scientific enterprise as a whole so particularly worthwhile. But extraordinary problems are not to be had for the asking. They emerge only on special occasions prepared by the advance of normal research. Inevitably, therefore, the overwhelming majority of the problems undertaken by even the very best scientists usually fall into one of the three categories outlined above. Work under the paradigm can be conducted in no other way, and to desert the paradigm is to cease practicing the science it defines.

IV Normal Science as Puzzle-solving

Page 50 @ 07 February 2023 10:47:46 PM

Less local and temporary, though still not unchanging characteristics of science, are the higher level, quasi-metaphysical commitments that historical study so regularly displays. After about 1630, for example, and particularly after the appearance of Descartes’s immensely influential scientific writings, most physical scientists assumed that the universe was composed of microscopic corpuscles and that all natural phenomena could be explained in terms of corpuscular shape, size, motion, and interaction. That nest of commitments proved to be both metaphysical and methodological. As metaphysical, it told scientists what sorts of entities the universe did and did not contain: there was only shaped matter in motion. As methodological, it told them what ultimate laws and fundamental explanations must be like: laws must specify corpuscular motion and interaction, and explanation must reduce any given natural phenomenon to corpuscular action under these laws. More important still, the corpuscular conception of the universe told scientists what many of their research problems should be.

Page 50 @ 07 February 2023 10:48:14 PM

Finally, at a still higher level, there is another set of commitments without which no man is a scientist. The scientist must, for example, be concerned to understand the world and to extend the precision and scope with which it has been ordered.

V The Priority of Paradigms

Page 53 @ 07 February 2023 11:22:32 PM

What need we know, Wittgenstein asked, in order that we apply terms like ‘chair,’ or ‘leaf,’ or ‘game’ unequivocally and without provoking argument?
That question is very old and has generally been answered by saying that we must know, consciously or intuitively, what a chair, or leaf, or game is. We must, that is, grasp some set of attributes that all games and that only games have in common. Wittgenstein, however, concluded that, given the way we use language and the sort of world to which we apply it, there need be no such set of characteristics. Though a discussion of some of the attributes shared by a number of games or chairs or leaves often helps us learn how to employ the corresponding term, there is no set of characteristics that is simultaneously applicable to all members of the class and to them alone. Instead, confronted with a previously unobserved activity, we apply the term ‘game’ because what we are seeing bears a close “family resemblance” to a number of the activities that we have previously learned to call by that name. For Wittgenstein, in short, games, and chairs, and leaves are natural families, each constituted by a network of overlapping and crisscross resemblances. The existence of such a network sufficiently accounts for our success in identifying the corresponding object or activity. Only if the families we named overlapped and merged gradually into one another—only, that is, if there were no natural families—would our success in identifying and naming provide evidence for a set of common characteristics corresponding to each of the class names we employ.

Page 55 @ 11 February 2023 12:06:48 AM

What quantum mechanics means to each of them depends upon what courses he has had, what texts he has read, and which journals he studies. It follows that, though a change in quantum-mechanical law will be revolutionary for all of these groups, a change that reflects only on one or another of the paradigm applications of quantum mechanics need be revolutionary only for the members of a particular professional subspecialty. For the rest of the profession and for those who practice other physical sciences, that change need not be revolutionary at all. In short, though quantum mechanics (or Newtonian dynamics, or electromagnetic theory) is a paradigm for many scientific groups, it is not the same paradigm for them all. Therefore, it can simultaneously determine several traditions of normal science that overlap without being coextensive. A revolution produced within one of these traditions will not necessarily extend to the others as well.

VI Anomaly and the Emergence of Scientific Discoveries

Page 61 @ 11 February 2023 01:42:36 AM

Ought we conclude from the frequency with which such instrumental commitments prove misleading that science should abandon standard tests and standard instruments? That would result in an inconceivable method of research. Paradigm procedures and applications are as necessary to science as paradigm laws and theories, and they have the same effects. Inevitably they restrict the phenomenological field accessible for scientific investigation at any given time. Recognizing that much, we may simultaneously see an essential sense in which a discovery like X-rays necessitates paradigm change—and therefore change in both procedures and expectations—for a special segment of the scientific community. As a result, we may also understand how the discovery of X-rays could seem to open a strange new world to many scientists and could thus participate so effectively in the crisis that led to twentieth-century physics.

Page 64 @ 11 February 2023 01:52:59 AM

Anomaly appears only against the background provided by the paradigm. The more precise and far-reaching that paradigm is, the more sensitive an indicator it provides of anomaly and hence of an occasion for paradigm change.

VII Crisis and the Emergence of Scientific Theories

Page 67 @ 12 February 2023 01:06:28 AM

That proliferation of versions of a theory is a very usual symptom of crisis.

VIII The Response to Crisis

Page 71 @ 12 February 2023 10:01:37 PM

the act of judgment that leads scientists to reject a previously accepted theory is always based upon more than a comparison of that theory with the world. The decision to reject one paradigm is always simultaneously the decision to accept another, and the judgment leading to that decision involves the comparison of both paradigms with nature and with each other.

Page 72 @ 12 February 2023 10:13:37 PM

Though history is unlikely to record their names, some men have undoubtedly been driven to desert science because of their inability to tolerate crisis. Like artists, creative scientists must occasionally be able to live in a world out of joint—elsewhere I have described that necessity as “the essential tension” implicit in scientific research.2 But that rejection of science in favor of another occupation is, I think, the only sort of paradigm rejection to which counterinstances by themselves can lead. Once a first paradigm through which to view nature has been found, there is no such thing as research in the absence of any paradigm. To reject one paradigm without simultaneously substituting another is to reject science itself. That act reflects not on the paradigm but on the man. Inevitably he will be seen by his colleagues as “the carpenter who blames his tools.”

IX The Nature and Necessity of Scientific Revolutions

Page 79 @ 20 March 2023 11:24:31 PM

aspect of the parallelism must already be apparent. Political revolutions are inaugurated by a growing sense, often restricted to a segment of the political community, that existing institutions have ceased adequately to meet the problems posed by an environment that they have in part created. In much the same way, scientific revolutions are inaugurated by a growing sense, again often restricted to a narrow subdivision of the scientific community, that an existing paradigm has ceased to function adequately in the exploration of an aspect of nature to which that paradigm itself had previously led the way. In both political and scientific development the sense of malfunction that can lead to crisis is prerequisite to revolution.

Page 83 @ 21 March 2023 01:46:37 PM

But, the objection continues, no theory can possibly conflict with one of its special cases. If Einsteinian science seems to make Newtonian dynamics wrong, that is only because some Newtonians were so incautious as to claim that Newtonian theory yielded entirely precise results or that it was valid at very high relative velocities. Since they could not have had any evidence for such claims, they betrayed the standards of science when they made them. In so far as Newtonian theory was ever a truly scientific theory supported by valid evidence, it still is. Only extravagant claims for the theory—claims that were never properly parts of science—can have been shown by Einstein to be wrong. Purged of these merely human extravagances, Newtonian theory has never been challenged and cannot be.

X Revolutions as Changes of World View

Page 91 @ 24 March 2023 10:27:27 AM

What a man sees depends both upon what he looks at and also upon what his previous visual-conceptual experience has taught him to see.

Postscript—1969

Page 130 @ 26 March 2023 11:34:00 PM

A paradigm governs, in the first instance, not a subject matter but rather a group of practitioners. Any study of paradigm-directed or of paradigm-shattering research must begin by locating the responsible group or groups.

Page 130 @ 26 March 2023 11:36:42 PM

A revolution is for me a special sort of change involving a certain sort of reconstruction of group commitments. But it need not be a large change, nor need it seem revolutionary to those outside a single community, consisting perhaps of fewer than twenty-five people. It is just because this type of change, little recognized or discussed in the literature of the philosophy of science, occurs so regularly on this smaller scale that revolutionary, as against cumulative, change so badly needs to be understood.

Generated at: 2023-03-27-15-20-43

The Souls of Black Folk by W. E. B. Du Bois

2023-02-10T04:53:40.000Z

by W. E. B. Du Bois

I - Of Our Spiritual Strivings

Note 01

Away back in the days of bondage they thought to see in one divine event the end of all doubt and disappointment; few men ever worshipped Freedom with half such unquestioning faith as did the American Negro for two centuries. To him, so far as he thought and dreamed, slavery was indeed the sum of all villainies, the cause of all sorrow, the root of all prejudice; Emancipation was the key to a promised land of sweeter beauty than ever stretched before the eyes of wearied Israelites.

II - Of the Dawn of Freedom

Note 02

The opposition to Negro education in the South was at first bitter, and showed itself in ashes, insult, and blood; for the South believed an educated Negro to be a dangerous Negro.

IV - Of the Meaning of Progress

Note 03

My journey was done, and behind me lay hill and dale, and Life and Death. How shall man measure Progress there where the dark-faced Josie lies? How many heartfuls of sorrow shall balance a bushel of wheat? How hard a thing is life to the lowly, and yet how human and real! And all this life and love and strife and failure, —is it the twilight of nightfall or the flush of some faint-dawning day? Thus sadly musing, I rode to Nashville in the Jim Crow car.

V - Of the Wings of Atalanta

Note 04

And this course of study will not change; its methods will grow more deft and effectual, its content richer by toil of scholar and sight of seer; but the true college will ever have one goal,—not to earn meat, but to know the end and aim of that life which meat nourishes.

Note 05

The function of the university is not simply to teach breadwinning, or to furnish teachers for the public schools, or to be a centre of polite society; it is, above all, to be the organ of that fine adjustment between real life and the growing knowledge of life, an adjustment which forms the secret of civilization. (It's funny that how a scholar from a race long enslaved before his time, and was effected by discriminations and competition in his own time in a capitalist system where money is the God can understand the true nature of education and denounce the 'banker's education'. While, we, an independent race can't still get out of our colonial mentality.)

VI - Of the Training of Black Men

Note 06

I cannot hesitate in saying that nowhere have I met men and women with a broader spirit of helpfulness, with deeper devotion to their life-work, or with more consecrated determination to succeed in the face of bitter difficulties than among Negro college-bred men.

Note 07

I sit with Shakespeare and he winces not. Across the color-line I move arm in arm with Balzac and Dumas, where smiling men and welcoming women glide in gilded halls. From out the caves of evening that swing between the strong-limbed earth and the tracery of the stars, I summon Aristotle and Aurelius and what soul I will, and they come all graciously with no scorn nor condescension. So, wed with Truth, I dwell above the Veil.

VII - Of the Black Belt

Note 08

I think I never before quite realized the place of the Fence in civilization. This is the Land of the Unfenced, where crouch on either hand scores of ugly one-room cabins, cheerless and dirty. Here lies the Negro problem in its naked dirt and penury.

VIII - Of the Quest of the Golden Fleece

Note 09

The crops? Just tolerable, he said; just tolerable. Getting on? No—he was n’t getting on at all. Smith of Albany “furnishes” him, and his rent is eight hundred pounds of cotton. Can’t make anything at that. Why did n’t he buy land? Humph! Takes money to buy land. And he turns away. Free! The most piteous thing amid all the black ruin of war-time, amid the broken fortunes of the masters, the blighted hopes of mothers and maidens, and the fall of an empire,—the most piteous thing amid all this was the black freedman who threw down his hoe because the world called him free. What did such a mockery of freedom mean? Not a cent of money, not an inch of land, not a mouthful of victuals,—not even ownership of the rags on his back. Free!

IX - Of the Sons of Master and Man

Note 10

this has again and again been the result of carrying civilization and the blessed gospel to the isles of the sea and the heathen without the law. Nor does it altogether satisfy the conscience of the modern world to be told complacently that all this has been right and proper, the fated triumph of strength over weakness, of righteousness over evil, of superiors over inferiors. It would certainly be soothing if one could readily believe all this; and yet there are too many ugly facts for everything to be thus easily explained away. We feel and know that there are many delicate differences in race psychology, numberless changes that our crude social measurements are not yet able to follow minutely, which explain much of history and social development. At the same time, too, we know that these considerations have never adequately explained or excused the triumph of brute force and cunning over weakness and innocence.

XII - Of Alexander Crummell

Note 11

And herein lies the tragedy of the age: not that men are poor,—all men know something of poverty; not that men are wicked,—who is good? not that men are ignorant,—what is Truth? Nay, but that men know so little of men.

XIII - Of the Coming of John

Note 12

“John,” she said, “does it make every one—unhappy when they study and learn lots of things?” He paused and smiled. “I am afraid it does,” he said. “And, John, are you glad you studied?” “Yes,” came the answer, slowly but positively.

XIV - The Sorrow Songs

Note 13

So wofully unorganized is sociological knowledge that the meaning of progress, the meaning of “swift” and “slow” in human doing, and the limits of human perfectability, are veiled, unanswered sphinxes on the shores of science.

The Society of the Spectacle by Guy Debord

2023-02-21T18:07:32.000Z

The Society of the Spectacle

Guy Debord, Ken Knabb

Chapter 1: The Culmination of Separation

19 Apr 2022 12:53 PM

“But for the present age, which prefers the sign to the thing signified, the copy to the original, representation to reality, appearance to essence… truth is considered profane, and only illusion is sacred. Sacredness is in fact held to be enhanced in proportion as truth decreases and illusion increases, so that the highest degree of illusion comes to be the highest degree of sacredness. ” — Feuerbach, Preface to the second edition of The Essence of Christianity.

19 Apr 2022 03:50 PM

2: The images detached from every aspect of life merge into a common stream in which the unity of that life can no longer be recovered. Fragmented views of reality regroup themselves into a new unity as a separate pseudoworld that can only be looked at. The specialization of images of the world evolves into a world of autonomized images where even the deceivers are deceived. The spectacle is a concrete inversion of life, an autonomous movement of the nonliving.

19 Apr 2022 03:51 PM

5: The spectacle cannot be understood as a mere visual excess produced by mass-media technologies. It is a worldview that has actually been materialized, a view of a world that has become objective.

19 Apr 2022 03:52 PM

6: Understood in its totality, the spectacle is both the result and the project of the dominant mode of production. It is not a mere decoration added to the real world. It is the very heart of this real society’s unreality. In all of its particular manifestations— news, propaganda, advertising, entertainment— the spectacle represents the dominant model of life. It is the omnipresent affirmation of the choices that have already been made in the sphere of production and in the consumption implied by that production. In both form and content the spectacle serves as a total justification of the conditions and goals of the existing system. The spectacle also represents the constant presence of this justification since it monopolizes the majority of the time spent outside the production process.

19 Apr 2022 03:55 PM

9: In a world that is really upside down, the true is a moment of the false.

19 Apr 2022 03:57 PM

13: The tautological character of the spectacle stems from the fact that its means and ends are identical. It is the sun that never sets over the empire of modern passivity. It covers the entire surface of the globe, endlessly basking in its own glory.

19 Apr 2022 03:59 PM

The first stage of the economy’s domination of social life brought about an evident degradation of being into having— human fulfillment was no longer equated with what one was, but with what one possessed. The present stage, in which social life has become completely dominated by the accumulated productions of the economy, is bringing about a general shift from having to appearing— all “having” must now derive its immediate prestige and its ultimate purpose from appearances. At the same time all individual reality has become social, in the sense that it is shaped by social forces and is directly dependent on them. Individual reality is allowed to appear only if it is not actually real.

19 Apr 2022 04:01 PM

20: Philosophy— the power of separate thought and the thought of separate power— was never by itself able to supersede theology. The spectacle is the material reconstruction of the religious illusion. Spectacular technology has not dispersed the religious mists into which human beings had projected their own alienated powers, it has merely brought those mists down to earth, to the point that even the most mundane aspects of life have become impenetrable and unbreathable. The illusory paradise that represented a total denial of earthly life is no longer projected into the heavens, it is embedded in earthly life itself. The spectacle is the technological version of the exiling of human powers into a “world beyond”; the culmination of humanity’s internal separation.

19 Apr 2022 04:05 PM

Separation is the alpha and omega of the spectacle. The institutionalization of the social division of labor in the form of class divisions had given rise to an earlier, religious form of contemplation: the mythical order with which every power has always camouflaged itself. Religion justified the cosmic and ontological order that corresponded to the interests of the masters, expounding and embellishing everything their societies could not deliver.

19 Apr 2022 04:10 PM

26: The general separation of worker and product tends to eliminate any direct personal communication between the producers and any comprehensive sense of what they are producing. With the increasing accumulation of separate products and the increasing concentration of the productive process, communication and comprehension are monopolized by the managers of the system. The triumph of this separation-based economic system proletarianizes the whole world.

19 Apr 2022 04:13 PM

The spectacle was born from the world’s loss of unity, and the immense expansion of the modern spectacle reveals the enormity of this loss.

Chapter 2: The Commodity as Spectacle

20 Apr 2022 12:17 AM

37: The world at once present and absent that the spectacle holds up to view is the world of the commodity dominating all living experience. The world of the commodity is thus shown for what it is, because its development is identical to people’s estrangement from each other and from everything they produce.

20 Apr 2022 12:20 AM

38: The loss of quality that is so evident at every level of spectacular language, from the objects it glorifies to the behavior it regulates, stems from the basic nature of a production system that shuns reality. The commodity form reduces everything to quantitative equivalence. The quantitative is what it develops, and it can develop only within the quantitative.

20 Apr 2022 12:23 AM

The abundance of commodities— that is, the abundance of commodity relations— amounts to nothing more than an augmented survival.

20 Apr 2022 12:25 AM

The spectacle is the stage at which the commodity has succeeded in totally colonizing social life. Commodification is not only visible, we no longer see anything else; the world we see is the world of the commodity.

20 Apr 2022 12:27 AM

Once his workday is over, the worker is suddenly redeemed from the total contempt toward him that is so clearly implied by every aspect of the organization and surveillance of production, and finds himself seemingly treated like a grownup, with a great show of politeness, in his new role as a consumer. At this point the humanism of the commodity takes charge of the worker’s “leisure and humanity” simply because political economy now can and must dominate those spheres as political economy. The “perfected denial of man” has thus taken charge of all human existence.

20 Apr 2022 12:28 AM

The spectacle is a permanent opium war designed to force people to equate goods with commodities and to equate satisfaction with a survival that expands according to its own laws.

20 Apr 2022 12:29 AM

45: Automation, which is both the most advanced sector of modern industry and the epitome of its practice, obliges the commodity system to resolve the following contradiction: The technological developments that objectively tend to eliminate work must at the same time preserve labor as a commodity, because labor is the only creator of commodities. The only way to prevent automation (or any other less extreme method of increasing labor productivity) from reducing society’s total necessary labor time is to create new jobs. To this end the reserve army of the unemployed is enlisted into the tertiary or “service” sector, reinforcing the troops responsible for distributing and glorifying the latest commodities; and in this it is serving a real need, in the sense that increasingly extensive campaigns are necessary to convince people to buy increasingly unnecessary commodities.

20 Apr 2022 12:44 AM

46: Exchange value could arise only as a representative of use value, but the victory it eventually won with its own weapons created the conditions for its own autonomous power. By mobilizing all human use value and monopolizing its fulfillment, exchange value ultimately succeeded in controlling use. Usefulness has come to be seen purely in terms of exchange value, and is now completely at its mercy. Starting out like a condottiere in the service of use value, exchange value has ended up waging the war for its own sake.

20 Apr 2022 12:47 AM

48: Use value was formerly understood as an implicit aspect of exchange value. Now, however, within the upside-down world of the spectacle, it must be explicitly proclaimed, both because its actual reality has been eroded by the overdeveloped commodity economy and because it serves as a necessary pseudo-justification for a counterfeit life.

20 Apr 2022 12:48 AM

50: With the achievement of economic abundance, the concentrated result of social labor becomes visible, subjecting all reality to the appearances that are now that labor’s primary product. Capital is no longer the invisible center governing the production process; as it accumulates, it spreads to the ends of the earth in the form of tangible objects. The entire expanse of society is its portrait.

Chapter 3: Unity and Division Within Appearances

20 Apr 2022 12:57 AM

Complacent acceptance of the status quo may also coexist with purely spectacular rebelliousness— dissatisfaction itself becomes a commodity as soon as the economy of abundance develops the capacity to process that particular raw material.

20 Apr 2022 12:58 AM

60: Stars— spectacular representations of living human beings— project this general banality into images of permitted roles. As specialists of apparent life, stars serve as superficial objects that people can identify with in order to compensate for the fragmented productive specializations that they actually live. The function of these celebrities is to act out various lifestyles or sociopolitical viewpoints in a full, totally free manner. They embody the inaccessible results of social labor by dramatizing the by-products of that labor which are magically projected above it as its ultimate goals: power and vacations— the decisionmaking and consumption that are at the beginning and the end of a process that is never questioned. On one hand, a governmental power may personalize itself as a pseudostar; on the other, a star of consumption may campaign for recognition as a pseudopower over life. But the activities of these stars are not really free, and they offer no real choices.

20 Apr 2022 01:01 AM

The admirable people who personify the system are well known for not being what they seem; they attain greatness by stooping below the reality of the most insignificant individual life, and everyone knows it.

Chapter 4: The Proletariat as Subject and Representation

21 Apr 2022 11:14 AM

81: Marx’s theory is closely linked with scientific thought insofar as it seeks a rational understanding of the forces that really operate in society. But it ultimately goes beyond scientific thought, preserving it only by superseding it. It seeks to understand social struggles, not sociological laws. “We recognize only one science: the science of history” (The German Ideology).

21 Apr 2022 11:42 AM

The First International’s initial successes enabled it to free itself from the confused influences of the dominant ideology that had survived within it. But the defeat and repression that it soon encountered brought to the surface a conflict between two different conceptions of proletarian revolution, each of which contained an authoritarian aspect that amounted to abandoning the conscious self-emancipation of the working class.

22 Apr 2022 06:32 PM

At the Tenth Congress, as the Kronstadt soviet was being crushed by arms and buried under a barrage of slander, Lenin attacked the radical-left bureaucrats who had formed a “Workers’ Opposition” faction with the following ultimatum, the logic of which Stalin would later extend to an absolute division of the world: “You can stand here with us, or against us out there with a gun in your hand, but not within some opposition… We’ve had enough opposition. ”

22 Apr 2022 06:41 PM

The Russian bureaucracy then carried this consolidation of power to the next stage by subjecting the peasantry to a reign of terror, implementing the most brutal primitive accumulation of capital in history. The industrialization of the Stalin era revealed the bureaucracy’s ultimate function: continuing the reign of the economy by preserving the essence of market society: commodified labor. It also demonstrated the independence of the economy: the economy has come to dominate society so completely that it has proved capable of recreating the class domination it needs for its own continued operation; that is, the bourgeoisie has created an independent power that is capable of maintaining itself even without a bourgeoisie.

22 Apr 2022 06:44 PM

105: Leninism was the highest voluntaristic expression of revolutionary ideology— a coherence of the separate governing a reality that resisted it. With the advent of Stalinism, revolutionary ideology returned to its fundamental incoherence. At that point, ideology was no longer a weapon, it had become an end in itself. But a lie that can no longer be challenged becomes insane. The totalitarian ideological pronouncement obliterates reality as well as purpose; nothing exists but what it says exists. Although this crude form of the spectacle has been confined to certain underdeveloped regions, it has nevertheless played an essential role in the spectacle’s global development. This particular materialization of ideology did not transform the world economically, as did advanced capitalism; it simply used police-state methods to transform people’s perception of the world.

22 Apr 2022 08:30 PM

When ideology has become total through its possession of total power, and has changed from partial truth to totalitarian falsehood, historical thought has been so totally annihilated that history itself, even at the level of the most empirical knowledge, can no longer exist. Totalitarian bureaucratic society lives in a perpetual present in which whatever has previously happened is determined solely by its police.

22 Apr 2022 08:32 PM

Although fascism rallies to the defense of the main icons of a bourgeois ideology that has become conservative (family, private property, moral order, patriotism), while mobilizing the petty bourgeoisie and the unemployed workers who are panic-stricken by economic crisis or disillusioned by the socialist movement’s failure to bring about a revolution, it is not itself fundamentally ideological. It presents itself as what it is— a violent resurrection of myth calling for participation in a community defined by archaic pseudovalues: race, blood, leader. Fascism is a technologically equipped primitivism.

22 Apr 2022 08:51 PM

124: Revolutionary theory is now the enemy of all revolutionary ideology, and it knows it.

Chapter 5: Time and History

22 Apr 2022 09:00 PM

Myth is the unitary mental construct which guarantees that the cosmic order conforms with the order that this society has in fact already established within its frontiers.

22 Apr 2022 09:09 PM

The monotheistic religions were a compromise between myth and history, between the cyclical time that still governed the sphere of production and the irreversible time that was the theater of conflicts and regroupings among different peoples. The religions that evolved out of Judaism were abstract universal acknowledgments of an irreversible time that had become democratized and open to all, but only in the realm of illusion. Time is totally oriented toward a single final event: “The Kingdom of God is soon to come. ” These religions were rooted in the soil of history, but they remained radically opposed to history.

Chapter 6: Spectacular Time

22 Apr 2022 09:42 PM

149: This pseudocyclical time is in fact merely a consumable disguise of the production system’s commodified time. It exhibits the latter’s essential traits: homogenous exchangeable units and suppression of any qualitative dimension. But as a by-product of commodified time whose function is to promote and maintain the backwardness of everyday life, it is loaded with pseudovalorizations and manifests itself as a succession of pseudoindividualized moments.

23 Apr 2022 12:19 AM

Thus, the time that modern society is constantly seeking to “save” by increasing transportation speeds or using packaged soups ends up being spent by the average American in watching television three to six hours a day.

23 Apr 2022 12:21 AM

As for the social image of the consumption of time, it is exclusively dominated by leisure time and vacations— moments portrayed, like all spectacular commodities, at a distance and as desirable by definition. These commodified moments are explicitly presented as moments of real life whose cyclical return we are supposed to look forward to. But all that is really happening is that the spectacle is displaying and reproducing itself at a higher level of intensity. What is presented as true life turns out to be merely a more truly spectacular life.

Chapter 8: Negation and Consumption Within Culture

24 Apr 2022 12:01 AM

188: When art becomes independent and paints its world in dazzling colors, a moment of life has grown old. Such a moment cannot be rejuvenated by dazzling colors, it can only be evoked in memory. The greatness of art only emerges at the dusk of life.

This is based on a very obsolete interpretation of art.

24 Apr 2022 12:10 AM

191: Dadaism and surrealism were the two currents that marked the end of modern art. Though they were only partially conscious of it, they were contemporaries of the last great offensive of the revolutionary proletarian movement, and the defeat of that movement, which left them trapped within the very artistic sphere whose decrepitude they had denounced, was the fundamental reason for their immobilization. Dadaism and surrealism were historically linked yet also opposed to each other. This opposition involved the most important and radical contributions of the two movements, but it also revealed the internal inadequacy of their one-sided critiques. Dadaism sought to abolish art without realizing it; surrealism sought to realize art without abolishing it. The critical position since developed by the situationists has shown that the abolition and realization of art are inseparable aspects of a single transcendence of art.

24 Apr 2022 12:16 AM

193: As culture becomes completely commodified it tends to become the star commodity of spectacular society. Clark Kerr, one of the foremost ideologues of this tendency, has calculated that the complex process of production, distribution and consumption of knowledge already accounts for 29% of the gross national product of the United States; and he predicts that in the second half of this century the “knowledge industry” will become the driving force of the American economy, as was the automobile in the first half of this century and the railroad in the last half of the previous century.

24 Apr 2022 12:34 AM

207: Ideas improve. The meaning of words plays a role in that improvement. Plagiarism is necessary. Progress depends on it. It sticks close to an author’s phrasing, exploits his expressions, deletes a false idea, replaces it with the right one.

The Setting Sun

2025-05-28T06:38:19.000Z

The Setting Sun

By Osamu Dazai

CHAPTER THREE / MOONFLOWERS

Page 56 @ December 3, 2019

When I pretended to be precocious, people started the rumor that I was precocious. When I acted like an idler, rumor had it 1 was an idler. When I pretended I couldn't write a novel, people said I couldn't write. When I acted like a liar, they called me a liar. When I acted like a rich man, they started the rumor I was rich. When I feigned indifference, they classed me as the indifferent type. But when I inadvertently groaned because I was really in pain, they started the rumor that I was faking suffering. The world is out of joint.

The Sea by John Banville

2023-01-30T17:47:21.000Z

The Sea

John Banville

Chapter I

Page 26 @ 08 October 2022 01:50 PM

Life, authentic life, is supposed to be all struggle, unflagging action and affirmation, the will butting its blunt head against the world’s wall, suchlike, but when I look back I see that the greater part of my energies was always given over to the simple search for shelter, for comfort, for, yes, I admit it, for cosiness. This is a surprising, not to say a shocking, realisation. Before, I saw myself as something of a buccaneer, facing all-comers with a cutlass in my teeth, but now I am compelled to acknowledge that this was a delusion. To be concealed, protected, guarded, that is all I have ever truly wanted, to burrow down into a place of womby warmth and cower there, hidden from the sky’s indifferent gaze and the harsh air’s damagings. That is why the past is just such a retreat for me, I go there eagerly, rubbing my hands and shaking off the cold present and the colder future. And yet, what existence, really, does it have, the past? After all, it is only what the present was, once, the present that is gone, no more than that. And yet.

Chapter II

Page 78 @ 08 October 2022 08:47 PM

From earliest days I wanted to be someone else. The injunction nosce te ipsum had an ashen taste on my tongue from the first time a teacher enjoined me to repeat it after him. I knew myself, all too well, and did not like what I knew. Again, I must qualify. It was not what I was that I disliked, I mean the singular, essential me—although I grant that even the notion of an essential, singular self is problematic—but the congeries of affects, inclinations, received ideas, class tics, that my birth and upbringing had bestowed on me in place of a personality. In place of, yes. I never had a personality, not in the way that others have, or think they have. I was always a distinct no-one, whose fiercest wish was to be an indistinct someone. I know what I mean. Anna, I saw at once, would be the medium of my transmutation. She was the fairground mirror in which all my distortions would be made straight. “Why not be yourself?” she would say to me in our early days together—be, mark you, not know—pitying my fumbling attempts to grasp the great world. Be yourself! Meaning, of course, Be anyone you like. That was the pact we made, that we would relieve each other of the burden of being the people whom everyone else told us we were.

An anti-buddhist positive outlook.

Page 83 @ 08 October 2022 09:19 PM

What are living beings, compared to the enduring intensity of mere things?

Generated at: 2022-10-09-00-02-25

The Power of Myth

2025-05-28T06:20:45.000Z

The Power of Myth

By Joseph Campbell; Bill D. Moyers; Betty S. Flowers

Introduction

Page 12 @ March 1, 2018

One story he especially liked told of the troubled woman who came to the Indian saint and sage Ramakrishna, saying, "O Master, I do not find that I love God."

Sadly, Ramakrishna is not a mainstream. Hinduism has it's own very dark corners.

MYTH AND THE MODERN WORLD

Page 17 @ March 1, 2018

With the loss of that, we've really lost something because we don't have a comparable literature to take its place. These bits of information from ancient times, which have to do with the themes that have supported human life, built civilizations, and informed religions over the millennia, have to do with deep inner problems, inner mysteries, inner thresholds of passage, and if you don't know what the guide-signs are along the way, you have to work it out yourself. But once this subject catches you, there is such a feeling, from one or another of these traditions, of information of a deep, rich, life-vivifying sort that you don't want to give it up.

At the same time it can causes blindness.

Page 21 @ March 1, 2018

MOYERS: The right person? How does one choose the right person? CAMPBELL: Your heart tells you. It ought to. MOYERS: Your inner being. CAMPBELL: That's the mystery. MOYERS: You recognize your other self. CAMPBELL: Well, I don't know, but there's a flash that comes, and something in you knows that this is the one.

To much mysticism.

Page 24 @ March 1, 2018

It's primarily a spiritual exercise, and the society is supposed to help us have the realization. Man should not be in the service of society, society should be in the service of man. When man is in the service of society, you have a monster state, and that's what is threatening the world at this minute.

A pure truth at last!

Page 32 @ March 2, 2018

This is why I think it is obscene to judge people in terms of civil law for performances that they rendered in time of war. They were acting not as individuals, they were acting as agents of something above them and to which they had by dedication given themselves. To judge them as though they were individual human beings is totally improper.

I don't agree and moreover nothing should get loyalty over ones judgment.

Page 33 @ March 2, 2018

I have a feeling that consciousness and energy are the same thing somehow. Where you really see life energy, there's consciousness. Certainly the vegetable world is conscious. And when you live in the woods, as I did as a kid, you can see all these different consciousnesses relating to themselves. There is a plant consciousness and there is an animal consciousness, and we share both these things. You eat certain foods, and the bile knows whether there's something there for it to go to work on. The whole process is consciousness. Trying to interpret it in simply mechanistic terms won't work.

Bullshit.

Page 47 @ March 3, 2018

The number thirteen is the number of transformation and rebirth. At the Last Supper there were twelve apostles and one Christ, who was going to die and be reborn. Thirteen is the number of getting out of the field of the bounds of twelve into the transcendent. You have the twelve signs of the zodiac and the sun. These men were very conscious of the number thirteen as the number of resurrection and rebirth and new life, and they played it up here all the way through.

What sort of bullshit is this?!

THE JOURNEY INWARD

Page 64 @ March 6, 2018

In the beginning, according to this story, the ancestors were not distinguished as to sex. There were no births, there were no deaths. Then a great public dance was celebrated, and in the course of the dance one of the participants was trampled to death and torn to pieces, and the pieces were buried. At the moment of that killing the sexes became separated, so that death was now balanced by begetting, begetting by death, while from the buried parts of the dismembered body food plants grew. Time had come into being, death, birth, and the killing and eating of other living beings, for the preservation of life. The timeless time of the beginning had been

Quite a myth!

Page 66 @ March 6, 2018

And from the Upanishads: "Then he realized, I indeed, I am this creation, for I have poured it forth from myself. In that way he became this creation. Verily, he who knows this becomes in this creation a creator."

Cool stuff!

Page 78 @ March 7, 2018

The Greek legend that Aristophanes tells in Plato's Symposium is another of this kind. Aristophanes says that in the beginning there were creatures composed of what are now two human beings. And those were of three sorts: male/female, male/male, and female/female. The gods then split them all in two. But after they had been split apart, all they could think of to do was to embrace each other again in order to reconstitute the original units. So we all now spend our lives trying to find and re-embrace our other halves.

Maybe they were aware of homosexuality too as a natural thing.

Page 84 @ March 8, 2018

There has to be a training to help you open your ears so that you can begin to hear metaphorically instead of concretely. Freud and Jung both felt that myth is grounded in the unconscious. Anyone writing a creative work knows that you open, you yield yourself, and the book talks to you and builds itself. To a certain extent, you become the carrier of something that is given to you from what have been called the

"কান পেতে রই" all over again…

THE HERO'S ADVENTURE

Page 172 @ March 13, 2018

the edge, the interface between what can be known and what is never to be discovered because it is a mystery that transcends all human research. The source of life -- what is it? No one knows. We don't even know what an atom is, whether it is a wave or a particle -- it is both. We don't have any idea of what these things are.

A little outdated. Even of his own time I guess. I have to check.

Page 191 @ March 15, 2018

Not the first cause, but a higher cause? CAMPBELL:I would say, a more inward cause. "Higher" is just up there, and there is no "up there." We know that. That old man up there has been blown away. You've got to find the Force inside you. This is why Oriental gurus are so convincing to young people today. They say, "It is in you. Go and find it."

Interesting…

TALES OF LOVE AND MARRIAGE

Page 241 @ March 17, 2018

The whole troubadour tradition was extinguished in Provence in the so-called Albigensian Crusade of 1209, which was launched by Pope Innocent III, and which is regarded as one of the most monstrous crusades in the history of Europe.

Pope Innocent III! What an irony.

MASKS OF ETERNITY

Page 272 @ March 17, 2018

I've lived through the twentieth century, and I know what I was told as a boy about a people who weren't yet and never had been our enemies. In order to represent them as potential enemies, and to justify our attack upon them, a campaign of hatred, misrepresentation, and denigration was launched, of which the echoes ring to this day.

Cool.

Page 285 @ March 17, 2018

Whereas in our religions, with their accent on the human, there is also an accent on the ethical -- God is qualified as good. No, no! God is horrific. Any god who can invent hell is no candidate for the Salvation Army. The end of the world, think of it! But there is a Muslim saying about the Angel of Death: "When the Angel of Death approaches, he is terrible. When he reaches you, it is bliss."

Very true.

Page 288 @ March 17, 2018

I've lost a lot of friends, as well as my parents. A realization has come to me very, very keenly, however, that I haven't lost them. That moment when I was with them has an everlasting quality about it that is now still with me. What it gave me then is still with me, and there's a kind of intimation of immortality in that.

Cool.

Page 291 @ March 17, 2018

MOYERS:And yet we all have lived a life that had a purpose. Do you believe that? CAMPBELL:I don't believe life has a purpose. Life is a lot of protoplasm with an urge to reproduce and continue in being. MOYERS:Not true -- not true.

Ha ha!

The Poetry of Zen by Sam Hamill, J.P. Seaton

2023-01-30T17:47:00.000Z

Notes & Highlights: The Poetry of Zen

Sam Hamill, J.P. Seaton

Han Shan

Time：2021-06-28 12:09

I STAND here and watch the people of this world:
all against one and one against all,
angry, arguing, plotting and scheming.
Then one day, suddenly, they die.
And each gets one plot of ground:
four feet wide, six feet long.
If you can scheme your way out of that plot,
I’ll set the stone that immortalizes your name

Page Number: 31

Time：2021-06-28 12:10

I laugh at what he calls poetry: a blind man’s
rhymes in lukewarm praise of the sun.

Page Number: 33

Time：2021-06-28 12:10

MY heart’s like the autumn moon,
reflecting from the clear pure waters of the pool.
There’s nothing to compare:What can I say?

Page Number: 33

Time：2021-06-28 12:11

EAST of me, the old lady
Got rich three or four years ago.
Used to be poorer than me,
Now she laughs that I don’t have money.
She laughs that I’ve fallen behind.
I laugh that she’s gotten ahead.
Both of us laughing, no stopping us.
East, and West.

Page Number: 34

Shih Te

Time：2021-06-28 12:13

MY poems are poems;
some people call them sermons.
Well, poems and sermons share one thing:
when you read them you’ve got to be careful.
Keep at it. Get into detail.
Don’t just claim they’re easy.
If you were to live your life like that,
a lot of funny things might happen.

Page Number: 37

Li Po

Time：2021-06-28 12:16

Zazen on Ching-t’ing Mountain
THE birds have vanished from the sky.
Now the last cloud drains away.
We sit together, the mountain and me,
until only the mountain remains.

Page Number: 43

Wang Wei

Time：2021-06-28 12:18

To Magistrate Chang

LATE, I love but quietness:
things of this world are no more my concern.
Looking back, I’ve known no better plan
than this: returning to the grove.
Pine breezes loosen my robe.
Mountain moonbeams play my lute.
What, you ask, is Final Truth?
The fisherman’s song strikes deep into the bank.

Page Number: 46

Chiao Jan

Time：2021-06-28 12:25

Inscribed on the Wall of the Hut by the Lake

IF you want to be a mountain-dweller …
no need to trek to India to find one.
I have a thousand peaks
to pick from right here on the lake.
Fragrant grasses and white cloudshold me here.
What holds you there,
world-dweller?

Page Number: 54

Po Chu-i

Time：2021-06-28 12:27

After Reading Lao Tzu

“ONE who speaks does not know; one who knows does not speak.”
Thus I have been instructed by the Old Master.
If you tell me the Old Master was one who knew, I ask,
Why did he write five thousand words to explain it?

Page Number: 58

Wu Pen (Chia Tao)

Time：2021-06-28 12:29

Parting with the Monk Ho-lan
WILD monk, come to make a parting with me.
We sit a while on the sand beside the welling source.
You’ll go a long way on that empty alms bowl,
deep among mountains, treading fallen flowers.
Masterless Ch’an, our own understanding?
When you’ve got it, there’s no place for it but a poem.
This parting’s nothing fated:
orphan clouds just never settle down.

Page Number: 62

Time：2021-06-28 12:29

The Swordsman

TEN long years I’ve honed this sword:
its frost white blade is yet untried.
Today, like any other gentleman,
it’s looking for injustice.

Page Number: 62

Anonymous Sung Dynasty Nun

Time：2021-06-28 12:32

SEARCHING for spring all day, I never saw it,
straw sandals treading everywhere
among the clouds, along the bank.
Coming home, I laughed, catching
the plum blossom’s scent:
spring at each branch tip, already perfect.

Page Number: 68

Su Tung-p’o

Time：2021-06-28 12:36

Written to the Tune of “An Immortal Approaching the River”

WINE at East Bank tonight, sobered up
then started over, getting drunk again.
Got home, a little fuzzy, maybe close to three,
and the houseboy was snoring like thunder.
I knocked at my gate, but nobody answered.
I leaned on my cane and listened to the river.
I hate it!—that even this body’s not mine alone …
Someday I’ll give it all up.
The night moves, the breeze writes
quietly in ripples on the water.
A little boat, leaving here and now,
the rest of my life on the river, on the sea.

Page Number: 69

Yuan Mei

Time：2021-06-28 12:40

Wandering Late at Kulin Temple

THE single sound of the bell
brings out the whole hall’s monks.
Golden glint of the Buddha’s face
almost the flash of a lamp.
The bodhisattva Dragon Tree is silent,
the wind has died away …
The robes of the monks cast shadows
as the moon begins to rise.
No need to chant to sutrasto make the flowers giggle …
As I lean and listen carefully,
even the stones respond.
How can the Buddha, King of Emptiness,
boast of setting the whole world free?
Here, when spring comes,
he hasn’t freed even half this pond
from thinking long on love.

Page Number: 73

Time：2021-06-28 12:41

On the Road to T’ien-t’ai

WRAPPED, surrounded by ten thousand mountains,
cut off, no place to go …
Until you’re here, there’s no way to get here.
Once you’re here, there’s no way to go.

Page Number: 74

Saigyō

Time：2021-06-28 12:56

I’D like to divide
myself in order to see,
among these mountains,
each and every flower
of every cherry tree

Page Number: 93

Time：2021-06-28 16:46

THIS loneliness is
not simply the result
of autumn colors—
even mountain evergreens make
me feel like autumn evening

Page Number: 98

Fujiwara no Ietaka

Time：2021-06-28 16:47

EVERYTHING must end.
Thus the day tries to begin
with the morning bell.
But the long night remains,
empty moon still in the sky.

Page Number: 100

The Priest Jakuren

Time：2021-06-28 16:47

CALL it loneliness,
that deep, beautiful color
no one can describe:
over these dark mountains,
the gathering autumn dusk.

Page Number: 101

Asukai Masatsune

Time：2021-06-28 16:48

I WALKED among stones
through mountains of mountains,
paying no mind
until the flower-trail behind
turned into drifting white clouds.

Page Number: 103

Dōgen Kigen

Time：2021-06-28 16:52

EVEN without hearts
and minds, plants wither
with the passing days.
Seeing just how this is so,
we feel a little ashamed.

Page Number: 104

Time：2021-06-28 16:52

CAST away all speech.
Our words may express it,
but cannot hold it.
The way of letters leaves no trace,
yet the teaching is revealed.

Page Number: 104

Kōhō Kennichi

Time：2021-06-28 16:52

HERE in a thatched hut
hidden among mountain peaks,
with barely room for one,
I’m suddenly invaded
by wandering white clouds.

Page Number: 105

Emperor Fushima

Time：2021-06-28 16:53

ONLY now I know
that power—greater than storms—
a heart-rending awe
silencing all the pine
sat nightfall on the mountain.

Page Number: 106

Ikkyū Sōjun

Time：2021-06-28 16:54

LIKE vanishing dew,
a passing apparition
or the sudden flash
of lightning—already gone—
thus should one regard one’s self.

Page Number: 110

Time：2021-06-28 16:55

AND what is mind
and how is it recognized?
It is clearly drawn
in sumi ink, the sound
of breezes drifting through pine.

Page Number: 110

Time：2021-06-28 16:56

Face-to-Face with My Lover on Daitō’s Anniversary

MONKS recite the sutras in honor of the founder,
their many voices cacophonous in my ear.
Afterward, making love, our intimate whispers
mock the empty formal discipline of others.

Page Number: 111

Time：2021-06-28 16:57

Elegy

WE first lay down among flowers
ten years ago and found a timeless rapture.
Sadly, I remember being pillowed by her lap,
all-night love, all eternity in our vows.

Page Number: 112

Anonymous

Time：2021-06-28 16:58

TO learn how to die,
watch cherry blossoms, observe
chrysanthemums.

Page Number: 115

Buson

Time：2021-06-28 17:00

IN a bitter wind
a solitary monk bends
to words cut in stone.

Page Number: 134

Ryōkan

Time：2021-06-28 17:01

WHO says my poems are poems?
They aren’t poems at all.
Only when you understand my poems aren’t poems
can we talk poetry.

Page Number: 136

Time：2021-06-28 17:02

(Poem in Four Characters)
ABOVE heaven
big winds

Page Number: 137

Time：2021-06-28 17:02

I NEVER longed for the wilder side of life.
Rivers and mountains were my friends.
Clouds consumed my shadow where I roamed,
and birds pass high above my resting place.
Straw sandals in snowy villages,
a walking stick in spring,
I sought a timeless truth: the flowers’ glory
is just another form of dust.

Page Number: 138

Time：2021-06-28 17:03

YOU stop to point at the moon in the sky,
but the finger’s blind unless the moon is shining.
One moon, one careless finger pointing—
are these two things or one?
The question is a pointer guiding
a novice from ignorance thick as fog.
Look deeper. The mystery calls and calls:
No moon, no finger—nothing there at all.

Page Number: 138

Kobayashi Issa

Time：2021-06-28 17:09

This world of dew
is only the world of dew—
and yet … and yet …

Page Number: 145

The Noble Eightfold Path by Bhikkhu Bodhi

2023-02-21T14:48:40.000Z

The Noble Eightfold Path: Way to the End of Suffering

Bhikkhu. Bodhi

III.Right Intentions

Time: 2021-08-29 00:20

From the Buddhist perspective, the cognitive and purposive sides of the mind do not remain isolated in separate compartments but intertwine and interact in close correlation. Emotional predilections influence views, and views determine predilections. Thus a penetrating view of the nature of existence, gained through deep reflection and validated through investigation, brings with it a restructuring of values which sets the mind moving towards goals commensurate with the new vision. The application of mind needed to achieve those goals is what is meant by right intention.

IV.Right Speech, Right Action, Right Livelihood

Time: 2021-08-29 03:13

It is said that in the course of his long training for enlightenment over many lives, a bodhisatta can break all the moral precepts except the pledge to speak the truth. The reason for this is very profound, and reveals that the commitment to truth has a significance transcending the domain of ethics and even mental purification, taking us to the domains of knowledge and being.

V.Right Effort

Time: 2021-08-30 18:40

The way to enlightenment starts with mindfulness. Mindfulness clears the ground for insight into the nature of things by bringing to light phenomena in the now, the present moment, stripped of all subjective commentary, interpretations, and projections. Then, when mindfulness has brought the bare phenomena into focus, the factor of investigation steps in to search out their characteristics, conditions, and consequences. Whereas mindfulness is basically receptive, investigation is an active factor which unflinchingly probes, analyzes, and dissects phenomena to uncover their fundamental structures.

VIII.The Development of Wisdom

Time: 2021-08-30 22:41

At the cognitive level, which is its most basic sphere of operation, ignorance infiltrates our perceptions, thoughts, and views, so that we come to misconstrue our experience, overlaying it with multiple strata of delusions. The most important of these delusions are three: the delusions of seeing permanence in the impermanent, of seing satisfaction in the unsatisfactory, and of seeing a self in the selfless.

Time: 2021-08-30 23:06

Insofar as they bind us to the round of becoming, the defilements are classified into a set of ten “fetters” (saṃyojana) as follows: (1) personality view, (2) doubt, (3) clinging to rules and rituals, (4) sensual desire, (5) aversion, (6) desire for fine-material existence,(7) desire for immaterial existence, (8) conceit, (9) restlessness, and (10) ignorance.

The Ministry of Truth, The Biography of George Orwell's 1984

2023-01-19T10:21:29.000Z

The Ministry of Truth, The Biography of George Orwell's 1984

by Dorian Lynskey

Part One

Page 31 @ October 14, 2019

Another, less spiritual consolation was the supply of chocolate, cigars and Fortnum & Mason tea that Orwell began receiving from his wife Eileen after she followed him to Spain in February to work as McNair’s secretary in Barcelona. The couple had married eight months earlier, having met at a party in 1935, and in many respects they were an excellent match. Both were emotionally reticent, with a tendency towards gloom enlivened by an ironic sense of humour and a spirit of generosity. They shared a passion for nature and literature, frugal tastes, and a carelessness about their health and appearance, rarely seen without a cigarette dangling from their lips. Both had strong principles and the courage to act on them. The difference was ambition. Eileen was a highly intelligent Oxford graduate, universally well-liked, but she subordinated her own aspirations to Orwell’s, dropping out of a master’s degree programme in educational psychology to live with him in a cottage-cum-shop in the Hertfordshire village of Wallington. One friend said, “ She caught George’s dreams from him like measles.”

Page 63 @ October 23, 2019

The future, at any rate the immediate future, is not with the “sensible” men. The future is with the fanatics. —George Orwell, Time & Tide, June 8, 1940

Things haven't changed much.

Page 118 @ October 27, 2019

He had warmer things to say about Charlie Chaplin’s The Great Dictator. Despite being a dogged defender of the Soviet Union in private, on the screen Chaplin stood, Orwell thought, for “ a sort of concentrated essence of the common man, for the ineradicable belief in decency that exists in the hearts of ordinary people.”

Page 122 @ October 27, 2019

In recent years, the BBC has exploited its Orwell connection in ways that might have amused the man himself. To mark Orwell’s centenary in 2003, it commissioned the artist Rachel Whiteread to produce a plaster cast of Room 101 in 55 Portland Place, revealing only how unremarkable and irrelevant to the novel it was. In 2017, it erected a bronze statue of Orwell outside its headquarters at Broadcasting House, beside an engraved line from the unpublished preface to Animal Farm—“ If liberty means anything at all it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear”—which is a good description of what Orwell’s job in the Indian Section wasn’t.

Page 128 @ October 27, 2019

Orwell’s most eccentric piece for the BBC was an imagined dialogue with the ghost of Swift, in which Orwell played the cautious optimist to Swift’s savage misanthrope. His version of Swift was unsurprised by Hitler, Stalin or the Blitz because progress is a con and science merely produces more efficient killing machines. Perhaps Orwell was using Swift to personify his own grimmest impulses, so that he could mount a case against them. However pessimistic he became, he didn’t believe that humans were grubby, worthless, self-defeating creatures. “ He couldn’t see what the simplest person sees,” Orwell concluded after his supernatural telephone line to Swift broke down, “that life is worth living and human beings, even if they are dirty and ridiculous, are mostly decent. But after all, if he could have seen that I suppose he couldn’t have written Gulliver’s Travels.” As Arthur Koestler put it, “ Orwell never completely lost faith in the knobby-faced yahoos with their bad teeth.”

Page 134 @ October 27, 2019

Orwell’s approval rating was a lowly 16 per cent. Only after the war would he learn that his work had any fans in India at all. He never saw the glowing internal report written by Rushbrook Williams, the director of Indian Services, who lauded his talent, work ethic and integrity: “ He is transparently honest, incapable of subterfuge, and in early days he would have been canonised—or burnt at the stake! Either fate he would have sustained with stoical courage.” On the day he left, Orwell’s colleagues threw him a surprise party; had he been forewarned, they suspected, he wouldn’t have showed up.

Page 144 @ October 27, 2019

To Zamyatin, this was artistic suicide: “ True literature can exist when it is created, not by diligent and trustworthy officials, but by madmen, hermits, heretics, dreamers, rebels and sceptics.”

Page 214 @ October 29, 2019

The essence of being human is that one does not seek perfection,” he wrote, “that one is sometimes willing to commit sins for the sake of loyalty, that one does not push asceticism to the point where it makes friendly intercourse impossible, and that one is prepared in the end to be defeated and broken up by life, which is the inevitable price of fastening one’s love upon other human individuals.” It was certainly the essence of being Orwell.

Part Two

Page 241 @ November 1, 2019

Screenwriter Nigel Kneale and director Rudolph Cartier had previously collaborated on the sci-fi chiller The Quatermass Experiment. Their confident, intelligent take on Orwell, starring Peter Cushing as Winston Smith, was even harder on the nerves, with its atmosphere of creeping dread and its horrific climax in the Ministry of Love. Cartier thought it was the combination of television and telescreen that made it uniquely potent. When the viewer saw Big Brother, he said, “ cold eyes stared from the small screen straight at him, casting into the viewer’s heart the same chill that the characters in the play experienced whenever they heard his voice coming from their watching TV screens.”

Page 262 @ November 1, 2019

Decades later, Times reporter James “Scotty” Reston explained McCarthy’s success: “ He knew that big lies produced big headlines. He also knew that most newspapers would print almost any outrageous charge a United States senator made in public…McCarthy knew how to take advantage of this ‘cult of objectivity.’ ” Almost everybody, he added, “ came out of the McCarthy period feeling vaguely guilty.”

The Message by Ta-Nehisi Coates

2024-12-05T18:07:57.000Z

The Message

Ta-Nehisi Coates

Part I: Journalism Is Not a Luxury

Page: 3 (2.70%) @ 09 Nov 2024 08:59:58 PM

Though we do not wholly believe it yet, the interior life is a real life, and the intangible dreams of people have a tangible effect on the world.
—James Baldwin

[!important] Striking/Intense

Page: 5 (4.50%) @ 09 Nov 2024 09:04:11 PM

Haunt. You’ve heard me say this word a lot. It is never enough for the reader of your words to be convinced. The goal is to haunt—to have them think about your words before bed, see them manifest in their dreams, tell their partner about them the next morning, to have them grab random people on the street, shake them and say, “Have you read this yet?”

[!question] Thought Provoking

Part II: On Pharaohs

Page: 28 (25.23%) @ 10 Nov 2024 12:59:30 AM

I think if he tried to describe the forces shaping his life, my father would see his own actions first: his credits, his mistakes. But if he widened the aperture to the world around him, he would see that some people’s credits earned them more, and their mistakes cost them less. And those people who took more and paid less lived in a world of iniquitous wealth, while his own people lived in a world of terrifying want.

[!question] Thought Provoking

Page: 29 (26.13%) @ 10 Nov 2024 01:01:40 AM

It may seem strange that people who have already attained a position of power through violence invest so much time in justifying their plunder with words. But even plunderers are human beings whose violent ambitions must contend with the guilt that gnaws at them when they meet the eyes of their victims. And so a story must be told, one that raises a wall between themselves and those they seek to throttle and rob.

[!important] Striking/Intense

Page: 34 (30.63%) @ 12 Nov 2024 01:17:13 AM

That was how I got my African name—“Ta-Nehisi,” a designation in Ancient Egyptian for the kingdom of Nubia, sometimes translated as “Land of the Blacks.” I was born into what the historian St. Clair Drake calls the “vindicationist tradition,” that is, to Black people who sought to reclaim the very history weaponized against them and turn it back against their tormentors. If a “Black Egypt” was what the Niggerologists feared, then we would insist on its truth and take it to its logical conclusion: We were born not to be slaves but to be royalty. That explains our veneration of Black pharaohs and African kingdoms. The point was to tell a different story than the one imposed on us—an understandable response, but one that I’ve never made peace with.

[!question] Thought Provoking

Page: 35 (31.53%) @ 12 Nov 2024 01:18:39 AM

My name is not meant simply to evoke a historical entity but to conjure the idea of a Black civilization—which is to say human beings filed away in a hierarchy of nobles, seers, commoners, and slaves who through their construction of monuments, recording of literature, and waging of war can rightfully be considered full human beings. But I think human dignity is in the mind and body and not in stone. And I think the moment we root our worth in castes and kingdoms, in “civilization,” we have accepted the precepts of those whose whole entire legacy is the burning and flooding of a planet. And then we have already lost.

[!important] Striking/Intense

Page: 39 (35.14%) @ 12 Nov 2024 01:32:05 AM

I felt the sadness now increase, expanding from a pinhole until it was wide as the sea itself, rippling with each wave that crested and fell on this African shore. I had traveled back to a kind of Big Bang. A universe would be born on the other side of the water, but first countless worlds would have to die. And I realized I was sad, not because I was alone but because I was not. I had indeed come home, and ghosts had come back with me.

[!stylish] Stylish

Page: 54 (48.65%) @ 12 Nov 2024 04:17:47 PM

I walked south down a cobblestone road, listening to the goats bleating and roosters crowing in the distance. I felt a deep calm. And then, at the end of the street, I found a hill and climbed it, and from that vantage point I looked out at the sea. I saw the waves crashing, and the familiar sadness that I’d felt that entire trip every time I looked out into the sea came over me again. In my mind, I was traveling across an epic dating back some five hundred years, when the first of us were carried off. Entire worldviews, systems of study, political movements, wars, and literature were birthed by that one act. And such deep suffering. Standing on that hill, I felt it all personally. My mind returned to Baltimore, to the sketch, to my father trying to read his way out.

[!stylish] Stylish

Page: 57 (51.35%) @ 12 Nov 2024 04:21:14 PM

Here is what I think: We have a right to our imagined traditions, to our imagined places, and those traditions and places are most powerful when we confess that they are imagined. Gorée is the name of a place my people have proclaimed as sacred, a symbolic representation of our last stop before the genocide and rebirth of the Middle Passage, before, as Robert Hayden once wrote, our “voyage through death / to life upon these shores.” We have a right to that memory, to choose the rock of Gorée, to consecrate it, to cry before it, to mourn its meaning. And we have a right to imagine ourselves as pharaohs, and then again the responsibility to ask if a pharaoh is even worthy of our needs, our dreams, our imagination.

[!question] Thought Provoking

Part III: Bearing the Flaming Cross

Page: 71 (63.96%) @ 12 Nov 2024 06:36:56 PM

And then Schulz sketches the future to make us feel what we might if a tsunami struck:
If it happens at night, the ensuing catastrophe will unfold in darkness…. Nonchalance will shatter instantly. So will everything made of glass…. Refrigerators will walk out of kitchens, unplugging themselves and toppling over…. Unmoored on the undulating ground, the homes will begin to collapse.

[!stylish] Stylish

Page: 80 (72.07%) @ 12 Nov 2024 11:05:57 PM

Great canons angle toward great power, and the great privilege of great power is an incuriosity about those who lack it. That incuriosity is what afflicts the dullest critics of safe spaces and the like. But if these writers, teachers, and administrators could part with the privilege of their own ignorance, they would see that they too need safe spaces—and that, for their own sakes, they have made a safe space of nearly the entire world.

[!question] Thought Provoking

Page: 91 (81.98%) @ 13 Nov 2024 01:42:00 PM

Oppressive power is preserved in the smoke and fog, and sometimes it is smuggled in the unexamined shadows of the language of the oppressed themselves.

[!important] Striking/Intense

Page: 92 (82.88%) @ 13 Nov 2024 01:43:12 PM

Literature is anguish.

[!stylish] Stylish

Page: 92 (82.88%) @ 13 Nov 2024 01:45:36 PM

I was not born into a religious home, but I knew that my peers had been raised on stories of God casting Adam and Eve from paradise for biting an apple, that He had destroyed all life save that contained in the ark, that He had condemned me and every other nonbeliever to eternal suffering. And this is the children’s literature of those who believe this to be a Christian nation. I suspect these believers would say that the anguish, this discomfort radiating out of their own gospel, is not incidental but is at the heart of its transformative power.

[!question] Thought Provoking

Page: 94 (84.68%) @ 13 Nov 2024 01:49:18 PM

I sat on the phone, silent, for eight seconds. Writing is all process to me, not finished work. It begins in the kind of anguish South Carolina sought to forbid, sometimes originating in something I’ve read, but more often in the world itself—in peoples and systems whose declared aims run contrary to their actions. And through reading, through reporting, I begin to comprehend a truth. That moment of comprehension is ecstatic. Writing and rewriting is the attempt to communicate not just a truth but the ecstasy of a truth. It is not enough for me to convince the reader of my argument; I want them to feel that same private joy that I feel alone.

[!question] Thought Provoking

Page: 110 (99.10%) @ 16 Nov 2024 10:50:32 PM

Much of the current hoopla about “book bans” and “censorship” gets it wrong. This is not about me or any writer of the moment. It is about writers to come—the boundaries of their imagination, the angle of their thinking, the depth of their questions.

[!question] Thought Provoking

Part IV: The Gigantic Dream

Page: 126 (113.51%) @ 24 Nov 2024 04:02:44 PM

Again I felt the mental lens curving against the light and was reminded of something I have long known, something I’ve written and spoken about, but still was stunned to see here in such stark detail: that race is a species of power and nothing else.

[!stylish] Stylish

Page: 127 (114.41%) @ 24 Nov 2024 04:05:52 PM

Throughout the West Bank, I saw cisterns used to harvest rainwater. These cisterns were almost certainly illegal—the Israeli state’s hold on the West Bank includes control of the aquifers in the ground and the rainwater that falls from above. Any structure designed for gathering water requires a permit from the occupying power, and such permits are rarely given to Palestinians. The upshot is predictable—water consumption for Israelis is nearly four times that of Palestinians living under occupation. And in those West Bank settlements which I once took as mere outposts, you can find country clubs furnished with large swimming pools. On seeing these cisterns, it occurred to me that Israel had advanced beyond the Jim Crow South and segregated not just the pools and fountains but the water itself. And more, it occurred to me that there was still one place on the planet—under American patronage—that resembled the world that my parents were born into.

[!important] Striking/Intense

Page: 148 (133.33%) @ 05 Dec 2024 12:58:31 AM

Thus the complex of curators is doing more than setting pub dates and greenlighting—they are establishing and monitoring a criterion for humanity. Without this criterion, there can be no oppressive power, because the first duty of racism, sexism, homophobia, and so forth is the framing of who is human and who is not.

[!question] Thought Provoking

Page: 206 (185.59%) @ 05 Dec 2024 10:46:40 PM

I came to think of my trade—long-form magazine or new journalism—as a kind of scientific process that, when correctly applied, must necessarily reveal the truth.

[!quote] Quotable/Concept/General Idea

Page: 216 (194.59%) @ 05 Dec 2024 11:22:16 PM

The link is colonialism, which has always had a racist cynicism at its core—a belief that the world is not just savage, but that the most dangerous savages tend to live beyond the borders of the West. Zionism—which from the outset sought to position itself as “an outpost of civilization against barbarism”—has never rejected these precepts.

[!question] Thought Provoking

Page: 229 (206.31%) @ 05 Dec 2024 11:43:00 PM

This is important—forced to match sword for sword, or gun for gun, slaveholders and white supremacists could be confident in victory, if only because their vast wealth assured them an unmatched arsenal. But the rules of writing are different, and great wealth has almost the same relationship to creating great writers as it does great basketball players. A literature fueled by a profound human experience must necessarily burn at a high flame, and thus a “material handicap” is transformed into a “spiritual advantage,” putting in the hands of the oppressed “the conditions of a classical art,” which is to say the power to haunt people, to move people, and expand the brackets of humanity. This is as true for those laboring under the shadow of enslavement as it is for those laboring under the shadow of apartheid.

[!question] Thought Provoking

The Lord of the Rings

2025-05-29T10:33:53.000Z

The Lord of the Rings

J.R.R. Tolkien

Chapter 2: THE SHADOW OF THE PAST

Page: 65 (7.72%) @ 05 Apr 2025 03:18:49 AM

A mortal, Frodo, who keeps one of the Great Rings, does not die, but he does not grow or obtain more life, he merely continues, until at last every minute is a weariness. And if he often uses the Ring to make himself invisible, he fades: he becomes in the end invisible permanently, and walks in the twilight under the eye of the Dark Power that rules the Rings. Yes, sooner or later – later, if he is strong or well-meaning to begin with, but neither strength nor good purpose will last – sooner or later the Dark Power will devour him.

[!stylish] Stylish

Page: 69 (8.19%) @ 05 Apr 2025 04:24:09 PM

Three Rings for the Elven-kings under the sky,
Seven for the Dwarf-lords in their halls of stone,
Nine for Mortal Men doomed to die,
One for the Dark Lord on his dark throne
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.
One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them,
One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.

[!quote] Quotable/Concept/General Idea

Page: 78 (9.26%) @ 05 Apr 2025 10:48:07 PM

‘But this is terrible!’ cried Frodo. ‘Far worse than the worst that I imagined from your hints and warnings. O Gandalf, best of friends, what am I to do? For now I am really afraid. What am I to do? What a pity that Bilbo did not stab that vile creature, when he had a chance!’
‘Pity? It was Pity that stayed his hand. Pity, and Mercy: not to strike without need. And he has been well rewarded, Frodo. Be sure that he took so little hurt from the evil, and escaped in the end, because he began his ownership of the Ring so. With Pity.’
‘I am sorry,’ said Frodo. ‘But I am frightened; and I do not feel any pity for Gollum.’
‘You have not seen him,’ Gandalf broke in.
‘No, and I don’t want to,’ said Frodo. ‘I can’t understand you. Do you mean to say that you, and the Elves, have let him live on after all those horrible deeds? Now at any rate he is as bad as an Orc, and just an enemy. He deserves death.’
‘Deserves it! I daresay he does. Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement. For even the very wise cannot see all ends.

[!question] Thought Provoking

Chapter 11: A KNIFE IN THE DARK

Page: 213 (25.30%) @ 13 Apr 2025 10:12:31 PM

Strider sighed and paused before he spoke again. ‘That is a song,’ he said, ‘in the mode that is called ann-thennath among the Elves, but is hard to render in our Common Speech, and this is but a rough echo of it. It tells of the meeting of Beren son of Barahir and Lúthien Tinúviel. Beren was a mortal man, but Lúthien was the daughter of Thingol, a King of Elves upon Middle-earth when the world was young; and she was the fairest maiden that has ever been among all the children of this world. As the stars above the mists of the Northern lands was her loveliness, and in her face was a shining light. In those days the Great Enemy, of whom Sauron of Mordor was but a servant, dwelt in Angband in the North, and the Elves of the West coming back to Middle-earth made war upon him to regain the Silmarils which he had stolen; and the fathers of Men aided the Elves. But the Enemy was victorious and Barahir was slain, and Beren escaping through great peril came over the Mountains of Terror into the hidden Kingdom of Thingol in the forest of Neldoreth. There he beheld Lúthien singing and dancing in a glade beside the enchanted river Esgalduin; and he named her Tinúviel, that is Nightingale in the language of old. Many sorrows befell them afterwards, and they were parted long. Tinúviel rescued Beren from the dungeons of Sauron, and together they passed through great dangers, and cast down even the Great Enemy from his throne, and took from his iron crown one of the three Silmarils, brightest of all jewels, to be the bride-price of Lúthien to Thingol her father. Yet at the last Beren was slain by the Wolf that came from the gates of Angband, and he died in the arms of Tinúviel. But she chose mortality, and to die from the world, so that she might follow him; and it is sung that they met again beyond the Sundering Seas, and after a brief time walking alive once more in the green woods, together they passed, long ago, beyond the confines of this world. So it is that Lúthien Tinúviel alone of the Elf-kindred has died indeed and left the world, and they have lost her whom they most loved. But from her the lineage of the Elf-lords of old descended among Men. There live still those of whom Lúthien was the foremother, and it is said that her line shall never fail. Elrond of Rivendell is of that Kin. For of Beren and Lúthien was born Dior Thingol’s heir; and of him Elwing the White whom Eärendil wedded, he that sailed his ship out of the mists of the world into the seas of heaven with the Silmaril upon his brow. And of Eärendil came the Kings of Númenor, that is Westernesse.’

[!quote] Quotable/Concept/General Idea

Chapter 7: THE MIRROR OF GALADRIEL

Page: 383 (45.49%) @ 21 Apr 2025 04:11:05 AM

That what should be shall be,’ she answered. ‘The love of the Elves for their land and their works is deeper than the deeps of the Sea, and their regret is undying and cannot ever wholly be assuaged. Yet they will cast all away rather than submit to Sauron: for they know him now. For the fate of Lothlórien you are not answerable, but only for the doing of your own task. Yet I could wish, were it of any avail, that the One Ring had never been wrought, or had remained for ever lost.’

[!stylish] Stylish

Chapter 8: FAREWELL TO LÓRIEN

Page: 385 (45.72%) @ 21 Apr 2025 04:14:47 AM

’No, Lady,’ he answered. ‘To tell you the truth, I wondered what you were talking about. I saw a star through your fingers. But if you’ll pardon my speaking out, I think my master was right. I wish you’d take his Ring. You’d put things to rights. You’d stop them digging up the Gaffer and turning him adrift. You’d make some folk pay for their dirty work.’ ‘I would,’ she said. ‘That is how it would begin. But it would not stop with that, alas! We will not speak more of it. Let us go!’

[!important] Striking/Intense

Page: 397 (47.15%) @ 22 Apr 2025 04:14:59 AM

The travellers now turned their faces to the journey; the sun was before them, and their eyes were dazzled, for all were filled with tears. Gimli wept openly. ‘I have looked the last upon that which was fairest,’ he said to Legolas his companion. ‘Henceforward I will call nothing fair, unless it be her gift.’ He put his hand to his breast. ‘Tell me, Legolas, why did I come on this Quest? Little did I know where the chief peril lay! Truly Elrond spoke, saying that we could not foresee what we might meet upon our road. Torment in the dark was the danger that I feared, and it did not hold me back. But I would not have come, had I known the danger of light and joy. Now I have taken my worst wound in this parting, even if I were to go this night straight to the Dark Lord. Alas for Gimli son of Glóin!’ ‘Nay!’ said Legolas. ‘Alas for us all! And for all that walk the world in these after-days. For such is the way of it: to find and lose, as it seems to those whose boat is on the running stream. But I count you blessed, Gimli son of Glóin: for your loss you suffer of your own free will, and you might have chosen otherwise. But you have not forsaken your companions, and the least reward that you shall have is that the memory of Lothlórien shall remain ever clear and unstained in your heart, and shall neither fade nor grow stale.’

[!stylish] Stylish

Chapter 4: TREEBEARD

Page: 478 (56.77%) @ 29 Apr 2025 01:42:21 AM

One felt as if there was an enormous well behind them, filled up with ages of memory and long, slow, steady thinking; but their surface was sparkling with the present; like sun shimmering on the outer leaves of a vast tree, or on the ripples of a very deep lake. I don’t know, but it felt as if something that grew in the ground – asleep, you might say, or just feeling itself as something between root-tip and leaf-tip, between deep earth and sky had suddenly waked up, and was considering you with the same slow care that it had given to its own inside affairs for endless years.’

[!stylish] Stylish: Pippin describing Ent.

Page: 480 (57.01%) @ 29 Apr 2025 01:47:05 AM

For one thing it would take a long while: my name is growing all the time, and I’ve lived a very long, long time; so my name is like a story. Real names tell you the story of the things they belong to in my language, in the Old Entish as you might say. It is a lovely language, but it takes a very long time to say anything in it, because we do not say anything in it, unless it is worth taking a long time to say, and to listen to.

[!question] Thought Provoking

Page: 491 (58.31%) @ 29 Apr 2025 03:01:38 AM

And now the Entwives are only a memory for us, and our beards are long and grey. The Elves made many songs concerning the Search of the Ents, and some of the songs passed into the tongues of Men. But we made no songs about it, being content to chant their beautiful names when we thought of the Entwives.

[!question] Thought Provoking
In Entish, names are long stories as noted earlier. Therefore, by only chanting names they can well-remember Entwives.

Page: 495 (58.79%) @ 29 Apr 2025 03:14:22 AM

Merry and Pippin were struck chiefly by the variety that they saw: the many shapes, and colours, the differences in girth, and height, and length of leg and arm; and in the number of toes and fingers (anything from three to nine). A few seemed more or less related to Treebeard, and reminded them of beech-trees or oaks. But there were other kinds. Some recalled the chestnut: brown-skinned Ents with large splayfingered hands, and short thick legs. Some recalled the ash: tall straight grey Ents with many-fingered hands and long legs; some the fir (the tallest Ents), and others the birch, the rowan, and the linden. But when the Ents all gathered round Treebeard, bowing their heads slightly, murmuring in their slow musical voices, and looking long and intently at the strangers, then the hobbits saw that they were all of the same kindred, and all had the same eyes: not all so old or so deep as Treebeard’s, but all with the same slow, steady, thoughtful expression, and the same green flicker. first Merry and Pippin were struck chiefly by the variety that they saw: the many shapes, and colours, the differences in girth, and height, and length of leg and arm; and in the number of toes and fingers (anything from three to nine). A few seemed more or less related to Treebeard, and reminded them of beech-trees or oaks. But there were other kinds. Some recalled the chestnut: brown-skinned Ents with large splayfingered hands, and short thick legs. Some recalled the ash: tall straight grey Ents with many-fingered hands and long legs; some the fir (the tallest Ents), and others the birch, the rowan, and the linden. But when the Ents all gathered round Treebeard, bowing their heads slightly, murmuring in their slow musical voices, and looking long and intently at the strangers, then the hobbits saw that they were all of the same kindred, and all had the same eyes: not all so old or so deep as Treebeard’s, but all with the same slow, steady, thoughtful expression, and the same green flicker.At first Merry and Pippin were struck chiefly by the variety that they saw: the many shapes, and colours, the differences in girth, and height, and length of leg and arm; and in the number of toes and fingers (anything from three to nine). A few seemed more or less related to Treebeard, and reminded them of beech-trees or oaks. But there were other kinds. Some recalled the chestnut: brown-skinned Ents with large splayfingered hands, and short thick legs. Some recalled the ash: tall straight grey Ents with many-fingered hands and long legs; some the fir (the tallest Ents), and others the birch, the rowan, and the linden. But when the Ents all gathered round Treebeard, bowing their heads slightly, murmuring in their slow musical voices, and looking long and intently at the strangers, then the hobbits saw that they were all of the same kindred, and all had the same eyes: not all so old or so deep as Treebeard’s, but all with the same slow, steady, thoughtful expression, and the same green flicker.

[!question] Thought Provoking

Page: 498 (59.14%) @ 29 Apr 2025 03:22:00 AM

’Ha, hmm, my friends, let us go for a walk!’ he said. ‘I am Bregalad, that is Quickbeam in your language. But it is only a nickname, of course. They have called me that ever since I said yes to an elder Ent before he had finished his question. Also I drink quickly, and go out while some are still wetting their beards. Come with me!’ He reached down two shapely arms and gave a long-fingered hand to each of the hobbits. All that day they walked about, in the woods with him, singing, and laughing; for Quickbeam often laughed. He laughed if the sun came out from behind a cloud, he laughed if they came upon a stream or spring: then he stooped and splashed his feet and head with water; he laughed sometimes at some sound or whisper in the trees. Whenever he saw a rowan-tree he halted a while with his arms stretched out, and sang, and swayed as he sang.

[!stylish] Stylish

Page: 501 (59.50%) @ 29 Apr 2025 03:28:24 AM

You do not know, perhaps, how strong we are. Maybe you have heard of Trolls? They are mighty strong. But Trolls are only counterfeits, made by the Enemy in the Great Darkness, in mockery of Ents, as Orcs were of Elves.

[!quote] Quotable/Concept/General Idea

Chapter 3: THE BLACK GATE IS CLOSED

Page: 654 (77.67%) @ 05 May 2025 05:15:13 AM

I did not mean the danger that we all share,’ said Frodo. ‘I mean a danger to yourself alone. You swore a promise by what you call the Precious. Remember that! It will hold you to it; but it will seek a way to twist it to your own undoing. Already you are being twisted. You revealed yourself to me just now, foolishly. Give it back to Sméagol you said. Do not say that again! Do not let that thought grow in you! You will never get it back. But the desire of it may betray you to a bitter end. You will never get it back. In the last need, Sméagol, I should put on the Precious; and the Precious mastered you long ago. If I, wearing it, were to command you, you would obey, even if it were to leap from a precipice or to cast yourself into the fire. And such would be my command. So have a care, Sméagol!’

[!stylish] Stylish

Chapter 5: THE WINDOW ON THE WEST

Page: 686 (81.47%) @ 16 May 2025 03:57:42 AM

Minas Anor again as of old, full of light, high and fair, beautiful as a queen among other queens: not a mistress of many slaves, nay, not even a kind mistress of willing slaves. War must be, while we defend our lives against a destroyer who would devour all; but I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend: the city of the Men of Númenor; and I would have her loved for her memory, her ancientry, her beauty, and her present wisdom. Not feared, save as men may fear the dignity of a man, old and wise.

[!stylish] Stylish

Chapter 9: SHELOB’S LAIR

Page: 732 (86.94%) @ 18 May 2025 10:27:07 PM

Drawing a deep breath they passed inside. In a few steps they were in utter and impenetrable dark. Not since the lightless passages of Moria had Frodo or Sam known such darkness, and if possible here it was deeper and denser. There, there were airs moving, and echoes, and a sense of space. Here the air was still, stagnant, heavy, and sound fell dead. They walked as it were in a black vapour wrought of veritable darkness itself that, as it was breathed, brought blindness not only to the eyes but to the mind, so that even the memory of colours and of forms and of any light faded out of thought. Night always had been, and always would be, and night was all.

[!stylish] Stylish

Chapter 1: MINAS TIRITH

Page: 777 (92.28%) @ 21 May 2025 03:26:54 AM

And yet’ – he paused and stood up, and looked round, north, east, and south – ‘the doings at Isengard should warn us that we are caught now in a great net and strategy. This is no longer a bickering at the fords, raiding from Ithilien and from Anórien, ambushing and pillaging. This is a great war long-planned, and we are but one piece in it, whatever pride may say. Things move in the far East beyond the Inland Sea, it is reported; and north in Mirkwood and beyond; and south in Harad. And now all realms shall be put to the test, to stand, or fall – under the Shadow. ‘Yet, Master Peregrin, we have this honour: ever we bear the brunt of the chief hatred of the Dark Lord, for that hatred comes down out of the depths of time and over the deeps of the Sea. Here will the hammer-stroke fall hardest. And for that reason Mithrandir came hither in such haste. For if we fall, who shall stand? And, Master Peregrin, do you see any hope that we shall stand?’

[!stylish] Stylish

Chapter 4: THE SIEGE OF GONDOR

Page: 830 (98.57%) @ 22 May 2025 02:46:45 AM

Denethor laughed bitterly. ‘Nay, not yet, Master Peregrin! He will not come save only to triumph over me when all is won. He uses others as his weapons. So do all great lords, if they are wise, Master Halfling. Or why should I sit here in my tower and think, and watch, and wait, spending even my sons? For I can still wield a brand.’ He stood up and cast open his long black cloak, and behold! he was clad in mail beneath, and girt with a long sword, great-hilted in a sheath of black and silver. ‘Thus have I walked, and thus now for many years have I slept,’ he said, ‘lest with age the body should grow soft and timid.’

[!stylish] Stylish

Chapter 9: THE LAST DEBATE

Page: 892 (105.94%) @ 24 May 2025 10:27:09 AM

If it is destroyed, then he will fall; and his fall will be so low that none can foresee his arising ever again. For he will lose the best part of the strength that was native to him in his beginning, and all that was made or begun with that power will crumble, and he will be maimed for ever, becoming a mere spirit of malice that gnaws itself in the shadows, but cannot again grow or take shape. And so a great evil of this world will be removed.

[!quote] Quotable/Concept/General Idea

Chapter 3: MOUNT DOOM

Page: 957 (113.66%) @ 26 May 2025 03:06:20 AM

And far away, as Frodo put on the Ring and claimed it for his own, even in Sammath Naur the very heart of his realm, the Power in Barad-dûr was shaken, and the Tower trembled from its foundations to its proud and bitter crown. The Dark Lord was suddenly aware of him, and his Eye piercing all shadows looked across the plain to the door that he had made; and the magnitude of his own folly was revealed to him in a blinding flash, and all the devices of his enemies were at last laid bare. Then his wrath blazed in consuming flame, but his fear rose like a vast black smoke to choke him. For he knew his deadly peril and the thread upon which his doom now hung. From all his policies and webs of fear and treachery, from all his stratagems and wars his mind shook free; and throughout his realm a tremor ran, his slaves quailed, and his armies halted, and his captains suddenly steerless, bereft of will, wavered and despaired. For they were forgotten. The whole mind and purpose of the Power that wielded them was now bent with overwhelming force upon the Mountain. At his summons, wheeling with a rending cry, in a last desperate race there flew, faster than the winds, the Nazgûl, the Ringwraiths, and with a storm of wings they hurtled southwards to Mount Doom.

[!stylish] Stylish

The Hero With a Thousand Faces

2025-05-27T15:42:20.000Z

The Hero With a Thousand Faces

by Joseph Campbell

1. Myth and Dream

Page 21 @ August 14, 2018

Dream is the personalized myth, myth the depersonalized dream;

4. Atonement with the Father

Page 116 @ January 13, 2019

Such a figure illustrates the function and value of a graven image, and shows why long sermons are unnecessary among idol-worshipers. The devotee is permitted to soak in the meaning of the divine symbol in deep silence and in his own good time. Furthermore, just as the god wears arm bands and ankle rings, so does the devotee; and these mean what the god’s mean. They are made of gold instead of serpents, gold (the metal that does not corrode) symbolizing immortality; i.e., immortality is the mysterious creative energy of God, which is the beauty of the body.

+1 for idolatry. 😁😁😁

Page 127 @ January 13, 2019

There can be no doubt that no matter how unilluminated the stark-naked Australian savages may seem to us, their symbolical ceremonials represent a survival into modern times of an incredibly old system of spiritual instruction, the far-flung evidences of which are to be found not only in all the lands and islands bordering the Indian Ocean, but also among the remains of the archaic centers of what we tend to regard as our own ven special brand of civilization.

Well… stories and myths are important I know, but it is the meaningful stories, the realized myths, that is science, makes a civilization superior.

5. Apotheosis

Page 149 @ January 13, 2019

Similarly, throughout the Orient, throughout the ancient world, and in the pre-Columbian Americas, society and nature represented to the mind the inexpressible. “The plants, rocks, fire, water, all are alive. They watch us and see our needs. They see when we have nothing to protect us,” declared an old Apache storyteller, “and it is then that they reveal themselves and speak to us.”130 This is what the Buddhist calls “the sermon of the inanimate.”

Time to time, I find scholars both atheist and theist bearing the idea that pantheism and polytheism are spiritually/socially superior than monotheism, to be specific, semitic religions.

5. Master of the Two Worlds

Page 205 @ January 16, 2019

Symbols are only the vehicles of communication; they must not be mistaken for the final term, the tenor , of their reference. No matter how attractive or impressive they may seem, they remain but convenient means, accommodated to the understanding.

Hm.

Page 206 @ January 16, 2019

Mistaking a vehicle for its tenor may lead to the spilling not only of valueless ink, but of valuable blood.

Hm.

1. From Psychology to Metaphysics

Page 221 @ January 17, 2019

Mythology, in other words, is psychology misread as biography; history, and cosmology.

Interesting.

6. The Hero as World Redeemer

Page 305 @ January 19, 2019

The hero of yesterday becomes the tyrant of tomorrow, unless he crucifies himself today.

Sounds so much accurate.

2. The Function of Myth, Cult, and Meditation

Page 333 @ January 20, 2019

If he presumes to cut himself off, either in deed or in thought and feeling, he only breaks connection with the sources of his existence. The tribal ceremonies of birth, initiation, marriage, burial, installation, and so forth, serve to translate the individual’s life-crises and life-deeds into classic, impersonal forms.

Hm.

Page 333 @ January 20, 2019

Social duties continue the lesson of the festival into normal, everyday existence, and the individual is validated still. Conversely, indifference, revolt—or exile—break the vitalizing connectives. From the standpoint of the social unit, the broken-off individual is simply nothing—waste. Whereas the man or woman who can honestly say that he or she has lived the role—whether that of priest, harlot, queen, or slave—is something in the full sense of the verb to be .

Can't agree.

Page 335 @ January 20, 2019

anyone in exile from the community is a nothing. From the other point of view, however, this exile is the first step of the quest. Each carries within himself the all; therefore it may be sought and discovered within. The differentiations of sex, age, and occupation are not essential to our character, but mere costumes which we wear for a time on the stage of the world. The image of man within is not to be confounded with the garments. We think of ourselves as Americans, children of the twentieth century, Occidentals, civilized Christians. We are virtuous or sinful. Yet such designations do not tell what it is to be man, they denote only the accidents of geography, birth-date, and income. What is the core of us? What is the basic character of our being?

3. The Hero Today

Page 341 @ January 20, 2019

And so every one of us shares the supreme ordeal—carries the cross of the redeemer—not in the bright moments of his tribe’s great victories, but in the silences of his personal despair.

Indeed.

The God Delusion

2025-05-27T15:40:48.000Z

The God Delusion

by Richard Dawkins

2 THE GOD HYPOTHESIS

Page 52 @ December 4, 2016

The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sado-masochistic, capriciously

That is how God is!

If there is no God, why be good?

Page 266 @ December 11, 2016

God and Country are an unbeatable team; they break all records for oppression and bloodshed.

So true…

The Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way

2023-01-30T17:46:22.000Z

The Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way

Jay L. Garfield

VII Examination of the Conditioned

Time：2020-11-15 00:08

Like a dream, like an illusion,
Like a city of Gandharvas,
So have arising, abiding,
And ceasing been explained.

XVIII Examination of Self and Entities

Time：2020-11-21 15:38

One who does not grasp onto “I” and “mine,”
That one does not exist.
One who does not grasp onto “I” and “mine,”
He does not perceive.

Lit! lol.

Time：2020-11-21 15:39

When views of “I” and “mine” are extinguished,
Whether with respect to the internal or external,
The appropriator ceases.
This having ceased, birth ceases.

Time：2020-11-21 15:39

Action and misery having ceased, there is nirvāṇa.
Action and misery come from conceptual thought.
This comes from mental fabrication.
Fabrication ceases through emptiness.

Time：2020-11-21 15:40

Everything is real and is not real,
Both real and not real,
Neither real nor not real.
This is Lord Buddha’s teaching.

Time：2020-11-21 15:41

When the fully enlightened ones do not appear,
And when the disciples have disappeared,
The wisdom of the self-enlightened ones
Will arise completely without a teacher.

XXII Examination of the Tathāgata

Time：2020-11-21 16:59

Whatever is the essence of the Tathāgata,
That is the essence of the world.
The Tathāgata has no essence.
The world is without essence.

XXIV Examination of the Four Noble Truths

Time：2020-11-21 23:35

If there is essence, the whole world
Will be unarising, unceasing,
And static. The entire phenomenal world
Would be immutable.

III Examination of the Senses

Time：2020-11-13 09:23

for Nāgārjuna, there is a further problem with vision of another in the present. The visual process—and any sensory process—takes time. So if vision is seeing another thing, the other thing is already past. The only thing that vision could see in the present is a visual sense-impression. But then we are back to the problem of visual apperception

That's how it happens though.

V Examination of Elements

Time：2020-11-13 11:26

Having shown that there are no inherently existent things, it might seem that it follows that all things are inherently nonexistent. But existence and nonexistence, after all, are characteristics. So it follows that neither existence nor nonexistence can be said to exist independently and hence to characterize, inherently, anything. Moreover, since no particulars can be said inherently to exist, and thereby characterized as inherently existing things, none can be said to be inherently nonexistent. Existence and nonexistence are hence themselves dependent, relative characteristics. It is, of course, important to recall that this entire dialectic is aimed at nonrelative understandings of existence and nonexistence

Time：2020-11-13 11:37

Fools and reificationists who perceive
The existence and nonexistence
Of objects
Do not see the pacification of objectification.
This is the soteriological import of this discussion of fundamental ontology: If one reifies phenomena—including such things as one’s own self, characteristics (prominently including one’s own), or external objects—and if one thinks that things either fail to exist or exist absolutely, one will be unable to attain any peace. For one will thereby be subject to egoism, the overvaluing of oneself and one’s achievements and of material things. One will not appreciate the possibility of change, of the impermanence and nonsubstantiality of oneself and one’s possessions. These are the seeds of grasping and craving and, hence, of suffering

XVII Examination of Actions and Their Fruits

Time：2020-11-21 15:28

Buddhist doctrine, at least as it is conceived in Mahāyāna philosophy. The point is this: Every moment of our lives represents the causal consequences of, inter alia, all of our prior actions. No action “lies dormant” waiting for its consequences to emerge. Nor does any action somehow become “canceled” when some salient consequence is noticed. There is no accounting kept, and no debit and credit system, either from the causal or the moral point of view in the continuum of human action and experience. Rather, at each moment we are the total consequence of what we have done and of what we have experienced. And the only sense in which some past action may determine some future reward is one in which that past action, as well as other conditions, have determined a state now that, together with other future conditions, will determine that reward. Mutatis mutandis, of course, for negative consequences. This sober empiricist account of these matters forms the basis for Mahāyāna moral theory and its account of the nature of soteriological practice.

XXIV Examination of the Four Noble Truths

Time：2020-11-22 00:46

Whatever is dependently co-arisen
That is explained to be emptiness.
That, being a dependent designation,
Is itself the middle way.

XXV Examination of Nirvāna

Time：2020-11-22 10:32

conventional as conventional, we argued, is to see it as it is ultimately. At this point, Nāgārjuna makes a similar move with regard to nirvāṇa and draws one of the most startling conclusions of the Mūlamadhyamakakārikā: Just as there is no difference in entity between the conventional and the ultimate, there is no difference in entity between nirvāṇa and saṃsāra; nirvāṇa is simply saṃsāra seen without reification, without attachment, without delusion. The reason that we cannot say anything about nirvāṇa as an independent, nonsamsaric entity, then, is not that it is such an entity, but that it is ineffable and unknowable.130 Rather it is because it is only saṃsāra seen as it is, just as emptiness is just the conventional seen as it is.

The Denial of Death

2025-05-27T15:37:53.000Z

The Denial of Death

by Ernest Becker

PART II: THE FAILURES OF HEROISM

Page 171 @ December 8, 2018

there is no such thing as a “hypnotising,” a “giving of ideas” in the sense of psychical incorporating of something quite foreign from without, but only procedures that are able to set going unconscious, pre-existing, auto-suggestive mechanisms… . According to this conception, the application of suggestion and hypnosis consists in the deliberate establishment of conditions under which the tendency to blind belief and uncritical obedience present in everyone, but usually kept repressed … may unconsciously be transferred to the person hypnotising or suggesting. 12

The natural tendency to believe, knowledge illusion, religious beliefs… are they connected (specially the knowledge illusion with the other two)? Have to dig more.

Page 218 @ January 9, 2019

Existence becomes a problem that needs an ideal answer; but when you no longer accept the collective solution to the problem of existence, then you must fashion your own. The work of art is, then, the ideal answer of the creative type to the problem of existence as he takes it in—not only the existence of the external world, but especially his own: who he is as a painfully separate person with nothing shared to lean on. He has to answer to the burden of his extreme individuation, his so painful isolation.

Thoughtful.

Page 221 @ January 9, 2019

Rank goes so far as to say that the “need for a truly religious ideology … is inherent in human nature and its fulfillment is basic to any kind of social life.”

I may disagree.

Page 228 @ January 9, 2019

Guilt, remember, is the bind that man experiences when he is humbled and stopped in ways that he does not understand, when he is overshadowed in his energies by the world. But the misfortune of man is that he can experience this guilt in two ways: as bafflement from without and from within—by being stopped in relation to his own potential development. Guilt results from unused life, from “the unlived in us.”

Thought provoking.

Page 234 @ January 9, 2019

Either you eat up yourself and others around you, trying for perfection; or you objectify that imperfection in a work, on which you then unleash your creative powers. In this sense, some kind of objective creativity is the only answer man has to the problem of life. In this way he satisfies nature, which asks that he live and act objectively as a vital animal plunging into the world; but he also satisfies his own distinctive human nature because he plunges in on his own symbolic terms and not as a reflex of the world as given to mere physical sense experience. He takes in the world, makes a total problem out of it, and then gives out a fashioned, human answer to that problem. This, as Goethe saw in Faust, is the highest that man can achieve.

Hmm. Recurring idea.

Page 235 @ January 9, 2019

There is no doubt that creative work is itself done under a compulsion often indistinguishable from a purely clinical obsession. In this sense, what we call a creative gift is merely the social license to be obsessed.

Indeed.

PART III: RETROSPECT AND CONCLUSION: THE DILEMMAS OF HEROISM

Page 315 @ January 11, 2019

there is no balance sheet to draw. Who is to tally up which one caused others to shrink up more or to expand more fully? For every shortcoming that we can point to in Freud, we can find a corresponding one in Kierkegaard. If Freud can be said to have erred on the side of the visible, then Kierkegaard can surely be said to have equally erred on the side of the invisible. He turned away from life partly from his fear of life, he embraced death more easily because he had failed in life; his own life was not a voluntary sacrifice undertaken in free will, but a pathetically driven sacrifice. He did not live in the categories in which he thought.

Hmm.

The Craft of Dying

2023-03-30T14:53:55.000Z

The Craft of Dying, 40th Anniversary Edition

Lofland, Lyn H.

Introduction

Highlight (yellow) - Discovering The Craft of Dying > Page 8 · Location 112

But the 1970s was also a decade when end - of - life issues extended all the way to the White House and bookended politically tumultuous times. In 1971 President Richard Nixon announced his War on Cancer, and in 1979 President Jimmy Carter formed the President’s Commission for the Study of Ethical Problems in Medicine and Biomedical Behavioral Research, which later published its landmark 1981 report Defining Death : A Report on the Medical, Legal, and Ethical Issues in the Determination of Death during the Reagan administration. Carter’s group would eventually become known as the President’s Council on Bioethics and advise all future Presidents on a wide array of issues, including, but not limited to, death and dying.

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I found myself directly confronting Lofland’s newly articulated experience of death and dying, as discussed in part II, when my younger sister, Julie Troyer, died from terminal brain cancer on July 29, 2018. Watching my sister die made me reflect quite heavily on The Craft of Dying’s key assertions, and in very unexpected ways that accidentally (albeit sadly) coincided with writing this introduction. The MIT Press expressed interest in republishing The Craft of Dying while my sister was dying, but I started writing the introduction after she was dead — an interval of approximately one - month. My father, Ron Troyer, a long - time grief and bereavement support - group facilitator and retired American Funeral Director, best summed up my death interval experience in very Loflandian language : it is one thing to publically say, “Julie is dying,” it’s an entirely different experience to state, “Julie is dead.” The former felt active, the latter inert.

Preface

Highlight (yellow) - Page 19 · Location 274

In the essay that follows I want to try to make some sociological sense of some of these kinds of activities; to view a portion of these death - related doings with the “sociological eye.” My focus will be on the what and how of all this collective bustle. I am concerned, that is, with such questions as : What are the important elements of the modern “face of death” ? What are the important components of a modern “craft of dying” ? How do the dying construct a dying role or identity for themselves ? How do varying conditions intrude on the freedom of that construction ? Put more generally, I will be analyzing what modern death and dying are like and how contemporary humans — individually and collectively — are dealing with them.

I The Situation of Modern Dying: Problems and Potentials

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Like the prolonged helplessness of its young, like bisexual reproduction, the inevitable fact of death provides one of the great parameters of the human condition. It can neither be “believed” nor “magicked” nor “scienced” away.

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Critics of modern death orientations frequently evoke an idealized past in which death is said to have been “accepted.” 14 Given human impotence relative to its control, one could as well speak of “fatalism” and “passivity.”

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What little evidence there is, 15 suggests that like Távana Vahine, most humans admitted to the dying category throughout human history and prehistory have probably been “sick unto death.” The absence of medical gadgetry, the absence of a well - developed complex medical establishment, the absence of theories of living and dying that would promote attempts at “early diagnosis,” the absence of bureaucratic control of large populations, all contributed to the likelihood that diseases or potentially fatal conditions would be “identified” rather late in the dying - to - death trajectory, and this would be even more true of those who died from what are now conceived as chronic or degenerative diseases than of those who died from the more typical maladies. [ condition (2) ] Thus, whether a person was “dying” or not was, in the premodern world, probably minimally problematic.

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If the dying situation of the premodern human can be likened to an encounter, the dying situation for more and more modern humans is best viewed as a full - blown affair.

II Individual Constructions: Styling and Controlling the Dying Role

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Before proceeding to an analysis of the more activist matters of shaping (or styling) and managing (or controlling) the dying role or identity, however, we need to consider three matters of a more structural or “given” character : the aspects of singularity, entry, and phases.

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Leaving aside questions of exhaustive topographic mapping, let me point up three ways in which “dying” is singular. As a way of “being” in the modern world, dying is (1) transitional, (2) irreversible, and (3) characterized by an absence of “graduates.”

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Once they have generated a category of kind of person or being in the world, social groups tend also to generate accompanying conceptions or “cultural scripts” that provide some specification for how one is to act when one is “in” the category. 10 Speaking ideal - typically, among traditional groups, such scripts tended to be singular and specific. For many, in fact, what to do when dying seems to have been quite thoroughly scripted. Of course, since dying, as we have seen, was usually a short - term way of being, it is understandable that what one was supposed to “do” while in the category were not things anyone could do for any prolonged period of time.

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In contrast, in modern social orders, dying scripts — if they can be said to exist at all — tend to be individualistic, varied, emergent and uncodified. If, therefore “being dying” is relatively problematic to those who take it on, it is not so only because as a kind of prolonged being it is of recent origin. Being dying is relatively problematic also because it is a role in the modern world, and such roles are frequently more akin to improvisational theater than to traditional drama. Parameters of some sort may be “given” (for example, the parameters of entry certification and of the necessity actually to die mentioned above), but within those, the actor has considerable freedom to shape the role’s detailed stylistic enactment as he or she sees fit. 12 Therein lies some of the problem; therein lies some of the potential.

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I should like to suggest that in shaping their dyings, in developing their styles of “passing on,” men and women work with, among other possible construction materials, the dimensions of space, population, knowledge, and stance.

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By space, I refer to the amount of “area” within what we might conceive as the individual’s total “life space” he or she chooses to devote to the dying role. What part of the pie, as it were, is to be labeled “dying”; what proportion of the self is this identity to encompass. Logically, one can imagine gradations all the way from 100 % to 0 %; empirically, it seems meaningful to speak only of centrality or marginality.

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By the dimension of population, I refer to the question of whether the actor chooses to play out the dying role alone or with others who are also playing it out. Given the proportion of persons who die in hospitals (see pp. 33 – 34, above), it seems likely that even those who would prefer to go the whole way alone are often forced into the company of the dying “at the end.” With sufficient resources, however, one can achieve an almost perfectly solo route, as did the “lone eagle,” Charles Lindbergh.

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By knowledge, I refer to the degree to which information about one’s admission to the dying role is shared with others — the dying, the living, or both. One might conceive of the possibilities as a series of outwardly extending circles or zones. In the minimal situation — the small center circle — only the M.D. and the involved actor “know.” In the maximal situation — the furthest and largest circle — the whole world or at least everyone in one’s social order has access to the information.

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By stance, I refer to something more elusive than the three dimensions outlined above. I refer to the character of emotional tone or orientation or personal philosophy that is expressed in the role. 18 Prolonged dying allows persons not only to act in certain ways vis - à - vis their dying but also to color their actions, to provide mood to their “being,” to add demeanor to their doing. Compare, for example, the “tone” conveyed by Ruth Hoffman with that expressed by Margorie Berg.

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Available materials do not permit a fully developed analysis of this important aspect of role construction. But we can, I think, gain some appreciation of the exigencies of control by examining three “dyings” and by making comparisons among them relative to the operation and consequences of four “externals” : (1) the disease process, (2) the social organization and culture of medical practice, (3) available resources, and (4) surrounding others.

III Collective Constructions: The Happy Death Movement

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In a secular age, large numbers of humans confront the modern face of death unarmed with any certainties about what it might mean. A part of the ideological work of the happy death movement is, therefore, the construction of some larger meaning system into which the experiences modern humans are having with death may be placed. While the ideological edifice is at present incomplete, it is still possible, tentatively, to identify three components that may eventually be central to the finished structure. These are immortality, positivity, and expressivity.

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Befitting a movement largely composed of presumably secular upper-middle-class professionals, the immortality claim rests not on revelation but on “research.” That is, Kübler-Ross and others know there is an afterlife not as a consequence of any direct communication with a deity but because of “evidence,” such as the following accounts, provided by the recovered “clinically dead.”

This is a very tall and unusual claim.

Highlight (yellow) - What Does It Mean? Emergent Ideology > Page 91 · Location 1518

As a component of the ideology of the movement, positivity involves three interrelated assertions : (1) that the dying process may be the occasion for self - improvement and personality “growth” for the dying person; (2) that the dying process and subsequent grieving may be the occasion for self - improvement and personality “growth” for the family and friends of the dying / dead person; and (3) that death itself (the moment of death and what follows) may be blissful, serene, pleasurable, intensely contenting — perhaps even orgastic.

The Conference of the Birds by Attar

2024-02-20T09:02:56.000Z

The Conference of the Birds

Attar

Foreword

Page: 5 (1.59%) @ 30 Jan 2024 10:40:16 AM

Attar believes that suffering destroys the ego. And since suffering is born out of love, love is also the destroyer of ego. When the ego is annihilated, the inner eye blinks open.

[!question] Thought Provoking

Introduction

Page: 7 (2.23%) @ 30 Jan 2024 12:06:14 PM

In one such story, when the Mongols invaded Nishapur, they took Attar prisoner. Someone came along and offered to buy Attar’s release, but Attar advised the Mongol soldier against selling him for silver. The Mongol, perhaps hoping for gold, refused the sale. Soon, another buyer offered gold. Again, Attar advised his captor not to sell. The soldier, driven by greed, refused that sale as well. Finally, along came a man with a donkey who, seeing Attar in chains, offered the soldier a sack of straw in exchange for the elderly poet’s life. Attar then urged the soldier to accept the offer, saying: “Now you have been offered what I am truly worth.” Upon hearing this, the angry soldier picked up his sword and beheaded Attar in one swoosh.

[!important] Striking/Intense

Page: 8 (2.55%) @ 30 Jan 2024 12:11:26 PM

The central idea in the Sufi movement is that the soul, in the prison of the body, awaits release. Once freed, it returns to the source which is the Creator. This reunion can be experienced while we are still bound by the body through looking inward and through purification.

[!question] Thought Provoking: Analogous to 'Moksha'.

Page: 8 (2.55%) @ 30 Jan 2024 12:13:43 PM

Hallaj (858–922 CE) was the first Sufi to speak about Iblis, the devil or Satan, not as an evil entity but as an angel who loved God more than others. According to Christian and Muslim scriptures, when God asked his angels to bow before Adam, all obeyed except Iblis. Hallaj argued that there was a big difference between God’s command to the angels to bow before Adam and His desire that they must bow before no one but God. Iblis understood this duality and wishing to obey God’s desire, he disobeyed God’s command. Therefore, Hallaj argued that Iblis was the angel who loved God the most.

[!important] Striking/Intense

Page: 9 (2.87%) @ 30 Jan 2024 12:15:14 PM

In the end, what led to Hallaj’s execution was his most famous and controversial declaration about the Divine within us, which he had taken from the oral teachings of Bastami and others before him; Hallaj took from the Quran the phrase God is the Truth (Hov-al-Haq) and announced to the world: I am the Truth (An-al-Haq). As punishment, Hallaj was tied up and stoned; his limbs were then cut off and burned. His execution gave rise to a myth: It is said that when Hallaj’s limbs were burned, the river Tigris became violent and threatened to swallow the land. It was calmed only when Hallaj’s ashes were given to its waters.

[!quote] Quotable/Concept/General Idea

Page: 9 (2.87%) @ 30 Jan 2024 12:15:55 PM

Hamedani (1098–1131 CE) was a student of and influenced by Ahmad Ghazali, a Persian mystic famous for his writings on love and that all created beauty was an exhalation of the Divine beauty. Hamedani was a young philosopher who believed that religious texts should be read according to the interpretation of the reader. He stated that the reader is like a mirror who reflects the text as a critic during whatever particular point in time he or she exists.

[!question] Thought Provoking

The Birds of the World Gather

Page: 23 (7.32%) @ 30 Jan 2024 01:35:43 PM

Enter, then exit your self,
and intellect will guide you to insight.
When from insight you have found wisdom,
the immortal prophet Khidr will offer you
the water of everlasting life.

[!quote] Quotable/Concept/General Idea

Page: 24 (7.64%) @ 30 Jan 2024 01:36:46 PM

Become a flawless bird in the Beloved’s path,
so that what remains of you will not be just you,
but will be the Beloved too.

[!important] Striking/Intense

The Birds Confer and Make Excuses

Page: 39 (12.42%) @ 31 Jan 2024 12:11:37 AM

The Beloved is a grand ocean in which
the Garden of Paradise is but a tiny ball of dew.
If you have the Ocean, you have the drop.
Don’t settle for less, don’t seek anything but the Ocean.

[!important] Striking/Intense

Page: 40 (12.74%) @ 31 Jan 2024 12:12:18 AM

Desire all, be all, become all.
Choose everything.
Choose everything.

[!important] Striking/Intense

Page: 40 (12.74%) @ 31 Jan 2024 12:14:49 AM

Those who go to Paradise expecting the promised ambrosia,
well, that’s all they will get, because that’s all they know and believe.

[!important] Striking/Intense

The Birds Prepare for the Journey

Page: 66 (21.02%) @ 02 Feb 2024 04:45:39 PM

sheikh was aware that he served as an exemplar to his followers and was therefore greatly alarmed when he found himself dreaming the same disturbing dream night after night. In this dream, he prostrated himself over and over, before an idol, inside a temple. Finally, one night that Awake One woke up and cried out, “Horror! Pity! The graceful Joseph has fallen into the well; I have come upon a difficult passage in the Path. I do not know if I can survive this pain, for I would rather die than give up my faith.”

[!question] Thought Provoking: The dark night of the soul perhaps?

The Birds Begin the Journey

Page: 83 (26.43%) @ 03 Feb 2024 10:52:36 PM

But, wonder of wonders, the road was featureless.
Wonder of wonders, not a speck of evil or good was in view.
All looked serene and still, lacking nothing,
burdened by nothing.
A bird asked:
Why is this road devoid of everything?
The Hoopoe replied:
It’s because of the glory of the Beloved.

[!important] Striking/Intense

The Birds Complain and Boast

Page: 100 (31.85%) @ 03 Feb 2024 11:43:34 PM

Parable of Jars of Honey

A Sufi was on his way to Baghdad when he heard someone call: “I have jars of honey. I’m selling them cheap. Where is everyone?”
The Sufi asked: “Good man, will you give me some for nothing?”
The man replied: “Away with you, are you mad? Are you the father of greed? Who sells anything for nothing?”
A voice from On High called and said: “Sufi, come away, there is a better seller than this. Come to a place where for nothing you will be given everything, and more.”
Compassion is a sun that shines
on all the atoms that float in its rays.
The Almighty rebukes even a prophet
for the sake of a wayward soul.

[!important] Striking/Intense

Page: 101 (32.17%) @ 03 Feb 2024 11:46:03 PM

Parable of a Sinner in Paradise

A young man who had led a life full of misdeeds died. As people carried his casket in the funeral procession, praying, a devout believer happened to pass by and objected: “Why pray for a wrongdoer?”
That night that pious man had a dream in which he saw that same dead sinner bathed in light in Paradise. He said in wonder: “Lad, you were mired in sin, you were rolling in it from head to toe. Tell me, how did you find such an exalted station?”
The lad replied: “It was your lack of compassion that brought me the Almighty’s forgiveness.”

[!important] Striking/Intense

The Birds Voice Their Fears

Page: 136 (43.31%) @ 06 Feb 2024 12:30:15 AM

When Socrates was in the throes of death, one of his students asked: “Master, after we have washed your body and wrapped it in a shroud, where should we bury you?”
He replied, “If you can find me, my boy, bury me wherever you like. I’ve lived long and while alive I was not able to find myself; how then can you find me in death? As I exit this world, not even a strand of my hair truly knows itself.”

[!important] Striking/Intense

The Birds Ask About the Beloved

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When the Almighty pulls you into an affair,
you can’t make love to any other.
Yes, this is a difficult love affair,
even more difficult than enduring war
or negotiating peace.

[!question] Thought Provoking
God of the Sufis is a loving one, and very much anthropomorphic too. It has its faults like jealousy.

Page: 181 (57.64%) @ 12 Feb 2024 06:58:11 PM

Parable of the Blemish in a Beloved’s Eye

There once was a lion heart, a vanquisher of enemies, who loved a woman for five years. This lovely woman had a blemish as small as the tip of a fingernail in one of her eyes. The man never saw this white blemish, even though he gazed into her eyes all the time. How can a man so deeply in love notice a fault in the eye of his beloved?
After a while, however, love cooled in the man’s heart like a sickness calmed by medicine. His love for the woman waned and he no longer felt the pain of love. That’s when he noticed the deformity in her eye and asked: “When did that blemish appear in your eye?”
She replied: “The moment your love for me began to die. When your love faded, so did the perfection of my eyes.”

[!quote] Quotable/Concept/General Idea

Page: 188 (59.87%) @ 12 Feb 2024 07:12:20 PM

Questioner, do as I say and take with you
what cannot be found in that Highest Court.
Whatever you can think of is already there—
wisdom, learning, mysteries, even
the ample worship of angels—
why bother taking such things?
What no one possesses there
is a burning soul, a heart’s fevered pain.
A single sigh rising from your innermost being
will carry the aroma of your yearning to that court.
Your special abode is the kernel, your soul,
encased in the shell of your rebel ego.
If your sigh rises from the special home of your soul,
the shell will break, the kernel freed.

[!important] Striking/Intense

Page: 191 (60.83%) @ 16 Feb 2024 09:51:41 AM

If you don’t arrive with a wounded heart,
the Beloved’s glance will pass over you.
Step into the Path, bring your branded heart,
for true lovers know each other by their scars.

[!important] Striking/Intense

The Seven Valleys

Page: 216 (68.79%) @ 16 Feb 2024 10:21:07 AM

Parable of a Man Turned to Stone

There was once a man who solidified into a rock in the mountains of China. He shed mournful tears that fell as pebbles. If clouds were to rain such tears, the world would always be miserable.
Knowledge is like that man, truthful and pure. Go seek that knowledge, even if it takes you as far as China, for knowledge has petrified in grief for want of a seeker’s zeal, the absence of those who value and seek it.
In the house of affliction, where darkness rules, knowledge is a shining rare jewel. Let your soul be guided by its effulgence, for it is the light of science, the kind that expands the realm of the soul. In this limitless dark, you are like the guideless Alexander who was told if he took even a tiny piece of the night-illuminating jewel66 he’d regret it, and if he didn’t take any, he’d be even sorrier.

[!important] Striking/Intense

Page: 230 (73.25%) @ 16 Feb 2024 10:07:49 PM

Valley of Unity

Arrive in the Valley of Unity
and give up everything except the absolute.
All who traverse this valley
will leave sharing a single collar.
Here, the many and the few
will merge and meld into one.
When many are united in the One forever,
then all inside the One is a perfection.
This is not a place for uniformity;
here you find unity in diversity.
Everything here is outside of time,
outside of measurements,
so forget about the Beginning,
forget about the End.
The Beginning is lost;
the End stretches into eternity.
Don’t bother with them, they’re irrelevant.
And since all is really nothing,
then nothing is truly everything.

[!question] Thought Provoking

Page: 231 (73.57%) @ 16 Feb 2024 10:09:10 PM

A Wayfarer sees the Beloved in everything,
looks at a pagan temple
and sees only the Beloved’s home,
hears and listens to the Almighty’s words
and finds strength only through that Great One.

[!important] Striking/Intense

Page: 233 (74.20%) @ 17 Feb 2024 07:43:04 PM

Wayfarer, when you reach the Valley of Unity,
you will disappear from yourself.
You’ll become lost because
the Beloved will appear;
you’ll become mute because
the Beloved will speak.

[!quote] Quotable/Concept/General Idea

Page: 234 (74.52%) @ 17 Feb 2024 07:43:38 PM

In the school of such wondrous mysteries
you will find countless intellects,
all of them parch-lipped.
Reason here is like a desperate deaf child
abandoned by its mother.

[!quote] Quotable/Concept/General Idea

Page: 243 (77.39%) @ 17 Feb 2024 08:37:02 PM

Parable of the Sheikh of Nasrabad and the Fire

Seized by the pain of ardor, the Sheikh of Nasrabad67 made forty pilgrimages to the Holy City. On each trip he took no aid or provisions, putting all his trust in the Almighty. What a man!
Later, a fellow saw the sheikh on the road, gray, emaciated, half-naked, heart aflame and soul ablaze. He wore an infidel’s belt and with his hand outstretched, he circumambulated the pagan fire. This he did with no pretension or deception.
The man said to the sheikh: “Great one of the age, what’s all this? Shame on you. After all your pilgrimages and attaining great eminence, now you’ve become a pagan? Such conduct comes from vanity and stupidity. You give the people of the Path a bad name. What kind of a sheikh behaves this way? Don’t you know whose path you are now on and whose fire you are circling?”
The sheikh replied: “I fell on hard times. A fire consumed my house and blew my harvest to the wind. With it all went my name and my honor too. I have become bewildered and don’t know what else to do. When such fire consumes the soul, why would it not also consume name and honor? As soon as this flame engulfed me, I became disgusted with the Kaaba and all temples. If you experience even a sliver of this wonderment, great regret and discontent will overtake you as well.”

[!question] Thought Provoking

Page: 245 (78.03%) @ 17 Feb 2024 08:40:05 PM

When you are a polluted soul,
the Ocean will not refuse you;
you will merely sink to its floor
and remain yourself.
But if you come to it as a pure drop,
you will lose yourself in the Ocean,
becoming one with its vast water.
The Ocean’s currents
will become yours, too—
its shining beauty, yours.
You will be and not be.

[!important] Striking/Intense

Epilogue

Page: 283 (90.13%) @ 17 Feb 2024 11:02:46 PM

How long do you think your life’s ocean will surge?
Give in, relinquish your soul;
then hush, be at peace.

[!important] Striking/Intense

Page: 286 (91.08%) @ 17 Feb 2024 11:08:02 PM

This book is all madness.
Reason is alien to these pages.
Not until the soul breathes in
the fragrance of its own lunacy
can it stop being a stranger to itself.

[!question] Thought Provoking

The Book of Disquiet by Fernando Pessoa

2023-02-02T04:13:15.000Z

The Book of Disquiet

Fernando Pessoa

Preface [1917?]

Page 15 @ 09 May 2022 10:10 PM

For Vicente Guedes, being self-aware was an art and a morality; dreaming was a religion.

1 [1913?]

Page 15 @ 09 May 2022 10:12 PM

My body sets my soul shivering with cold, not the cold that exists in space, but the cold of me being that space …

Page 15 @ 09 May 2022 10:23 PM

All pleasure is a vice because seeking pleasure is what everyone does in life, and the worst vice of all is to do what everyone else does.

2 [1913?]

Page 16 @ 09 May 2022 11:20 PM

Thus we will remain forever like the figure of a man in a stained-glass window opposite the figure of a woman in another stained-glass window … Between us, shadows whose footsteps echo coldly — humanity passing by … Between us will pass murmured prayers, secrets … Occasionally, the air will fill with incense. At other times, to left or right, a figure like a statue will sprinkle us with prayers … And there we will stay, always in the same windows, all color when the sun shines through and all dark lines when night falls … The centuries will not touch our glassy silence. Outside, civilizations will come and go, revolutions will break out, parties will whirl past, meek, everyday people will rush by … And we, my unreal love, will be frozen in the same pointless pose, the same false existence, and the same […], until one day, after centuries of empires, the Church will, at last, crumble and everything will end …

8 [1913?]

Page 20 @ 10 May 2022 02:19 PM

Sometimes inside me, I cast an impartial eye over those absurd, delicious things that I cannot see because they are apparently illogical — bridges that begin nowhere and go nowhere, streets with no beginning and no end, upside-down landscapes — the absurd, the illogical, the contradictory, everything that detaches and distances us from the real and from its misshapen retinue of practical thoughts and human feelings and desires for useful, effective action. The absurd saves us, despite the tedium, from that state of soul that begins with the sweet fury of dreaming.
And somehow I find a strange, mysterious way of envisioning those absurdities — I don’t know how else to explain it, but I see things of which visibility cannot even conceive.

9 [1913?]

Page 20 @ 10 May 2022 04:17 PM

Let us absurdify life from east to west.

16 [1913?]

Page 22 @ 10 May 2022 11:13 PM

How often it pains me not to be the captain of that ship, the driver of that train! To be some other banal individual whose life, because not mine, fills me with delicious longing and a poetic sense of otherness!

17 [1913?]

Page 22 @ 10 May 2022 11:16 PM

During those hours when the landscape forms a halo around Life, and dream is simply a matter of dreaming oneself, I created, O my love, in the silence of my disquiet, this strange book like a series of arches opening up at the end of some abandoned avenue.

Genesis story of this book.

Page 23 @ 10 May 2022 11:18 PM

And I am offering you this book because I know it to be both beautiful and useless. It teaches nothing, preaches nothing, arouses no emotion. It is a stream that runs into an abyss of ashes that the wind scatters and which neither fertilize nor harm — I put my whole soul into its making, but I wasn’t thinking of that at the time, only of my own sad self and of you, who are no one.

22 [1913?]

Page 26 @ 10 May 2022 11:30 PM

To kill our dream is to kill ourselves. It is like mutilating our soul. The dream is what is most truly, impenetrably, ineradicably ours.

23 [1913?]

Page 27 @ 10 May 2022 11:31 PM

For me, possession is an absurd lake — very large, very dark and rather shallow. It only seems deep because it’s full of filth and lies.

26 [1913?]

Page 28 @ 12 May 2022 02:00 AM

Did I set off? I could not swear to you that I did. I found myself elsewhere, I saw other ports, passed through cities other than that one, although neither one nor the other were cities at all. Nor can I swear that it was I who set off rather than the landscape, that I visited other lands rather than them visiting me. Not knowing what life is, I do not even know whether I am the one living it or if my life is living me (if we allow that empty word “live” to mean whatever it wants to), and I should not really swear to anything at all.

27 [1913?]

Page 29 @ 12 May 2022 02:06 AM

To organize our life so that it is a mystery to others, so that those who know us best only unknow us from closer to. That is how I shaped my life, almost unintentionally, but I put so much instinctive art into it that I became, even for myself, a not entirely clear-cut individual.

28 [1913?]

Page 30 @ 13 May 2022 05:25 AM

Each one of us is a whole society, an entire God’s people; it is as well then at least to bring a certain elegance and distinction to life in our part of town, to make sure that the celebrations held by our senses show good taste and reserve, and sober pomp and courtesy in the banquets of our thoughts. Let other souls build their poor, shabby dwellings around us, but let us clearly mark where ours begin and end, and make sure that from the façades of our houses to the inner sanctums of our timidities, everything is noble and serene, elegantly and discreetly sculpted.

29 [1913?]

Page 30 @ 13 May 2022 05:26 AM

Life gets in the way of being able to express life. If I were to experience a great love, I would never be able to describe it.

30 [after 10 May 1913]

Page 31 @ 13 May 2022 05:30 AM

Because you do not love what I say with the ears with which I hear myself saying it. If I hear myself speaking out loud, the ears with which I hear myself speaking out loud do not listen to me in the same way as the inner ear with which I dare to think those words. And if, when listening to myself, I frequently have to ask myself what I mean, how little others will understand me!

32 [c. 15 May 1913]

Page 32 @ 13 May 2022 10:39 PM

Blessed with absurdity are the artists who burned a very beautiful work, or those who, although they could have made something beautiful, deliberately made it imperfect, or those great poets of Silence who, realizing that they could create something utterly perfect, chose never to dare. (Although if it had been imperfect, that would have been another matter.)

Page 32 @ 13 May 2022 10:40 PM

Why is art beautiful? Because it is useless. Why is life ugly? Because it is all aims and purposes and intentions.

35 [1913?]

Page 34 @ 14 May 2022 05:59 PM

Let us, with an amused, incredulous smile on our lips, listen to God telling us that we exist. Let us watch Time painting the world and finding the resulting picture not only false but hollow.

36 [August 1913]

Page 38 @ 14 May 2022 06:23 PM

Ah, the flowers that I saw there! Flowers that sight translated into names, when I knew them, and whose perfume my soul picked, not from the flowers themselves, but from the melody of their names … Flowers whose names were, when repeated in sequence, whole orchestras of sonorous perfumes … Trees whose voluptuous green cast shade and cool over their names … Fruits whose name was a biting into the very soul of their flesh … Shadows that were relics of happy once-upon-a-times … Clearings, clear clearings, that were the most candid of smiles from the landscape that lay yawning near by … O multicolored hours! Flower-instants, tree-minutes, O time stagnating in space, time lying dead in space and covered in flowers and the perfume of flowers and the perfume of the names of flowers! …
A mad dream in that alien silence!

Page 38 @ 14 May 2022 06:25 PM

When we suddenly found ourselves before the stagnating lakes, we felt a desire to weep … There, the landscape had its eyes filled with tears, unmoving eyes, full of the innumerable tedium of being … Yes, full of the tedium of being, of having to be something, real or illusory — and that tedium had its homeland and its voice in the silence and exile of those lakes … And even though, all unknowing, we were still walking, it seemed that we were lingering by the shores of those lakes, because so much of us lingered and lived there, symbolized and absorbed …

37 [1913?]

Page 39 @ 14 May 2022 06:27 PM

How unnecessary it all is! Us and the world and the mystery of both.

39 [1913]

Page 40 @ 14 May 2022 06:29 PM

Become an absurd sphinx in the eyes of others. Shut yourself up in your ivory tower, but without slamming the door, for your ivory tower is you.

40 [1913?]

Page 40 @ 14 May 2022 06:30 PM

Nothing penetrates, neither atoms nor souls. That is why nothing can possess anything else. From the truth to a handkerchief, nothing is possessable. (Property is not theft: it is nothing.)

41 [1913?]

Page 40 @ 14 May 2022 06:30 PM

First, take care to respect nothing and to believe in nothing. When faced by those things you do not respect, your attitude must be that of someone willing to respect something; your feelings of distaste when confronted by what you do not love should resemble a painful desire to love; of your scorn for life retain only the idea that it should be good to live and to love life. Thus you will be laying the foundations for your dreams.

43 [1913?]

Page 42 @ 14 May 2022 06:35 PM

Drunk on errors, I momentarily find myself erroneously alive.

44 [1913?]

Page 42 @ 14 May 2022 06:36 PM

A child knows that the doll is not real, and yet he or she treats it as real, even weeping disconsolately when it breaks. The art of the child is that of making things unreal. Blessèd is that mischievous stage in life, when love is negated by the absence of sex, when reality is negated by play, treating as real things that are not.

Page 42 @ 14 May 2022 06:38 PM

A child gives no more value to gold than to glass. And is gold really worth so much more? The child finds the passions, rages and fears that he sees on adult faces vaguely absurd. And is it not true that all our fears, loathings and loves are entirely absurd and vain?

Page 42 @ 14 May 2022 06:39 PM

Is God merely perhaps a big child? Does not the entire universe seem like a game, a prank played by a naughty child? So unreal …
I tossed this idea up into the air for you, but seeing it from afar, I suddenly see how horrifying it is! (What if it’s true?)

46 [1913?]

Page 44 @ 14 May 2022 06:47 PM

Not entirely … We should never invade the feelings others pretend they are feeling. Such feelings are always far too personal … Believe me, it really hurts me to be sharing these personal confidences with you, for, while they are all false, they do represent genuine scraps of my poor soul … Deep down, you know, the saddest part of us is the least real part, and our greatest tragedies occur in our own idea of ourselves.

Page 44 @ 14 May 2022 06:51 PM

— Have you ever read a grammar book?
— Never. I always felt a deep aversion for knowing how one should say things. The only thing I liked in grammar books were the exceptions and the pleonasms. The truly modern view is to avoid rules and speak only nonsense. Isn’t that what they say?
— Indeed. The worst thing about grammar books (have you noticed the delicious impossibility of us talking about this?), the very worst thing, is the verbs. They are the words that give meaning to sentences … An honest sentence should always have several meanings. Verbs! A friend of mine, who committed suicide — every time I have a longer than usual conversation, a friend commits suicide — had decided to spend his entire life destroying verbs …

Page 45 @ 14 May 2022 06:53 PM

The two creatures sitting at the table drinking tea certainly never had this conversation, but they were so impeccably turned out, so well dressed, that it seemed a shame that they didn’t. That’s why I wrote this so that they’d be able to have had such a conversation … Their attitudes, their slightest gesture, their childish looks and smiles, at those points in any conversation that open up spaces in one’s sense of existence, clearly said what I am faithfully pretending they said … When they each doubtless got married and went their separate ways — for they were far too similar to marry each other — were they ever to read these pages, I’m sure they would recognize what they never said and would be grateful to me for having interpreted so accurately not just what they really are, but what they never wanted to be and never knew they were …

54 [1914?]

Page 48 @ 14 May 2022 07:02 PM

I sometimes create inside myself a philosopher who carefully sets out his philosophies for me, while, at the window of his house, I, a pageboy, flirt with his daughter, whose soul I love.

Page 51 @ 14 May 2022 07:11 PM

It’s incredible how this depersonalizes the spirit, how it reduces it to ashes, and, I admit, it’s difficult then not to succumb to the general lassitude that afflicts one’s whole being. But what a triumph!
This is the only possible asceticism. It involves no faith, nor even a God.
I am God.

60 [1914?]

Page 54 @ 15 May 2022 01:43 PM

Some metaphors are more real than the people you see walking down the street. Some images one finds in books are more vividly alive than many men and women. Some literary phrases have an absolutely human individuality.

62 [1914?]

Page 56 @ 18 May 2022 03:35 AM

The truly wise man is the man who lets external events trouble him as little as possible. To do this, he needs to armor himself by surrounding himself with realities that are closer to him than those events, and through which the events reach him, changed so as to accord with those realities.

If so, every social media addict is very wise.

66 [1914?]

Page 60 @ 20 May 2022 08:28 PM

Why do I write, then? Because, as a preacher of renunciation, I have not yet learned to practice what I preach. I have not yet learned to give up this leaning towards prose and poetry. I have to write as if I were doing a penance. And the worst penance is knowing that what I write is completely futile, failed and feeble.

67 [1914?]

Page 60 @ 20 May 2022 08:30 PM

Confronted by other people’s misfortunes, I do not experience pain but a feeling of aesthetic discomfort and a furtive irritation. This has nothing to do with kindness, it is simply because when someone is made to feel ridiculous, they appear ridiculous not only to me but to others too, and that is what irritates me; it hurts me that any animal of the human species should laugh at someone else’s expense when they have no right to do so. I don’t care if others laugh at me, because I’m protected by an efficient armor of scorn.

68 [1914?]

Page 61 @ 20 May 2022 08:32 PM

No one has the necessary divinity to write a work of art large enough to be great, and precise and perfect enough to be sublime, and no one has the good fortune to have achieved this. What does not flow freely from us is the result of the uneven ground of our own imperfect self.

Page 61 @ 20 May 2022 08:40 PM

You, who hear me and barely listen, you don’t understand what a tragedy this is! To lose father and mother, to achieve neither glory nor happiness, to have neither a friend nor a lover — all those things are bearable. What cannot be borne is to dream a thing of beauty, but lack the skill to endow it with actions or words. The awareness that a work is perfect, the satisfaction of a work achieved — sweet is it to sleep beneath the shade of that tree, on a quiet summer’s day …

He's speaking to me.

70 [1914?]

Page 62 @ 20 May 2022 08:47 PM

I contain certain spiritual qualities appropriate in a bohemian, the kind of bohemian who allows life to pass by like something which, at some point, slips from his fingers or in whom even the merest gesture of reaching out to grasp life simply drops asleep at the mere thought of trying. However, I did not have the external compensation of the bohemian spirit — the easy idleness of instantly abandoned emotions. I was never more than an isolated bohemian, which is absurd, or a mystical bohemian, which is impossible.

76 [1914?]

Page 66 @ 21 May 2022 01:18 PM

Ah, tall, twilight mountains, almost-narrow moonlit streets, if only I enjoyed your lack of awareness of the […] your spiritual vision of the material world, with no inner life, devoid of sensibility, with no room for feelings or thoughts or disquiet! Trees, never anything more than trees, with your green leaves so pleasant to the eyes, you are so indifferent to my cares and griefs, so consoling to my anguish because you lack eyes to see it or a soul to look through those eyes, to misunderstand and mock! Stones on the road, decapitated trees, the mere anonymous soil of the earth, your insensitivity to my soul is like a sisterly caress, a balm … Beneath the sun or beneath the moon of the Earth, my mother, so tenderly maternal, because you cannot criticize me, as my own human mother can, because you do not have a soul with which unwittingly to analyze me, nor can you shoot me rapid glances that provoke thoughts about me you would not confess even to yourself. Vast sea, my clamorous childhood companion, you bring me peace and cradle me because you have no human voice and will not one day whisper into other human ears of my weaknesses and imperfections. Vast sky, blue sky, so close to the mystery of the angels […] you do not look at me with envious eyes, and when you pin the sun on your breast, you do not do so to attract me nor […] nor don a mask of stars in order to make fun of me … Immense peace of nature, so maternal in your utter ignorance of me; distant quiet of atoms and systems, so fraternal in your utter inability ever to know me … I would like to pray to your vastness and your calm, as an expression of my gratitude for having you and being able to love without suspicion or doubt; I would Iike to give ears to your not-hearing, eyes to your sublime blindness, and to be seen and heard by you through those imagined eyes and ears, glad to be present at your Nothingness, attentive to what is distant, as if to a definitive death, clinging to no hopes of any other life beyond a God, beyond the possibility of growing into a voluptuous nothing and taking on the spiritual color of all matter.

83 [1915?]

Page 71 @ 21 May 2022 02:04 PM

Why are there not islands for those who feel uncomfortable here, ancient avenues for the lonely to dream in and that others cannot find?

Exactly my question.

87 [1915?]

Page 74 @ 21 May 2022 02:16 PM

Only business letters are addressed to someone. All other letters should, at least in the case of the superior man, be written only for himself.

91 [1915?]

Page 76 @ 21 May 2022 02:40 PM

My life is a continual fever, a never-quenched thirst. I find real life as oppressive as a very hot day. There’s something rather humiliating about that.

92 [1915?]

Page 76 @ 21 May 2022 02:41 PM

Man should not be able to see his own face. Nothing is more terrible than that. Nature gave him the gift of being unable either to see his face or to look into his own eyes.
He could only see his own face in the waters of rivers and lakes. Even the posture he had to adopt to do so was symbolic. He had to bend down, to lower himself, in order to commit the ignominy of seeing his own face.
The creator of the mirror poisoned the human soul.

111 [1915?]

Page 85 @ 22 May 2022 01:54 AM

Sometimes, on elegant evenings of the Imagination, in my dialogues with myself, in weary twilight colloquies in imagined salons, during those intervals in the conversation when I am left alone with an interlocutor more me than the others, I wonder why our scientific age has not extended its urge to understand to the artificial. And one of the questions over which I linger most languorously is why, along with the usual psychology of human and subhuman beings, there is not also a psychology — as there should be — of those artificial figures and creatures who exist only in rugs or paintings. Anyone who limits himself to the organic, and does not accept the idea of statues and tapestries having a soul, must have a very dim notion of reality. Where there is form there is a soul.

123 [1916?]

Page 91 @ 24 May 2022 12:31 AM

The longing to understand, which, in so many noble souls, takes the place of action, belongs to the sphere of sensibility. Replacing energy with intelligence, breaking the link between will and emotion, stripping of self-interest every manifestation of material life, that, if one can achieve it, is worth more than life, so difficult to possess completely and so sad if possessed only partially.

125 [1916?]

Page 93 @ 24 May 2022 12:44 AM

For any mind of a scientific bent, seeing more in something than is actually there is, in fact, to see less. What you add in substance, you take away in spirit.

128 [1916?]

Page 96 @ 24 May 2022 12:55 AM

We live in death, because we exist today only because we are dead to yesterday. We wait for death, because we can only believe in tomorrow in the knowledge that today will die. We live in Death when we dream, because to dream is to deny life. We die in death even while we live, because to live is to deny eternity! Death guides us, death seeks us out, death accompanies us. All we have is Death, all we want is Death, Death is all we want to want.

136 [1917]

Page 100 @ 24 May 2022 01:18 AM

In modern life the world belongs to the stupid, the insensitive and the disturbed. The right to live and triumph is today earned with the same qualifications one requires to be interned in a madhouse: amorality, hypomania and an incapacity for thought.

144 [1917?]

Page 103 @ 25 May 2022 07:43 PM

The pagan idea of the perfect man was the perfection of the man who exists; the Christian idea of the perfect man is the perfection of the man who does not exist; the Buddhist idea of the perfect man is the perfection of no man at all.

147 [1918?]

Page 105 @ 26 May 2022 12:32 PM

Art is a science …
It suffers rhythmically.

152 [1918?]

Page 106 @ 26 May 2022 03:21 PM

Each one of us is two, and whenever two people meet, get close or join forces, it’s rare for those four to agree. If the dreamer in each man of action frequently falls out with his own personal man of action, he’s sure to fall out with the other person’s dreamer and man of action.

Page 107 @ 26 May 2022 04:20 PM

Love requires us to be both identical and different, which isn’t possible in logic, still less in life. Love wants to possess, to make its own something that must remain outside in order for it to be able to distinguish between the something it has made its own and its own self. To love is to surrender oneself. The greater the surrender, the greater the love. However, to surrender completely is to surrender one’s consciousness to the other person. The greatest love, therefore, is death or oblivion or renunciation — all loves are the abomination of love.

156 [1919?]

Page 109 @ 26 May 2022 04:52 PM

I sometimes think with sad pleasure that if, one day in a future to which I will not belong, these sentences I write should meet with praise, I will at last have found people who “understand” me, my own people, a real family to be born into and to be loved by. But far from being born into that family, I will have been long dead by then. I will be understood only in effigy, and then affection can no longer compensate the dead person for the lack of love he felt when alive.

157 [c. 12 Jan 1920]

Page 110 @ 26 May 2022 04:54 PM

Composed of living cells and in a state of permanent dissolution, we are made of death.

158 [1920?]

Page 110 @ 26 May 2022 04:58 PM

Everything that lives, lives because it changes; it changes because everything passes; and because everything passes, it dies. Everything that lives perpetually becomes something else, constantly denying and eluding life.
Life, then, is an interval, a nexus, a link, but a link between what happened and what will happen, a dead interval between Death and Death.
… intelligence, a fiction composed solely of surface and error.

Anatman.

163 [29 Mar 1930]

Page 124 @ 27 May 2022 12:19 AM

To someone like myself, and to the few like me who live without knowing they live, what remains except renunciation as a way of life and contemplation as destiny? Ignorant of the meaning of a religious life and unable to discover it through reason, unable to have faith in the abstract concept of man and not even knowing what to do with it, all that remains for us as a justification for having a soul is the aesthetic contemplation of life. And so, insensitive to the solemnity of the world, indifferent to the divine and despising humankind, we give ourselves vainly over to a purposeless sensationism crossed with a refined form of epicureanism suited to our cerebral nerves.

172 [1929?]

Page 129 @ 27 May 2022 11:05 AM

Fraternity is a very subtle thing.
Some govern the world, others are the world. Between an American millionaire, a Caesar or Napoleon, or Lenin and the Socialist boss of a village there is no qualitative difference, only quantitative. Below them come us, the amorphous ones, the unruly dramatist William Shakespeare, the schoolteacher John Milton, that vagabond Dante Alighieri, the boy who ran an errand for me yesterday, the barber who always tells me stories, and the waiter who, simply because I drank only half my bottle of wine, proffered the fraternal hope that I would feel better tomorrow.

184 [1929?]

Page 135 @ 28 May 2022 11:49 PM

With an enormous effort I rise from my seat only to find that I still seem to be carrying it around with me, only now it’s even heavier because it’s become the seat of my own subjectivity.

190 [1929?]

Page 138 @ 29 May 2022 12:03 AM

The search for the truth — whether the subjective truth of one’s own convictions, the objective truth of reality or the social truth of money or power — always brings with it, if the searcher in question deserves the prize, the ultimate knowledge that the truth does not exist. Life’s biggest lottery prize goes only to those who happened to buy tickets.
The value of art is that it takes us away from here.

191 [1929?]

Page 139 @ 29 May 2022 12:05 AM

I prefer to fail having known the beauty of flowers than to triumph in a wilderness, for triumph is the blindness of the soul left alone with its own worthlessness.

194 [1929?]

Page 141 @ 31 May 2022 12:19 AM

There was always a clear relation between that humanitarian impulse and the amount of brandy consumed, and many grand gestures suffered from that one glass too many or from the pleonasm of thirst.

Page 141 @ 31 May 2022 12:20 AM

The most extraordinary thing about all those people was their utter meaninglessness. Some wrote for important newspapers and yet still managed not to exist; others held public posts recorded in the professional registers and yet managed to do nothing in life; others were celebrated poets, but the same ashen dust smeared their foolish faces with gray, as if in a tomb of embalmed corpses, with, as in life, their hands behind their backs.

217 [1929?]

Page 155 @ 04 June 2022 12:17 AM

I envy — although I’m not sure if envy is the right word — those people about whom one could write a biography, or who could write their autobiography. Through these deliberately unconnected impressions I am the indifferent narrator of my autobiography without events, of my history without a life. These are my Confessions and if I say nothing in them it’s because I have nothing to say.

218 [1929?]

Page 156 @ 04 June 2022 12:41 AM

All around me is the abstract, naked universe, composed of nothing but the negation of night. I am split between tiredness and restlessness and reach a point where I physically touch a metaphysical knowledge of the mystery of things. Sometimes my soul softens and then the formless details of everyday life float up to the surface of my consciousness and I draw up a balance sheet on the back of my insomnia. At other times I wake within the half-sleep in which I lie stagnating, and vague images in random poetic colors let their silent spectacle slide by my inattentive mind. My eyes are not quite closed. My weak sight is fringed with distant light from the street lamps still lit below, in the abandoned regions of the street.

Page 156 @ 04 June 2022 12:49 AM

I pass through time, through silences, as formless worlds pass through me.

219 [1929?]

Page 157 @ 04 June 2022 12:54 AM

We are all of us the slaves of external circumstance: even at a table in some backstreet café, a sunny day can open up before us visions of wide fields; a shadow over the countryside can cause us to shrink inside ourselves, seeking uneasy shelter in the doorless house that is our self; and, even in the midst of daytime things, the arrival of darkness can open out, like a slowly spreading fan, a deep awareness of our need for rest.

221 [21 Feb 1930]

Page 159 @ 04 June 2022 02:08 AM

To know nothing about oneself is to live. To know a little about oneself is to think. To know oneself precipitately, as I did in that moment of pure enlightenment, is suddenly to grasp Leibniz’s notion of the dominant monad, the magic password to the soul. A sudden light scorches and consumes everything. It strips us naked even of our selves.

238 [21 Apr 1930]

Page 170 @ 05 June 2022 01:22 AM

What a lot of nonsense just to satisfy myself! What cynical insights into purely hypothetical emotions! All this mixing up of soul and feelings, of my thoughts with the air and the river, just to say that life wounds my sense of smell and my consciousness, just because I do not have the wit to use the simple, all-embracing words of the Book of Job: “My soul is weary of my life!”

239 [23 Apr 1930]

Page 171 @ 05 June 2022 01:24 AM

Everything we love or lose — things, people, meanings — brushes our skin and thus reaches our soul, and, in God’s eyes, that is no more or less than the breeze that brought me nothing except the imagined relief, the propitious moment, and the ability to lose everything splendidly.

240 [25 Apr 1930]

Page 172 @ 05 June 2022 01:27 AM

Suddenly, I am alone in the world. I see all this while looking down from a mental rooftop. I am alone in the world. To see is to be distant. To see clearly is to stop. To analyze is to be foreign. People pass without even touching me. I have only air around me. I feel so isolated that I’m aware of the distance between me and my suit. I’m a child carrying a flickering candle and crossing, in my nightshirt, the big, deserted house. Living shadows surround me — only shadows, the daughters of dead things and the light accompanying me. They surround me here too in the sun, but they are people. And yet they are shadows too, shadows …

243 [c. 4/1930]

Page 174 @ 07 June 2022 01:32 AM

The burden of feeling! The burden of having to feel!

246 [6 May 1930]

Page 174 @ 07 June 2022 01:38 AM

They bring me faith wrapped up like a parcel and borne on someone else’s tray. They want me to accept it, but not open it. They bring me science, like a knife on a plate, with which I will cut the pages of a book of blank pages. They bring me doubt, like dust inside a box; but why do they bring me the box if all it contains is dust?

250 [12 June 1930]

Page 177 @ 07 June 2022 01:52 PM

There are times when everything wearies us, even those things that would normally bring us rest. Obviously what wearies us does so because it’s tiring; what is restful tires us because the thought of having to obtain it is tiring. Behind all anguish and pain lie certain debilities of the soul; the only people who remain unaware of these are, I believe, those who shrink from human anguish and pain and tactfully conceal from themselves their own tedium. Since in this way they armor themselves against the world, it is not surprising that at some stage in their self-consciousness they feel suddenly crushed by the whole weight of that armor, and life is revealed to them as an anguish in reverse, an absent pain.

253 [27 June 1930]

Page 178 @ 07 June 2022 01:58 PM

Life for us is whatever we imagine it to be. To the peasant with his one field, that field is everything, it is an empire. To Caesar with his vast empire which still feels cramped, that empire is a field. The poor man has an empire; the great man only a field. The truth is that we possess nothing but our own sensations; it is on them, then, and not on what they perceive, that we must base the reality of our life.

257 [c. 24 July 1930]

Page 181 @ 07 June 2022 02:08 PM

I write with a strange sense of grief, I make use of a certain intellectual asphyxia, which comes to me from the perfection of the evening. This exquisitely blue sky fading into pale pink on a soft, steady breeze fills my consciousness of myself with an urge to scream. I am, after all, writing in order to flee and flee again. I avoid ideals. I forget precise expressions, and they come to me in the physical act of writing, as if the pen itself were producing them.
From what I thought, from what I felt, there survives obscurely a futile desire to weep.

258 [25 July 1930]

Page 181 @ 07 June 2022 02:09 PM

Relations between one soul and another, expressed through such uncertain, divergent things as words exchanged and gestures made, are of a strange complexity. The very way in which we come to know each other is a form of unknowing. When two people say “I love you” (or perhaps think or reciprocate the feeling), each one means by that something different, a different life, even, perhaps, a different color and aroma in the abstract sum of impressions that constitute the activity of the soul.

260 [27 July 1930]

Page 182 @ 07 June 2022 03:53 PM

All literature consists of an effort to make life real. As everyone knows, even when they act as if they did not, in its physical reality, life is absolutely unreal; fields, cities, ideas are all totally fictitious, the children of our complex experience of ourselves. All impressions are incommunicable unless we make literature of them.

Page 182 @ 07 June 2022 03:54 PM

To say things! To know how to say things! To know how to exist through the written voice and the intellectual image! That’s what life is about: the rest is just men and women, imagined loves and fictitious vanities, excuses born of poor digestion and forgetting, people squirming beneath the great abstract boulder of a meaningless blue sky, the way insects do when you lift a stone.

261 [10 Dec 1930]

Page 183 @ 07 June 2022 03:56 PM

Thus days and days pass; how much of my life, were I to add up those days, I couldn’t say. Sometimes I think that when I finally slough off these stagnant clothes, I may not stand as naked as I imagine and some intangible vestments may still clothe the eternal absence of my true soul; it occurs to me that to think, feel or want may also be stagnant forms of a more personal way of thinking, of feelings more intimately mine, of a will lost somewhere in the labyrinth of who I really am.

274 [1930?]

Page 190 @ 07 June 2022 11:55 PM

We generally give to our ideas about the unknown the color of our notions about what we do know: if we call death a sleep it’s because it has the appearance of sleep; if we call death a new life, it’s because it seems different from life. We build our beliefs and hopes out of these small misunderstandings with reality and live off husks of bread that we call cakes, the way poor children play at being happy.

Page 190 @ 07 June 2022 11:56 PM

Civilization consists in giving an inappropriate name to something and then dreaming what results from that. And in fact the false name and the true dream do create a new reality. The object really does become other, because we have made it so. We manufacture realities. We use the raw materials we always used, but the form lent it by art effectively prevents it from remaining the same.

283 [1930?]

Page 194 @ 08 June 2022 12:54 AM

To be is to be free.

296 [1930?]

Page 201 @ 11 June 2022 07:07 PM

To move is to live, to express oneself is to endure.

301 [1930?]

Page 204 @ 11 June 2022 08:06 PM

There is an erudition of knowledge, which is what we usually mean by “erudition,” and there is an erudition of understanding, which is what we call “culture.” But there is also an erudition of sensibility.

Page 204 @ 11 June 2022 08:09 PM

Condillac begins his famous book with the words: “However high we climb and however low we fall we never escape our own feelings.” We can never disembark from ourselves. We can never become another person, except by making ourselves other through the sensitive application of our imaginations to our selves.

Page 204 @ 11 June 2022 08:11 PM

Renunciation is freedom. Not wanting is power.

Page 205 @ 11 June 2022 08:16 PM

What hands will I reach out to what universe? The universe is not mine: it is me.

305 [2 Feb 1931]

Page 208 @ 12 June 2022 11:02 AM

I always felt that virtue lay in getting what lay beyond one’s reach, in living where you were not, in being more alive when dead than when alive, in achieving, in short, something difficult, something absurd, in overleaping — like an obstacle — the obstinate reality of the world.

313 [1 July 1931]

Page 214 @ 13 June 2022 01:39 AM

No one likes us when we’ve slept badly. The sleep we missed carried off with it whatever it was that made us human. There is, it seems, a latent irritation in us, in the empty air that surrounds us. Ultimately, it is we who are in dispute with ourselves, it is within ourselves that diplomacy in the secret war breaks down.

315 [22 Aug 1931]

Page 215 @ 14 June 2022 01:01 AM

So great is my tedium, so overwhelming the horror of being alive, that I cannot imagine what could possibly serve as a palliative, an antidote, a balm, a source of oblivion. The idea of sleeping horrifies me too. As does the idea of dying. Leaving or staying are the same impossible thing. Hoping and doubting are equally cold and gray. I am a shelf full of empty bottles.
And yet, if I allow my vulgar eyes to receive the dying greeting of the bright day’s end, what a longing I feel to be no one else but me! What a grand funeral for hope in the still-golden silence of the lifeless skies, what a cortège of vacuums and voids parades past the reddish blues growing paler on the vast plains of empty white space!

317 [3 Sep 1931]

Page 225 @ 18 June 2022 11:01 PM

The most painful feelings, the most piercing emotions, are also the most absurd ones — the longing for impossible things precisely because they are impossible, the nostalgia for what never was, the desire for what might have been, one’s bitterness that one is not someone else, or one’s dissatisfaction with the very existence of the world. All these half-tones of the soul’s consciousness create a raw landscape within us, a sun eternally setting on what we are. Our sense of ourselves then becomes a deserted field at nightfall, with sad reeds flanking a boatless river, bright in the darkness growing between the distant shores.

329 [c. 21 Oct 1931]

Page 235 @ 22 June 2022 08:02 PM

If a man writes well only when he is drunk, I would tell him: Drink. And if he were to tell me that his liver suffers as a consequence, I would say: And what is your liver? It is a dead thing that lives only while you live, whereas there is no “while” about the poems you write.

134 [1917?]

Page 236 @ 15 January 2022 03:35 AM

I belong to a generation that inherited a disbelief in the Christian faith and that created within itself a disbelief in all other faiths. Our forefathers still felt an impulse to believe, which they transferred from Christianity to other forms of illusion. Some were enthusiasts for social equality, others were simply in love with beauty, others put their faith in science and its benefits, whilst others, even more Christian than ever, went off to East and West in search of other religions with which they could fill their consciousness of merely living, which seemed hollow otherwise.

We lost all this and were orphaned at birth of all these consolations. Every civilization cleaves to the intimate contours of the religion that represents it: to go after other religions is to lose that first religion and ultimately to lose them all.

We lost both our religion and the others too.

Each of us was left abandoned to ourselves, amidst the desolation of merely knowing we were alive. A boat would seem to be an object whose one purpose is to travel, but its real purpose is not to travel but to reach harbor. We found ourselves on the high seas, with no idea which port we should be aiming for. Thus we represent a painful version of the argonauts’ bold motto: the journey is what matters, not life.

Bereft of illusions, we live on dreams, which are the illusions of those who cannot have illusions. Living off ourselves alone, we diminish ourselves, because the complete man is one who is unaware of himself. Without faith, we have no hope and without hope we do not really have a life. With no idea of the future, we can have no real idea of today, because, for the man of action, today is only a prologue to the future. The fighting spirit was stillborn in us, because we were born with no enthusiasm for the fight.

Some of us stagnated in the foolish conquest of the everyday, contemptible, vulgar beings scrabbling for our daily bread and wanting to get it without working for it, without feeling the effort involved, without the nobility of achievement.

Others, of better stock, abstained from public life, wanting and desiring nothing, and trying to carry to the calvary of oblivion the cross of simply existing. A vain endeavor in men whose consciousness, unlike that of the original carrier of the Cross, lacks any spark of the divine.

Others, busily engaged outside their soul, gave themselves over to the cult of confusion and noise, thinking they were alive because they could be heard, thinking they loved when they merely stumbled against love’s outer walls. Life hurt us because we knew we were alive; death held no terror for us because we had lost all normal notion of death.

But others, the People of the End, the spiritual boundary of the Dead Hour, did not even have the courage to give it all up and seek asylum in themselves. They lived in negation, discontent and desolation. But we lived it all inside ourselves, making not even a single gesture, shut up for as long as we lived within the four walls of our room and within the four walls of our inability to act.

333 [29 Nov 1931]

Page 237 @ 23 June 2022 11:09 PM

Everything we do or say, everything we think or feel, wears the same mask and the same fancy dress. However many layers of clothing we take off, we are never left naked, for nakedness is a phenomenon of the soul and has nothing to do with taking off one’s clothes. Thus, dressed in body and soul, with our multiple outfits clinging to us as sleek as feathers, we live out the brief time the gods give us to enjoy ourselves happily or unhappily (or ignorant of quite what our feelings are), like children playing earnest games.
Someone, freer or more accursed than the rest of us, suddenly sees (though even he sees it only rarely) that everything we are is what we are not, that we deceive ourselves about what is certain and are wrong about what we judge to be right. And this individual, who, for one brief moment, sees the universe naked, creates a philosophy or dreams a religion, and the philosophy is listened to and the religion resonates, and those who believe in the philosophy wear it like an invisible garment, and those who believe in the religion put it on like a mask which they then forget they are wearing.

334 [November 1931]

Page 238 @ 23 June 2022 11:21 PM

have never forgotten that phrase of the biologist, Haeckel, whom I read in the infancy of my intelligence, at that age when one reads scientific publications and arguments against religion. The phrase goes more or less like this: the superior man (a Kant or a Goethe, I think he says) is farther removed from the common man than the common man is from the monkey. I’ve never forgotten the phrase because it’s true. Between myself, of little significance amongst the ranks of thinkers, and a peasant in Loures there is a greater distance than between that peasant and, I won’t say a monkey, but a cat or a dog. None of us, from the cat up, actually leads the life imposed on us or the fate given to us; we all derive from equally obscure origins, we are all shadows of gestures made by someone else, effects made flesh, consequences with feelings. But between me and the peasant there is a qualitative difference, deriving from the existence in me of abstract thought and disinterested emotion; whereas between him and the cat, at the level of the spirit, there is only a difference of degree.

Page 238 @ 23 June 2022 11:22 PM

What distinguishes the superior man from the inferior man and from the latter’s animal brothers is the simple quality of irony. Irony is the first indication that consciousness has become conscious, and it passes through two stages: the stage reached by Socrates when he said “I only know that I know nothing,” and the stage reached by Sanches,xii when he said “I do not even know that I know nothing.” The first stage is that point at which we dogmatically doubt ourselves and it’s a point that every superior man will reach. The second stage is the point at which we doubt both ourselves and our doubt, and, in the brief yet long curve of time during which we, as humans, have watched the sun rise and the night fall over the varied surface of the earth, that is a stage very few men have reached.

Page 239 @ 23 June 2022 11:24 PM

I get up from the chair where, leaning distractedly on the table, I’ve been amusing myself setting down these rough and ready impressions. I get up, I make my body get up, and go over to the window, high above the rooftops, from where I can see the city settling to sleep in the slow beginnings of silence. The big, bright white moon sadly points out the ragged line of the terraced roofs and its icy light seems to illuminate all the mystery of the world. It seems to reveal everything and that everything is just shadows intermingled with dim light, false intervals, erratically absurd, the incoherent mutterings of the visible world. The absence of any breeze only seems to increase the mystery. I’m sick of abstract thoughts. I will never write a single page that will reveal myself or anything else. The lightest of clouds hovers vaguely above the moon as if it were the moon’s hiding place. Like these rooftops, I know nothing. Like all of nature, I have failed.

335 [1 Dec 1931]

Page 239 @ 23 June 2022 11:25 PM

Art consists in making others feel what we feel, in freeing them from themselves, by offering them our own personality as a liberation. What I feel, in the actual substance in which I feel it, is totally incommunicable; and the more profoundly I feel something, the more incommunicable it becomes. In order for me to be able to transmit what I feel to someone else, I have to translate my feelings into his language, that is, to say those things as if they were what I feel, and for him, reading them, to feel exactly what I felt. And since that other person is, in terms of art, not this or that person, but everyone, that is, the person common to all people, what I have to do in the end is to convert my feelings into a typical human feeling, even if that perverts the true nature of what I felt.

You know my struggle mate.

Page 240 @ 23 June 2022 11:29 PM

Art lies because it is a social thing. And there are only two great forms of art — one is addressed to our deep soul, the other to our attentive soul. The first is poetry, the second the novel. The structure of the former is in itself a lie; and the very intention of the latter is a lie. One sets out to give us the truth by means of metered lines, which go against the inherent nature of speech; the other sets out to give us the truth through a reality that we know very well never existed.

337 [1 Dec 1931]

Page 242 @ 24 June 2022 03:13 PM

I’m always thinking, always feeling, but my thoughts lack all reason, my emotions all feeling. I’m falling through a trapdoor, through infinite, infinitous space, in a directionless, empty fall. My soul is a black maelstrom, a great madness spinning around a vacuum, the swirling of a vast ocean around a hole in the void, and in the waters, more like whirlwinds than waters, float images of all I ever saw or heard in the world: houses, faces, books, crates, snatches of music and fragments of voices, all caught up in a sinister, bottomless whirlpool.
And I, I myself, am the center that exists only because the geometry of the abyss demands it; I am the nothing around which all this spins, I exist so that it can spin, I am a center that exists only because every circle has one. I, I myself, am the well in which the walls have fallen away to leave only viscous slime. I am the center of everything surrounded by the great nothing.

343 [1931?]

Page 246 @ 24 June 2022 03:28 PM

And if the office in the Rua dos Douradores represents Life for me, the fourth-floor room I live in on that same street represents Art. Yes, Art, living on the same street as Life but in a different room; Art, which offers relief from life without actually relieving one of living, and which is as monotonous as life itself, but in a different way. Yes, for me Rua dos Douradores embraces the meaning of all things, the resolution of all mysteries, except the existence of mysteries themselves, which is something beyond resolution.

345 [1931?]

Page 248 @ 24 June 2022 10:59 PM

Unfortunately, the suffering of the intellect is less painful than that of the emotions, and that of the emotions, again unfortunately, less than that of the body. I say “unfortunately” because human dignity would naturally demand the opposite. No anguished sense of the mystery of life hurts like love or jealousy or longing, chokes you the way intense physical fear can or transforms you like anger or ambition. But neither can any of the pains that lacerate the soul ever be as real a pain as that of toothache, or colic or (I imagine) childbirth …

349 [1931?]

Page 249 @ 24 June 2022 11:07 PM

As far as I can see, plagues, storms and wars are all products of the same blind force, which sometimes operates through unconscious microbes, sometimes through unconscious lightning bolts and floods, sometimes through unconscious men. I see no difference between an earthquake and a massacre, except in the way that murdering someone with a knife and murdering someone with a dagger can be considered different. The monster immanent in all things is as likely to deploy — to its own advantage or disadvantage, the monster doesn’t seem to care which — a boulder falling from on high as a heart suddenly filling up with jealousy or greed. The boulder falls and kills a man; the greed or jealousy puts a weapon in someone’s hand, and the hand kills a man. That is how the world is, a dungheap of instinctive impulses, that somehow glitters in the shafts of sunlight, pale gold and dark gold.

360 [1931?]

Page 255 @ 26 June 2022 03:32 PM

Some days are like whole philosophies in themselves that suggest to us new interpretations of life, marginal notes full of the acutest criticism in the book of our universal destiny.

361 [1931?]

Page 256 @ 26 June 2022 03:33 PM

Which of us, turning to look back down the road along which there is no return, could say that we had walked that road as we should have?

382 [2 May 1932]

Page 269 @ 27 June 2022 11:11 PM

Doubtless the tragedy out of which life was created occurred along the paths of the park. There were two of them and they were beautiful and they wanted to be something else; love waited for them far off in the tedious future and the nostalgia for what would be arrived as the child of the love they had never felt. Thus, beneath the moonlight in the nearby woods — for the light trickled through the trees — they would walk hand in hand, feeling no desires or hopes, across the desert of abandoned paths. They were just like children, precisely because they weren’t. From path to path, silhouetted like paper cut-outs among the trees, they strolled that no man’s land of a stage. And so, ever closer and more separate, they disappeared beyond the fountains, and the noise of the gentle rain — which has almost stopped — is now the noise of the fountains they moved towards. I am the love that was their love and that’s why I can hear them in this sleepless night and why I’m capable of living unhappily.

394 [28 Sep 1932]

Page 276 @ 27 June 2022 11:42 PM

Yes, tedium is boredom with the world, the malaise of living, the weariness of having lived; in truth, tedium is the feeling in one’s flesh of the endless emptiness of things. But, more than that, tedium is a boredom with other worlds, whether they exist or not; the malaise of living, even if one were someone else, with a different life, in another world; a weariness not just with yesterday or today but with tomorrow too, with all eternity (if it exists) and with nothingness (if that is what eternity is). It isn’t just the emptiness of things and beings that hurts the soul when it is immersed in tedium, it’s the emptiness of something else too, the emptiness of the soul experiencing that emptiness and feeling itself to be empty, the emptiness that provokes a sense of self-disgust and repudiation.

On 'tedium'.

399 [30 Dec 1932]

Page 280 @ 28 June 2022 12:28 AM

Each of us is more than one person, many people, a proliferation of our one self. That’s why the same person who scorns his surroundings is different from the person who is gladdened or made to suffer by them. In the vast colony of our being there are many different kinds of people, all thinking and feeling differently. Today, as I note down these few impressions in a legitimate break brought about by a shortage of work, I am the person carefully transcribing them, the person who is pleased not to have to work just now, the person who looks at the sky even though he can’t actually see it from here, the person who is thinking all this, and the person feeling physically at ease and noticing that his hands are still slightly cold. And, like a diverse but compact multitude, this whole world of mine, composed as it is of different people, projects but a single shadow, that of this calm figure writing on Borges’s high desk, where I have come to find the blotter he borrowed from me.

404 [1932?]

Page 282 @ 28 June 2022 01:02 AM

Leaning over the balcony, enjoying the day, looking out at the diverse shapes of the whole city, just one thought fills my soul — the deep-seated will to die, to finish, no more to see light falling on a city, not to think or feel, to leave behind me, like discarded wrapping paper, the course of the sun and all its days, and to peel off the involuntary effort of being, just as one would discard one’s heavy clothing at the foot of the great bed.

আমি শুধু অকপটে মরতে চেয়েছি।

408 [1932?]

Page 283 @ 28 June 2022 01:11 AM

I wonder how many people have contemplated as it deserves to be contemplated a deserted street with people in it. Even putting it that way makes it seem as if I were trying to say something else, which in fact I am. A deserted street is not one along which no one walks, but a street along which people walk as if it were deserted. It isn’t a difficult concept to grasp once one has seen it; after all, to someone whose experience of the equine is restricted to mules, a zebra must seem inconceivable.

414 [5 Apr 1933]

Page 287 @ 28 June 2022 01:44 AM

It isn’t true that life is painful, or that it’s painful to think about life. What is true is that our pain is only as serious and important as we pretend it to be. If we lived naturally, it would pass as quickly as it came, it would fade as quickly as it bloomed. Everything is nothing, and our pain is no exception.

Kinda echoing Buddha.

418 [19 Sep 1933]

Page 289 @ 28 June 2022 01:55 AM

Tedium is not a sickness brought on by the boredom of having nothing to do, but the worse sickness of feeling that nothing is worth doing. And thus, the more one has to do the worse the tedium.

429 [29 June 1934]

Page 295 @ 28 June 2022 01:53 PM

To receive from the mystic state only the undemanding pleasures of that state; to be the ecstatic devotee of no god, the uninitiated mystic or epopt: to spend one’s days meditating on a paradise in which one does not believe — all those things please the soul, if the soul knows what it is not to know.

Page 295 @ 28 June 2022 01:55 PM

So what if I know that, come rain or shine, body or soul, I too will pass? It doesn’t matter a jot, apart from the hope that everything is nothing and, therefore, that nothing is everything.

430 [c. 29 June 1934]

Page 295 @ 28 June 2022 01:55 PM

Not to be, but to think, that is the true throne. Not to want, but to desire, that is the crown. Whatever we renounce we preserve intact in our dreams, eternally bathed in the sun that does not exist or the moon that will never exist.

432 [c. 26 July 1934]

Page 296 @ 28 June 2022 01:57 PM

The miracle is a sign of God’s laziness or, rather, the laziness we attribute to Him by inventing the miracle.

438 [1934?]

Page 299 @ 28 June 2022 02:06 PM

To be born free is Man’s greatest quality; it is what makes the humble hermit superior to kings, superior even to the gods, who are sufficient unto themselves only by virtue of their power but not by virtue of their disdain for it.

Generated at: 2022-06-28-14-13-46

The Anarchy

2023-01-30T17:45:26.000Z

Page 46

that then controlled South and Central America was licensed by the Crown and was essentially a form of Elizabethan state-sanctioned organised crime controlled by the oligarchs of Whitehall and Charing Cross.

Page 62

The status of the English at the Mughal court in this period is perhaps most graphically illustrated by one of the most famous images of the period, a miniature by Jahangir’s master artist, Bichitr. The conceit of the painting is how the pious Jahangir preferred the company of Sufis and saints to that of powerful princes. This was actually not as far-fetched as it might sound: one of Roe’s most telling anecdotes relates how Jahangir amazed the English envoy by spending an hour chatting to a passing holy man he encountered on his travels:

a poor silly old man, all asht, ragd and patcht, with a young roague attending on him. This miserable wretch cloathed in rags, crowned with feathers, his Majestie talked with about an hour, with such familiaritie and shew of kindnesse, that it must needs argue an humilitie not found easily among Kings … He took him up in his armes, which no cleanly body durst have touched, imbracing him, and three times laying his hand on his heart, calling him father, he left him, and all of us, and me, in admiration of such a virtue in a heathen Prince.61

Page 67

Before long it had eclipsed Surat as the main centre of EIC operations on the west coast, especially as the rowdy English were becoming less and less welcome there: ‘Their private whorings, drunkenesse and such like ryotts … breaking open whorehouses and rackehowses [i.e. arrack bars] have hardened the hearts of the inhabitants against our very names,’ wrote one weary EIC official. Little wonder that the British were soon being reviled in the Surat streets ‘with the names of Ban-chude* and Betty-chude† which my modest language will not interpret’.

Page 69

The country about being overspread with Paganism, the Custom of Wives burning with their deceased Husbands is also practised here. Mr Channock went one Time with his guard of Soldiers, to see a young widow act that tragical Catastrophe, but he was so smitten with the Widow’s Beauty, that he sent his guards to take her by Force from her Executioners, and conducted her to his own Lodgings. They lived lovingly many Years, and had several children. At length she died, after he had settled in Calcutta, but instead of converting her to Christianity, she made him a Proselyte to Paganism, and the only Part of Christianity that was remarkable in him, was burying her decently, and he built a Tomb over her, where all his Life after her Death, he kept the anniversary Day of her Death by sacrificing a Cock on her Tomb, after the Pagan Manner.87

Page 128

This young man of average height, aged about 24 or 25 years old … was noted for indulgence in all kinds of debauchery and for his revolting cruelty. The women of the Gentiles [Hindus] are in the habit of bathing in the Ganges. Siraj was informed by his henchmen of those who were of some beauty. He would send his henchmen in small boats to carry them off while they were still in the water. He had been seen many times, when the river was in flood, to intentionally ram the ferry boats to jolt them, or make them spring a leak, in order to experience the cruel pleasure of frightening a hundred or more people – men, women and children – many of whom would not know how to swim and would be certain to perish by drowning.

Page 130

This Prince … made a sport of sacrificing to his lust almost every person of either sex to which he took a fancy, or else he converted them without scruple into so many objects of the malignity of his temper, or the frolics of his inconsiderate youth … He neglected and daily insulted those ancient commanders that had served so faithfully and so bravely Aliverdi Khan, so that intimidated now by his grandson’s character and foul language, they did not dare to open their mouths, or even take breath in his presence. Most of them, shocked at the dishonourable expressions made use of in speaking to them, and incensed at the insolence of the upstarts that had taken possession of his mind, were so far from offering advice upon the posture of affairs that they were generally ill-intentioned and wished to see his downfall, while he made it a point not to ask anyone’s opinions.

As for himself, Siraj was ignorant of the world, and incapable of taking a reasonable line of action, being totally destitute of sense and penetration, and yet having a head so obscured with the smoke of ignorance, and so giddy and intoxicated with the fumes of youth and power and dominion, that he knew no distinction between good and bad, nor betwixt vice and virtue. His imprudence was so great that, in the middle of a military expedition, he would set daggers in the hearts of his bravest and ablest commanders by his harsh language, and his choleric disposition. Such usage naturally rendered them regardless, and utterly neglectful … In time he became as hated as Pharaoh. People on meeting him by chance used to say, God save us from him!

Ghulam Hussain Khan

Page 139

He was given the titles Ali Gauhar and Shah Alam, Exalted of Lineage, Lord of the World, and forced to take an interest in politics as well as his first and most personal passion of poetics. But it was still literature that lay at the heart of his world. Under the pen name ‘Aftab’, the prince became a prolific and respected author in Urdu, Persian, Punjabi and especially Braj Bhasha, in which language he wrote copious, passionate odes to Lord Krishna, Shiva and to goddesses Kali and Sarasvati; many of his works were later gathered at his own request in a diwan (collection) he entitled the Nadirat-i-Shahi. He also later composed a dastan romance entitled the Aja’ib al-Qasas.82 Shah Alam was a Sufi by inclination.

Page 203

Ghulam Hussain Khan gives a moving account of Law’s brave last stand and his determination, having seen the Emperor deserted by all, and betrayed even by his commander-in-chief, to battle to the death: ‘M. Law, with a small force, and the few pieces of artillery that he could muster, bravely fought the English, and for some time he managed to withstand their immense numerical superiority. The handful of troops that followed M. Law, discouraged by the flight of the Emperor and tired of the wandering life they had hitherto led in his service, turned about and fled. M. Law, finding himself abandoned and alone, resolved not to turn his back; he bestrode one of the guns, and remained firm in that posture, waiting for the moment of death.’

Moved by Law’s bravery, the Company commander, John Carnac, dismounted, and without taking a guard, but bringing his most senior staff officers, walked over on foot, and pulling their ‘hats from their heads, they swept the air with them, as if to make him a salaam’, pleading with Law to surrender: ‘You have done everything that can be expected from a brave man, and your name shall undoubtedly be transmitted to posterity by the pen of history,’ he begged. ‘Now loosen your sword from your loins, come amongst us, and abandon all thoughts of contending with the English.’

Law answered that if they would ‘accept this surrendering himself just as he was, he had no objections; but that as to surrendering himself with the disgrace of his being without a sword, it was a shame he would never submit to; and that they must take his life if they were not satisfied with the condition. The English commanders, admiring his firmness, consented to his surrendering himself in the manner he wished to; after which the Major shook hands with him, in their European manner, and every sentiment of enmity was instantly dismissed from both sides.

Page 238

But perhaps Shuja’s most feared crack troops were a large force of 6,000 dreadlocked Hindu Naga sadhus, who fought mainly on foot with clubs, swords and arrows, ash-painted but entirely naked, under their own much-feared Gossain leaders, the brothers Anupgiri and Umraogiri.

Page 295

It was at this point that it became clear, as Pearse noted, ‘that both gentlemen were unacquainted with the modes usually observed on these occasions’; indeed, neither of the two most powerful British intellectuals in Bengal seemed entirely clear how to operate their pistols. Francis said he had never fired one in his life, and Hastings said he could only remember doing so once. So both had to have their weapons loaded for them by their seconds who, being military men, knew how to operate firearms.

Page 303

At the end of ten years’ captivity, one of these prisoners, James Scurry, found that he had forgotten how to sit in a chair or use a knife and fork; his English was ‘broken and confused, having lost all its vernacular idiom’, his skin had darkened to the ‘swarthy complexion of Negroes’ and he found he actively disliked wearing European clothes.126

Page 375

James Kirkpatrick, who was in the second column, had gazed across the river and seen Tipu’s magnificent Mughal-style garden palace, ‘Lall Baug, in all its glory’, the day before: ‘Alas!’ he wrote to his father, ‘it fell sacrifice to the emergencies of war.’ The palace was made a hospital for the wounded and the beautiful garden ‘toppled to supply materials for the siege. Whole avenues of tall and majestic cypresses were in an instant laid low, nor was the orange, apple, sandal tree or even the fragrant bowers of rose and jasmine spared in this indiscriminate ruin. You might have seen in our batteries fascines of rose bushes, bound with jasmine and picketed with pickets of sandal wood. The very pioneers themselves became scented …’

Melancholic.

Page 442

The East India Company limped on in its amputated form for another fifteen years when its charter expired, finally quietly shutting down in 1874, ‘with less fanfare,’ noted one commentator, ‘than a regional railway bankruptcy’.

Its brand name is now owned by two brothers from Kerala who use it to sell ‘condiments and fine foods’ from a showroom in London’s West End.

Page 444

The Company’s conquest of India almost certainly remains the supreme act of corporate violence in world history. For all the power wielded today by the world’s largest corporations – whether ExxonMobil, Walmart or Google – they are tame beasts compared with the ravaging territorial appetites of the militarised East India Company. Yet if history shows anything, it is that in the intimate dance between the power of the state and that of the corporation, while the latter can be regulated, the corporation will use all the resources in its power to resist.

Swann_s Way by Marcel Proust

2023-10-02T08:50:50.000Z

Swann's Way

Marcel Proust

Chapter 1

Page: 29 (7.47%) @ 28 Sep 2023 02:06:28 PM

grandmother would go off again, sad, discouraged, yet smiling, for she was so humble at heart and so gentle that her tenderness for others, and the lack of fuss she made over her own person and her sufferings, came together in her gaze in a smile in which, unlike what one sees in the faces of so many people, there was irony only for herself, and for all of us a sort of kiss from her eyes, which could not see those she cherished without caressing them passionately with her gaze.

[!quote] Quotable/Concept/General Idea

Page: 32 (8.25%) @ 28 Sep 2023 02:08:28 PM

My grandfather, who had not seen him for a long time, had rushed to his side at the estate the Swanns owned in the vicinity of Combray and, so that he would not be present at the coffining, managed to entice him for a while, all in tears, out of the death chamber. They walked a short way in the park, where there was a little sunshine. Suddenly M. Swann, taking my grandfather by the arm, cried out: “Oh, my old friend, what a joy it is to be walking here together in such fine weather! Don’t you think it’s pretty, all these trees, these hawthorns! And my pond—which you’ve never congratulated me on! You look as sad as an old nightcap. Feel that little breeze? Oh, say what you like, life has something to offer despite everything, my dear Amédée!”

[!important] Striking/Intense: Reminds me of Nazrul's son's death.

Page: 50 (12.89%) @ 28 Sep 2023 02:11:36 PM

And so, for the first time, my sadness was regarded no longer as a punishable offense but as an involuntary ailment that had just been officially recognized, a nervous condition for which I was not responsible; I had the relief of no longer having to mingle qualms of conscience with the bitterness of my tears, I could cry without sin.

[!important] Striking/Intense

Page: 57 (14.69%) @ 28 Sep 2023 02:12:58 PM

But, when nothing subsists of an old past, after the death of people, after the destruction of things, alone, frailer but more enduring, more immaterial, more persistent, more faithful, smell and taste still remain for a long time, like souls, remembering, waiting, hoping, upon the ruins of all the rest, bearing without giving way, on their almost impalpable droplet, the immense edifice of memory.

[!question] Thought Provoking

Chapter 2

Page: 59 (15.21%) @ 28 Sep 2023 02:14:22 PM

These were the sorts of provincial rooms which—just as in certain countries entire tracts of air or ocean are illuminated or perfumed by myriad protozoa that we cannot see—enchant us with the thousand smells given off by the virtues, by wisdom, by habits, a whole secret life, invisible, superabundant, and moral, which the atmosphere holds in suspension; smells still natural, certainly, and colored by the weather like those of the neighboring countryside, but already homey, human and enclosed, an exquisite, ingenious, and limpid jelly of all the fruits of the year that have left the orchard for the cupboard; seasonal, but movable and domestic, correcting the piquancy of the hoarfrost with the sweetness of warm bread, as lazy and punctual as a village clock, roving and orderly, heedless and foresightful, linen smells, morning smells, pious smells, happy with a peace that brings only an increase of anxiety and with a prosiness that serves as a great reservoir of poetry for one who passes through it without having lived in it.

[!important] Striking/Intense

Page: 72 (18.56%) @ 28 Sep 2023 02:16:01 PM

And even today, if in a large provincial town or a part of Paris I do not know well, a passing stranger who has “put me on the right path” shows me in the distance, as a reference point, some hospital belfry, some convent steeple lifting the peak of its ecclesiastical cap at the corner of a street I am supposed to take, if only my memory can obscurely find in it some small feature resembling the dear departed form, the stranger, if he turns around to make sure I am not going astray, may, to his astonishment, see me, forgetting the walk I had begun or the necessary errand, remain there in front of the steeple for hours, motionless, trying to remember, feeling deep in myself lands recovered from oblivion draining and rebuilding themselves; and then no doubt, and more anxiously than a short time before when I asked him to direct me, I am still seeking my path, I am turning a corner … but … I am doing so in my heart …

[!important] Striking/Intense

Page: 84 (21.65%) @ 28 Sep 2023 02:17:34 PM

There must have been a good deal of reality in those Virtues and Vices of Padua, since they seemed to me as alive as the pregnant servant, and since she herself did not appear to me much less allegorical. And perhaps this (at least apparent) nonparticipation of a person’s soul in the virtue that is acting through her has also, beyond its aesthetic value, a reality that is, if not psychological, at least, as they say, physiognomical. When, later, I had occasion to meet, in the course of my life, in convents for instance, truly saintly embodiments of practical charity, they generally had the cheerful, positive, indifferent, and brusque air of a busy surgeon, the sort of face in which one can read no commiseration, no pity in the presence of human suffering, no fear of offending it, the sort which is the ungentle face, the antipathetic and sublime face of true goodness.

[!question] Thought Provoking

Page: 136 (35.05%) @ 28 Sep 2023 02:01:22 PM

Perhaps there exists no one, however virtuous he may be, who may not be led one day by the complexity of his circumstances to live on familiar terms with the vice he condemns most expressly—without his fully recognizing it, moreover, in the disguise of particular details that it assumes in order to come into contact with him in that way and make him suffer: strange remarks, an inexplicable attitude, one evening, on the part of someone whom he has otherwise so many reasons for liking.

[!question] Thought Provoking

Page: 136 (35.05%) @ 28 Sep 2023 02:02:27 PM

Facts do not find their way into the world in which our beliefs reside; they did not produce our beliefs, they do not destroy them; they may inflict on them the most constant refutations without weakening them, and an avalanche of afflictions or ailments succeeding one another without interruption in a family will not make it doubt the goodness of its God or the talent of its doctor.

[!question] Thought Provoking

PART II - Swann in Love

Page: 185 (47.68%) @ 28 Sep 2023 10:49:13 AM

It even seemed, for a moment, that this love for a phrase of music would have to open in Swann the possibility of a sort of rejuvenation. He had for so long given up directing his life toward an ideal goal and limited it to the pursuit of everyday satisfactions that he believed, without ever saying so formally to himself, that this would not change as long as he lived; much worse, since his mind no longer entertained any lofty ideas, he had ceased to believe in their reality, though without being able to deny it altogether. Thus he had acquired the habit of taking refuge in unimportant thoughts that allowed him to ignore the fundamental essence of things.

[!question] Thought Provoking: A common pitfall.

Page: 295 (76.03%) @ 01 Oct 2023 02:09:44 AM

What had happened was that the violin had risen to a series of high notes on which it lingered as though waiting for something, holding on to them in a prolonged expectancy, in the exaltation of already seeing the object of its expectation approaching, and with a desperate effort to try to endure until it arrived, to welcome it before expiring, to keep the way open for it another moment with a last bit of strength so that it could come through, as one holds up a trapdoor that would otherwise fall back. And before Swann had time to understand, and say to himself: “It’s the little phrase from the sonata by Vinteuil; don’t listen!” all his memories of the time when Odette was in love with him, which he had managed until now to keep out of sight in the deepest part of himself, deceived by this sudden beam of light from the time of love which they believed had returned, had awoken and flown swiftly back up to sing madly to him, with no pity for his present misfortune, the forgotten refrains of happiness.

[!question] Thought Provoking

PART III - Place-Names: The Name

Page: 338 (87.11%) @ 01 Oct 2023 04:46:21 PM

we no longer love anyone else when we are in love

[!question] Thought Provoking

Page: 357 (92.01%) @ 01 Oct 2023 05:37:14 PM

But when a belief disappears, there survives it—more and more vigorous so as to mask the absence of the power we have lost to give reality to new things—a fetishistic attachment to the old things which our belief once animated, as if it were in them and not in us that the divine resided and as if our present lack of belief had a contingent cause, the death of the Gods.

[!question] Thought Provoking

Page: 359 (92.53%) @ 01 Oct 2023 05:41:33 PM

The places we have known do not belong solely to the world of space in which we situate them for our greater convenience. They were only a thin slice among contiguous impressions which formed our life at that time; the memory of a certain image is but regret for a certain moment; and houses, roads, avenues are as fleeting, alas, as the years.

[!question] Thought Provoking

Spinoza_s Ethics by George Elliot

2023-01-11T06:56:14.000Z

Spinoza's Ethics-Princeton University Press (2020)

Benedictus de Spinoza

George Eliot’s Spinoza An Introduction

Time: 2021-08-03 02:28

As Brilmyer has shown, Middlemarch abounds with “descriptions of humans as material substances and geometrical forms, which operate both as metaphors for personalities and—more literally—as descriptions of the plasticity of character,” amounting to what Brilmyer calls a “physics of character,” which explores “the bodily sensitivity, impressionability, and the propensity toward habit formation that produce characterological change throughout time.” The process of character formation, she explains, “is one of neither passive imprintation nor heroic self-formation.” George Eliot depicts individuals in action not as expressions of fixed essences but as “loosely structured material formations, softly bounded forms open to reconfiguration or change” and “nebulous relational fields.”123 These amorphous selves are given cohesion and constancy by the “gum or starch” of habit and tradition: as Middlemarch’s narrator explains,even the most “indefinite minds enclose hard grains of habit”

Very similar to composite self from Buddha.

Part I: Of God

Time: 2021-08-03 14:16

Many imagine God after the likeness of a man, consisting of body and mind, and liable to passions; but how far such people are from the true knowledge of God, is sufficiently apparent from what has already been demonstrated. Them, however, I pass by; for all who have in any degree contemplated the nature of God, deny that God is corporeal; and they bring excellent proof of this when they urge that by a body we understand some quantity with length, breadth and depth, some determinate figure, a conception which it is the height of absurdity to apply to God, i.e. to the absolutely infinite being. Meanwhile, other reasons, by which they endeavour to demonstrate the incorporeality of God, clearly show that they altogether exclude corporeal or extended substance from the divine nature, and regard it as created by God. But by what divine power it could have been created they are entirely ignorant; which plainly proves that they do not understand what they themselves say.

Time: 2021-08-03 15:46

Prop. XVII. God acts solely from the laws of his nature and is not constrained by any other being.Dem. That an infinity of modes absolutely follows solely from the necessity of the divine nature, or (which is the same thing) solely from the laws of nature, we have just shown in prop. XVI;26 and under prop. XV we have demonstrated that nothing can exist or be conceived besides God—that all things are in God. Consequently nothing external to him can exist by which he can be determined or compelled; and therefore God acts solely from the laws of his nature and is constrained by no other being; q.e.d.

Time: 2021-08-03 15:50

Schol. Others suppose God to be a free cause on the ground that he can, as they imagine, effect that those things which we have shown to follow from his nature, i.e. which are in his power, should not come into existence, or should not be produced by him. But this is equivalent to saying that God can cause that it should not follow from the nature of a triangle that its three angles should be equal to two right angles; or that from a given cause no effect should follow; which is absurd.

Time: 2021-08-03 15:55

Further, to say a few words here on the intelligence [intellectus] and will which are commonly attributed to God, if intelligence and will belong to the eternal essence of God, something else must be understood by these attributes than what people usually understand by them. For the intelligence and will which constitute the essence of God must differ toto caelo from our intelligence and will, and indeed can agree in nothing else than in name: they resemble each other as the dog, a heavenly constellation, resembles the dog, a barking animal.

Time: 2021-08-03 16:00

Dem. For God (by def. 6) is a substance which (by prop. XI) necessarily exists; i.e. (by prop.VII) to the nature of which belongs existence, or (which is the same thing) from the simple definition of which it follows that it exists; and thus (by def. 8) God is eternal.

If God is eternal does that mean God cannot precede time, therefore created with the universe?

Time: 2021-08-03 17:56

God did not exist before his decrees and cannot exist without them. But, say they, although it be supposed that God made another nature of things.

Time: 2021-08-03 18:07

Further, as within themselves and outside themselves they discover many means which are highly conducive to the pursuit of their own advantage, for example, eyes to see with, teeth to masticate with, vegetables and animals for food, the sun to give them light, the sea to nourish fish, etc., so they come to consider all natural things as means for their benefit; and because they are aware that these things have been found and not prepared by them, they have been led to believe that some one else has adapted those means to their use. For after considering things in the light of means, they could not believe these things to have made themselves; but arguing from their own practice of preparing means for their use, they must conclude that there is some ruler or rulers of nature endowed with human freedom, who have provided all these things for them and have made them all for the use of men.

Time: 2021-08-03 18:10

For it was easier to them to class these phenomena among other things the use of which was unknown to them, and thus retain their present and innate condition of ignorance, than to destroy all the fabric of their belief and excogitate a new one. Accordingly they presuppose as certain that the wisdom of the Gods far transcends the human understanding: a position which would assuredly suffice eternally to hide the truth from the human race, if mathematics, which is concerned not with causes [fines] but solely with the essences and properties of figures, had not shown us another law of truth. Other causes however, besides mathematics, may be assigned (though to enumerate them here is superfluous) which might incite people to call in question these common prejudices and so lead them to the true knowledge of things.

Time: 2021-08-03 18:24

Nor must it be left unnoticed that the followers of this doctrine who wish to show their ingenuity in assigning final causes to things, have introduced a new kind of argument in its support, viz. a reductio not ad absurdum but ad ignorantiam: an evidence that no other mode of argument would sustain their doctrine. If, for example, a stone were to fall from some height on a man’s head and kill him, they would in this way demonstrate that the stone fell in order to kill the man. For unless it had fallen to that end by the will of God, how could so many circumstances (for these circumstances are often numerous) have concurred to produce this end? You will answer perhaps that it happened because the wind blew and the man was passing that way. But they will insist: why should the wind blow at that moment? Why should the man be passing by at that moment? If you again reply that the wind had then risen because on the preceding day the sea, previously tranquil, had begun to be agitated, and that the man had been invited by a friend, they will further ask, there being no end to this kind of questioning: why was the sea agitated? Why was the man invited at that particular time? And so they will not cease to ask the cause of causes until you have taken refuge in the will of God,i.e. in ignorance. Again, when they see the structure of the human body they are struck with astonishment and because they are ignorant of the causes of this complex structure, they conclude that it has been framed and so constituted that one part does not injure the other, not by natural forces but by divine or supernatural art. And this is the reason why any one who inquires into the true causes of miracles, and seeks to understand natural things like an instructed person, and not simply to be amazed at them like a fool, is held and proclaimed to be heretical and impious by those whom the vulgar venerate as the interpreters of nature and the gods. For they know that if ignorance were done away with, wonder, their only means of arguing and of enforcing their authority, would be done away with too. But I quit this subject and proceed to the one which I have determined to treat of in the third place.

Part II: On the Nature and Origin of the Mind

Time: 2021-08-04 12:00

I say secondly, that this concatenation is formed according to the order and concatenation of the affections of the human body, that I may distinguish it from the concatenation of ideas which is formed according to the order of the intellect, which is the same in all men, and by which things are perceived in their first causes. And hence we further clearly understand why the mind passes instantaneously from the idea of one thing to that of another which has no resemblance to the former; as, for example, on thinking of the word pomum a Roman immediately thought of a fruit, which has no resemblance to that articulate sound, nor anything in common with it, except that the body of the same person was often simultaneously affected by these two things, i.e., that the same man often heard the word pomum when he saw the fruit; and thus each man passes from one thought to another,according to the order which habit has given to the images of things in his body. A soldier, for example, on seeing the footsteps of a horse in the sand, will always pass from the thought of a horse to that of a rider and from thence to the thought of war etc. But a rustic will pass from the thought of a horse to that of a plough, of a field, etc.; and so each person according as he is accustomed to join and link together the images of things in this or that manner, will have this or that succession of ideas.

Time: 2021-08-04 12:00

The human mind does not know the human body, or know it to exist, except by the ideas of the affections which the body experiences.

Time: 2021-08-04 13:46

Prop. XLVIII. There is no absolute or free will in the mind, but [the mind] is determined to will this or that by a cause which is also determined by another cause, and this again by another, and so on in infinitum. Dem. The mind is a certain and determinate mode of thought (by prop. XI, Part II) and therefore (by coroll. 2, prop. XVII, Part I) cannot be the free cause of its actions, i.e. cannot have an absolute power of willing and not willing; but must be determined to will this or that (by prop. XXVIII, Part I) by a cause, which is also determined by another and this again by another, etc.; q.e.d.

Part III: On the Origin and Nature of the Emotions

Time: 2021-08-04 16:05

Many have written on the emotions and actions of men as if they were not treating of natural things which follow from the common laws of nature, but of things which lie beyond the domain of nature; they appear, indeed, to regard man in nature as an imperium in imperio—a state within a state. For they believe that man rather disturbs than follows the order of nature,that he has absolute power over his actions, and that he is determined by nothing besides himself. They refer the cause of human weakness and inconstancy not to the common forces of universal nature, but to I know not what vice in human nature, which they therefore bewail,deride, despise, or, more frequently, detest; and he who is especially eloquent and acute in his invectives against the impotence of the human mind is regarded as divinely wise.

Time: 2021-08-04 16:56

From what has been said we understand the nature of hope [Spes], fear [Metus],confidence [Securitas], despair [Desperatio], joy [Gaudium], and remorse [Conscientiae morsus].Hope is nothing else than an intermittent pleasure arising from the image of a past or future thing, concerning the issue of which we are doubtful; fear, on the contrary, is an intermittent pain also arising from the image of a dubious event. If the doubt connected with these emotions be removed, hope becomes confidence and fear becomes despair; that is to say, joy or sadness [Laetitia vel Tristitia] arising from the image of a thing which we have feared or hoped.Joy [Gaudium] is pleasure [Laetitia] arising from the image of a past event, concerning the occurrence of which we have doubted. Lastly, remorse is the grief [Tristitia] opposed to joy [Gaudio].

Part IV: On the Servitude of Man and on the Power of the Passions

Time: 2021-08-04 22:36

Prop. XXII. No virtue can be conceived prior to this, namely, the effort to preserve oneself. Dem. The effort to preserve self* is the essence of a being (according to prop. VII, Part III). If therefore any virtue could be conceived prior to this effort, it must follow (by def. 8, Part IV)that the essence of the being could be conceived prior to itself; which (as is self-evident) is absurd. Therefore no virtue, etc.; q.e.d. Coroll. The effort to preserve self is the first and only foundation of virtue. For nothing can be conceived prior to this principle (by preceding prop.) and no virtue is conceivable without it (by prop. XXI, Part IV).

Time: 2021-08-04 22:41

Prop. XXVII. We know nothing certainly to be good or evil, except that which really conduces to understanding, or which can impede understanding. Dem. The mind so far as it reasons, desires nothing else than to understand, and judges nothing to be a good to itself, except what conduces to understanding (by preceding prop.). But the mind (according to prop. XLI and XLIII, Part II, see also schol.) has no certitude of things except in so far as it has adequate ideas, or (what by schol. 2, prop. XL, Part II is the same thing)so far as it reasons. Therefore we know nothing certainly to be good except what conduces to understanding; and on the other hand we know nothing certainly to be bad, except what impedes understanding; q.e.d.

Time: 2021-08-04 22:42

The highest object the mind can understand is God, i.e. (by def. 6, Part I) the absolutely infinite being, without whom (by prop. XV, Part I) nothing can exist or be conceived. And therefore (by prop. XXVI and XXVII, Part IV) the highest good of the mind, or (by def. 1, Part IV) that which is most useful to it, is the knowledge of God. Further, so far as the mind understands, so far only does it act (by prop. I and III, Part III), and so far only (by prop. XXIII,Part IV) can it be absolutely said to act from virtue. Hence the absolute virtue of the mind is to understand. But the highest object that the mind can understand is God (as I have already demonstrated). Therefore the highest virtue of the mind is to know God; q.e.d.

Time: 2021-08-04 23:01

These are the positions which in the scholium of prop. XVIII, Part IV I promised to demonstrate; and it is clear from them that the law of not killing brutes is founded rather on vain superstition and womanish compassion than on sound reason. Our reason indeed teaches us that the necessity of seeking what is useful to us unites us with other men; but not to brutes or to things which differ from us in nature; on the contrary, we have the same right over them as they have over us. Nay, as the right of every being is measured by his virtue or power, men have a far greater right over brutes than brutes [have] over men. Not that I deny sentiment to brutes: but I deny that therefore we are not justified in consulting our own benefit in using them according to our pleasure, and treating them as it best suits us; since they are not in accordance with our nature and their emotions differ in nature from ours.

Time: 2021-08-05 01:59

It is therefore of the first importance in life to perfect the intellect as far as possible,and in this one point consists the supreme felicity or blessedness [felicitas seu beatitudo]of man. For blessedness is nothing else than the peace of mind [animi acquiescentia]which springs from the intuitive knowledge of God; and to perfect the intellect is nothing else than to understand God and the attributes and actions of God which follow from the necessity of his nature. Hence the ultimate aim of the man who is led by reason, i.e. his highest desire, by which he endeavours to govern all other desires, is that which leads to the adequate knowledge of himself and of all objects which can be embraced by his intelligence [intelligentiam].

Part V: On the Power of the Intellect, or, On Human Liberty

Time: 2021-08-05 10:05

poor man is constantly talking of the abuse of riches and the vices of the wealthy; by which he produces no other effect than to afflict himself and manifest to others that he is unable to bear with equanimity not merely his own poverty but also the fact that other men are wealthy.

Time: 2021-08-05 10:09

He who clearly and distinctly understands his emotions loves God, and loves him in proportion as he understands [himself and] his emotions.7

Time: 2021-08-05 10:10

Prop. XVII. God is free from passions, and is affected with neither pleasure nor pain. Dem. All ideas, so far as they belong to God, are true (by prop. XXXII, Part II), i.e. (by def. 4,Part II) they are adequate; and therefore (by general def. of emotions) God is free from passions. Further, God cannot pass either to a higher or a lower degree of perfection (by coroll.2, prop. XX, Part I); and therefore (by def. 2 and 3 of emotions) he is affected with no emotions of pleasure or pain; q.e.d. Coroll. God, properly speaking, loves no one and hates no one. For God (by preceding prop.) is affected with no emotion either of pleasure or pain, and consequently (by def. 6 and 7 of emotions) he neither loves nor hates.

Time: 2021-08-05 10:11

Prop. XIX. He who loves God, cannot desire that God should love him in return. Dem. If a man desired this, he would (by coroll. prop. XVII, Part V) desire that God, whom he loves, should not be God, and consequently (by prop. XIX, Part III) he would desire to experience pain; which (by prop. XXVIII, Part III) is absurd. Therefore he who loves God, etc.;q.e.d.

Time: 2021-08-05 10:13

Hence it appears that the power of the mind over the emotions consists: I. In the knowledge of the emotions. (See schol. prop. IV, Part V.) II. In the separation of the emotions from the idea of external causes which we imagine confusedly. (See prop. II with schol. and prop. IV, Part V.) III. In time, by means of which emotions relating to things that we understand,triumph over those relating to things that we conceive in a confused and mutilated manner. (See prop. VII, Part V.) IV. In the multitude of causes by which the emotions relating to the common properties of things, or to God, are encouraged. (See prop. IX and XI, Part V.) V. In the order in which the mind can arrange its emotions and link them together.(See schol. prop. X, Part V and prop. XII, XIII, and XIV, Part V.)

Silence by Shūsaku Endō

2024-08-26T13:06:12.000Z

Silence

Shūsaku Endō

I

30 Mar 2022 11:56 PM

From the beginning of the mission until the year 1632, in spite of crucifixions, burnings, water-torture and the rest, no missionary had apostatized. But such a record could not last; and finally the blow fell. Christovao Ferreira, the Portuguese Provincial, after six hours of agony in the pit gave the signal of apostasy. His defection being so exceptional might seem of little significance; but the fact that he was the acknowledged leader of the mission made the shock a cruel one— all the more so when it became known that he was collaborating with his former persecutors.

[!quote] Quotable/Concept/General Idea

Chapter 3

03 Apr 2022 12:50 PM

My hunch from some time back was not wrong. What are the Japanese peasants looking for in me? These people who work and live and die like beasts find for the first time in our teaching a path in which they can cast away the fetters that bind them. The Buddhist bonzes simply treat them like cattle. For a long time they have just lived in resignation to such a fate.

[!question] Thought Provoking

Chapter 4

04 Apr 2022 03:28 PM

What do I want to say? I myself do not quite understand. Only that today, when for the glory of God Mokichi and Ichizo moaned, suffered and died, I cannot bear the monotonous sound of the dark sea gnawing at the shore. Behind the depressing silence of this sea, the silence of God. … the feeling that while men raise their voices in anguish God remains with folded arms, silent.

[!question] Thought Provoking

Chapter 5

05 Apr 2022 01:50 AM

Sin, he reflected, is not what it is usually thought to be; it is not to steal and tell lies. Sin is for one man to walk brutally over the life of another and to be quite oblivious of the wounds he has left behind.

[!question] Thought Provoking

Chapter 6

05 Apr 2022 11:02 PM

In the mist of the evening their voices rose up like a fountain and then died away. ‘Lead us not into temptation. ’ In those praying voices was there not a note of pathos? a plaintive tone? Blinking his sunken eyes the priest moved his lips in unison with that prayer. ‘Yet you never break the silence, ’ he said. ‘You should not be silent for ever. ’

[!question] Thought Provoking

05 Apr 2022 11:32 PM

Heaving a deep sigh and searching for words of explanation, Kichijirō shifted and shuffled. The stench of his filth and sweat was wafted toward the priest. Could it be possible that Christ loved and searched after this dirtiest of men? In evil there remained that strength and beauty of evil; but this Kichijirō was not even worthy to be called evil. He was thin and dirty like the tattered rags he wore. Suppressing his disgust, the priest recited the final words of absolution, and then, following the established custom, he whispered, ‘Go in peace. ’ With all possible speed getting away from the stench of that mouth and that body, he returned to where the Christians were. No, no. Our Lord had searched out the ragged and the dirty. Thus he reflected as he lay in bed. Among the people who appeared in the pages of the Scripture, those whom Christ had searched after in love were the woman of Capharnaum with the issue of blood, the woman taken in adultery whom men had wanted to stone— people with no attraction, no beauty. Anyone could be attracted by the beautiful and the charming. But could such attraction be called love? True love was to accept humanity when wasted like rags and tatters. Theoretically the priest knew all this; but still he could not forgive Kichijirō. Once again near his face came the face of Christ, wet with tears. When the gentle eyes looked straight into his, the priest was filled with shame.

[!question] Thought Provoking

Chapter 7

06 Apr 2022 11:00 AM

Did God really exist? If not, how ludicrous was half of his life spent traversing the limitless seas to come and plant the tiny seed in this barren island! How ludicrous the life of the one-eyed man executed while the cicada sang in the full light of day! How ludicrous was the life of Garrpe, swimming in pursuit of the Christians in that little boat! Facing the wall, the priest laughed aloud

[!question] Thought Provoking

Chapter 8

06 Apr 2022 08:47 PM

Moreover this guard did not possess any aristocratic cruelty; rather was it the cruelty of a low-class fellow toward beasts and animals weaker than himself. He had seen such fellows in the countryside in Portugal, and he knew them well. This fellow had not the slightest idea of the suffering that would be inflicted on others because of his conduct. It was this kind of fellow who had killed that man whose face was the best and the most beautiful that ever one could dream of.

[!question] Thought Provoking

06 Apr 2022 08:52 PM

‘I have no right? That is certain. I have no right. Listening to those groans all night I was no longer able to give praise to the Lord. I did not apostatize because I was suspended in the pit. For three days, I who stand before you was hung in a pit of foul excrement, but I did not say a single word that might betray my God. ’ Ferreira raised a voice that was like a growl as he shouted: ‘The reason I apostatized … are you ready? Listen! I was put in here and heard the voices of those people for whom God did nothing. God did not do a single thing. I prayed with all my strength; but God did nothing. ’

[!question] Thought Provoking

06 Apr 2022 08:56 PM

‘Don’t deceive yourself! ’ said Ferreira. ‘Don’t disguise your own weakness with those beautiful words. ’
‘My weakness? ’ The priest shook his head; yet he had no self-confidence. ‘What do you mean? It’s because I believe in the salvation of these people … ’
‘You make yourself more important than them. You are preoccupied with your own salvation. If you say that you will apostatize, those people will be taken out of the pit. They will be saved from suffering. And you refuse to do so. It’s because you dread to betray the Church. You dread to be the dregs of the Church, like me.’ Until now Ferreira’s words had burst out as a single breath of anger, but now his voice gradually weakened as he said: ‘Yet I was the same as you. On that cold, black night I, too, was as you are now. And yet is your way of acting love? A priest ought to live in imitation of Christ. If Christ were here … ’ For a moment Ferreira remained silent; then he suddenly broke out in a strong voice: ‘Certainly Christ would have apostatized for them. ’

[!question] Thought Provoking

EXTRACTS FROM THE DIARY OF JONASSEN, A CLERK AT THE DUTCH FIRM, DEJIMA, NAGASAKI

06 Apr 2022 09:28 PM

‘There are neither the strong nor the weak. Can anyone say that the weak do not suffer more than the strong? ’ The priest spoke rapidly, facing the entrance. ‘Since in this country there is now no one else to hear your confession, I will do it … Say the prayers after confession … Go in peace! ’ Kichijirō wept softly; then he left the house. The priest had administered that sacrament that only the priest can administer. No doubt his fellow priests would condemn his act as sacrilege; but even if he was betraying them, he was not betraying his Lord. He loved him now in a different way from before. Everything that had taken place until now had been necessary to bring him to this love. ‘Even now I am the last priest in this land. But Our Lord was not silent. Even if he had been silent, my life until this day would have spoken of him. ’

[!question] Thought Provoking

Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors

2026-03-05T12:08:59.000Z

Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors

Carl Sagan, Ann Druyan

Prologue: The Orphan’s File

Page: 20 (4.45%) @ 12 Jul 2025 03:58:06 AM

Who are we? The answer to this question is not only one of the tasks, but the task of science.

[!stylish] Stylish: by Erwin Schrödinger (Science and Humanism)

6 Us and Them

Page: 116 (27.36%) @ 29 Nov 2025 02:12:06 AM

In the annals of primate ethics, there are some accounts that have the ring of parable. Consider, for example, the macaques. Also known as rhesus monkeys, they live in tightly knit cousins’ clubs. Since the macaque you save is statistically likely to share many of your genes (assuming you’re another macaque), you’re justified in taking risks to save it, and a fine discrimination of shades of consanguinity is unnecessary. In a laboratory setting, macaques were fed if they were willing to pull a chain and electrically shock an unrelated macaque whose agony was in plain view through a one-way mirror. Otherwise, they starved. After learning the ropes, the monkeys frequently refused to pull the chain; in one experiment only 13% would do so—87% preferred to go hungry. One macaque went without food for nearly two weeks rather than hurt its fellow. Macaques who had themselves been shocked in previous experiments were even less willing to pull the chain. The relative social status or gender of the macaques had little bearing on their reluctance to hurt others.
If asked to choose between the human experimenters offering the macaques this Faustian bargain and the macaques themselves—suffering from real hunger rather than causing pain to others—our own moral sympathies do not lie with the scientists. But their experiments permit us to glimpse in non-humans a saintly willingness to make sacrifices in order to save others—even those who are not close kin. By conventional human standards, these macaques—who have never gone to Sunday school, never heard of the Ten Commandments, never squirmed through a single junior high school civics lesson—seem exemplary in their moral grounding and their courageous resistance to evil.

[!important] Striking/Intense

10 The Next-to-Last Remedy

Page: 178 (41.98%) @ 18 Jan 2026 03:03:58 AM

If ever there was an avian candidate for psychotherapy, the male blue heron is our nominee.

[!quote] Quotable/Concept/General Idea: LOL!

Page: 183 (43.16%) @ 18 Jan 2026 03:25:12 AM

Those groups that incline to xenophobic paranoia might gain a cohesive advantage over groups that are initially more realistic and carefree. If you’ve exaggerated the threat, at least you’ve reduced internal tensions in your group; and if the external threat is more serious than you’ve privately estimated, your preparedness is higher. As long as the social costs stay within reasonable bounds, it may become a successful survival strategy. So there’s a kind of contagion about xenophobia.

[!question] Thought Provoking: Dark forest…

11 Dominance and Submission

Page: 201 (47.41%) @ 22 Jan 2026 02:37:31 AM

Racism, sexism, and a toxic mix of xenophobias still powerfully influence action and inaction. But one of the proudest achievements of our own age is the developing global consensus—despite many false starts—that we’re at last ready to leave behind this vestige of long ago. Many ancient voices speak within us. We are capable of muting some, once they no longer serve our best interests, and amplifying others as our need for them increases. This is cause for hope.

[!question] Thought Provoking

15 Mortifying Reflections

Page: 249 (58.73%) @ 08 Feb 2026 01:36:05 PM

Darwin wrote telegraphically in his 1838 “M” notebook: “Origin of man now proved … He who understands baboon would do more towards metaphysics than [the philosopher John] Locke.” But what does it mean to understand a baboon?

[!question] Thought Provoking

Page: 250 (58.96%) @ 08 Feb 2026 01:38:46 PM

One of the earliest scientific studies of the chimpanzee in its natural African habitat was made by Thomas N. Savage, a Boston physician. Writing in early Victorian times, he concluded:

They exhibit a remarkable degree of intelligence in their habits, and, on the part of the mother, much affection for their young … [But] they are very filthy in their habits … It is a tradition with the natives generally here, that they were once members of their own tribe: that for their depraved habits they were expelled from all human society, and, that through an obstinate indulgence of their vile propensities, they have degenerated into their present state and organisation.

[!quote] Quotable/Concept/General Idea
The idea that Africans are very close to apes was pretty prevalent. Even, relatively recently, we can see in Tintin comics Africans are drawn as monkeys, less intelligent, etc. This bias was only against Africans. The author has drawn the Red Indians perfectly.

Page: 259 (61.08%) @ 08 Feb 2026 09:44:17 PM

Beneath a thin varnish of civilization, it sometimes seems, there’s a chimp struggling to bust out—to take off the absurd clothes and the restraining social conventions and let loose.

[!quote] Quotable/Concept/General Idea: The chimp busted out at last and became the POTUS.

16 Lives of the Apes

Page: 280 (66.04%) @ 15 Feb 2026 07:17:00 PM

It is astonishing that so striking a characteristic of chimpanzee life in the wild as male sexual oppression of females can to such an extent be reversed merely because they’re all crowded together in a minimum security prison. We’ve already seen how, under these conditions, restraint, coalition building, and peacemaking by females come to the fore. Societies in which females have something approaching equality are also societies that benefit from their political skills.

[!question] Thought Provoking

17 Admonishing the Conqueror

Page: 296 (69.81%) @ 26 Feb 2026 12:12:55 AM

For a society to be successful, it must be consonant with the nature and character of the individuals who must live in it. If those contriving social structures overlook who these individuals are, or sentimentalize their nature, or are incompetent social engineers, disaster can result.

[!question] Thought Provoking

18 The Archimedes of the Macaques

Page: 312 (73.58%) @ 28 Feb 2026 01:35:46 PM

Among the many new social forms invented by the primates are feuds and vendettas, sometimes extending over many generations—intimations of the beginnings of history.

[!question] Thought Provoking
Is it really, though? Can feuds be the primary reason for recording history?

19 What Is Human?

Page: 332 (78.30%) @ 01 Mar 2026 04:02:30 PM

It is unseemly of us, who often behave so unfeelingly toward other animals, to contend that only humans can suffer.

[!important] Striking/Intense

Page: 334 (78.77%) @ 01 Mar 2026 10:06:56 PM

“remembering the sabbath to keep it holy,” which is an institution unknown in many human cultures.

[!quote] Quotable/Concept/General Idea

20 The Animal Within

Page: 358 (84.43%) @ 05 Mar 2026 04:52:47 AM

The common primate practice of pseudosexual mounting of males by males to express dominance is not widespread in humans, and some have taken comfort from this fact. But the most potent form of verbal abuse in English and many other languages is “Fuck you,” with the pronoun “I” implicit at the beginning. The speaker is vividly asserting his claim to higher status, and his contempt for those he considers subordinate. Characteristically, humans have converted a postural image into a linguistic one with barely a change in nuance. The phrase is uttered millions of times each day, all over the planet, with hardly anyone stopping to think what it means. Often, it escapes our lips unbidden. It is satisfying to say. It serves its purpose. It is a badge of the primate order, revealing something of our nature despite all our denials and pretensions.

[!question] Thought Provoking

SPQR_ A History of Ancient Rome

2023-02-09T09:40:03.000Z

9

SPQR takes its title from another famous Roman catchphrase, Senatus PopulusQue Romanus, ‘The Senate and People of Rome’.

141

There are also all kinds of anecdotes about the importance and intensity of canvassing, and how the vote of the people could be won or lost. Polybius tells a curious story about the Syrian king Antiochus IV (Epiphanes, ‘famous’ or even ‘manifest god’), the son of Antiochus the Great, who had been ‘crushed’ by Scipio Asiaticus. As a young man he had lived more than a decade as a hostage in Rome before being swapped for a younger relative, the one whom Polybius later advised on his escape plans. On his return to the East, he took with him a variety of Roman habits that he had picked up during his stay. These mostly came down to displaying a popular touch: talking with anyone he met, giving presents to ordinary people and making the rounds of craftsmen’s shops. But most striking of all, he would dress up in a toga and go around the marketplace as if he were a candidate for election, shaking people by the hand and asking for their vote. This baffled the people in his showy capital city of Antioch, who were not used to this kind of thing from a monarch and nicknamed him Epimanes (‘bonkers’ or, to preserve the pun, ‘fatuous’). But it is clear that one lesson that Antiochus had drawn from Rome was that the common people and their votes were important.

রোমান ডেমোক্রেসি যারে খায়, প্লেটসুদ্ধা খায়।

142

Equally revealing is an anecdote about another member of the Scipio family in the second century BCE, Publius Cornelius Scipio Nasica. He was out canvassing one day in a bid to be elected to the office of aedile and was busy shaking the hands of voters (standard procedure, then as now) when he came across one whose hands were hardened by work in the fields. ‘My goodness,’ the young aristocrat joked, ‘do you walk on them?’ He was overheard, and the common people concluded that he had been taunting their poverty and their labour. The upshot, needless to say, was that he lost the election.

160

The first was in 133 BCE, when Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus, a tribune of the people with radical plans to distribute land to the Roman poor, decided to seek a second year in office. To put a stop to this, an unofficial posse of senators and their hangers-on interrupted the elections, bludgeoned Gracchus and hundreds of his supporters to death and threw their bodies into the Tiber. Conveniently forgetting the violence that had accompanied the Conflict of the Orders, many Romans held this to be ‘the first political dispute since the fall of the monarchy to be settled by bloodshed and the death of citizens’. There was soon another. Just over a decade later, Tiberius Gracchus’ brother Gaius met the same fate. He had introduced an even more radical programme of reform, including a subsidised grain allowance for Roman citizens, and was successfully elected tribune for a second time. But in 121 BCE, when he was trying to prevent his legislation from being dismantled, he became the victim of another, more official, posse of senators. On this occasion the bodies of thousands of his supporters clogged the river. And it happened again in 100 BCE, when other reformers were battered to death in the senate house itself, the assailants using tiles from the building’s roof as their weapons.

194

Corruption, money grabbing and sex tourism were matters of public criticism, accusations regularly levelled at political rivals and convenient weapons in character assassination. They were not, so far as we know, matters for public celebration or even smug boasting.

317

As a senator under Commodus, he was an eyewitness to some of the emperor’s extravagant gladiatorial spectacles, but he also tells of one of the strangest exercises in imperial menace, dreamt up by Domitian in 89 CE. The story was that the emperor invited a group of senators and knights to a dinner party, where to their horror they found on arrival that the whole decor was black, from the couches to the crockery and the serving boys. Each guest’s name was inscribed on a slab like a tombstone, and all evening the emperor’s conversation never strayed from the topic of death. They were all convinced that they would not live to see the next day. But they were wrong. When they had returned home and the expected knock on the door came, instead of a killer they found one of the emperor’s staff laden with gifts from the party, including their own name slab and their own personal serving boy.

383

Julius Civilis in Germany rouses his followers by comparing Roman rule to slavery rather than alliance and lists the unfair exactions imposed by the imperial power. Most memorably of all, in Tacitus’ biography of his father-in-law, one of Rome’s enemies, as part of a set-piece speech delivered before he enters battle with Agricola, challenges Roman rule and what it adds up to. The Romans, he insists, are the robbers of the world, insatiable for domination and profit. And in a much-quoted phrase that still hits home, he sums up the Roman imperial project: ‘they create desolation and call it peace’, ‘solitudinem faciunt, pacem appellant

Permanent Record

2023-01-30T17:45:06.000Z

Permanent Record

by Edward Snowden

Preface

Page 9 @ November 15, 2019

The reason you’re reading this book is that I did a dangerous thing for a man in my position: I decided to tell the truth. I collected internal IC documents that gave evidence of the US government’s lawbreaking and turned them over to journalists, who vetted and published them to a scandalized world. This book is about what led up to that decision, the moral and ethical principles that informed it, and how they came to be—which means that it’s also about my life.

Part One

Page 57 @ November 15, 2019

What convinced me that school, at least, was an illegitimate system was that it wouldn’t recognize any legitimate dissent. I could plead my case until I lost my voice, or I could just accept the fact that I’d never had a voice to begin with.

Page 72 @ November 15, 2019

This kind of change is constant, common, and human. But an autobiographical statement is static, the fixed document of a person in flux. This is why the best account that someone can ever give of themselves is not a statement but a pledge—a pledge to the principles they value, and to the vision of the person they hope to become.

Part Two

Page 125 @ November 16, 2019

You don’t need to tell a bunch of computer whizzes that they possess superior knowledge and skills that uniquely qualify them to act independently and make decisions on behalf of their fellow citizens without any oversight or review. Nothing inspires arrogance like a lifetime spent controlling machines that are incapable of criticism.

Page 125 @ November 16, 2019

This, to my thinking, actually represented the great nexus of the Intelligence Community and the tech industry: both are entrenched and unelected powers that pride themselves on maintaining absolute secrecy about their developments. Both believe that they have the solutions for everything, which they never hesitate to unilaterally impose. Above all, they both believe that these solutions are inherently apolitical, because they’re based on data, whose prerogatives are regarded as preferable to the chaotic whims of the common citizen.

Page 183 @ November 16, 2019

I felt far from home, but monitored. I felt more adult than ever, but also cursed with the knowledge that all of us had been reduced to something like children, who’d be forced to live the rest of our lives under omniscient parental supervision. I felt like a fraud, making excuses to Lindsay to explain my sullenness. I felt like a fool, as someone of supposedly serious technical skills who’d somehow helped to build an essential component of this system without realizing its purpose.

Page 199 @ November 17, 2019

Put simply, a world in which every law is always enforced would be a world in which everyone was a criminal.

Part Three

Page 227 @ November 17, 2019

I liked reading the Constitution partially because its ideas are great, partially because its prose is good, but really because it freaked out my coworkers. In an office where everything you printed had to be thrown into a shredder after you were done with it, someone would always be intrigued by the presence of hard-copy pages lying on a desk.

Page 317 @ November 17, 2019

Watching as my photos flicked by. I whipped out my phone and made the mistake of Googling myself. So many comments labeling me a stripper or whore. None of this is me. Just like the feds, they had already decided who I was.

Page 327 @ November 17, 2019

Who among us can predict the future? Who would dare to? The answer to the first question is no one, really, and the answer to the second is everyone, especially every government and business on the planet. This is what that data of ours is used for. Algorithms analyze it for patterns of established behavior in order to extrapolate behaviors to come, a type of digital prophecy that’s only slightly more accurate than analog methods like palm reading.

Pale Blue Dot

2023-01-27T17:55:11.000Z

Pale Blue Dot

by Carl Sagan

Wanderers: An Introduction

Page 13 @ February 13, 2017

There’s something heartbreakingly terse about the document: Can she read or write? No. Can she speak English? No. How much money does she have? I can imagine her vulnerability and her shame as she replies, “One dollar.” She disembarked in New York, was reunited with Leib, lived just long enough to give birth to my mother and her sister, and then died from “complications” of childbirth.

Wow!

1. You Are Here

Page 20 @ February 16, 2017

From this vantage point, our obsession with nationalism is nowhere in evidence.

Mighty blow.

Page 23 @ February 16, 2017

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position

The human evil

4. A Universe Not Made for Us

Page 57 @ February 18, 2017

He longs for “the universe of Catholic orthodoxy”

Hillerious.

Page 60 @ April 4, 2017

In some respects, science has far surpassed religion in delivering awe. How is it that hardly any major religion has looked at science and concluded, “This is better than we thought! The Universe is much bigger than our prophets said, grander, more subtle, more elegant. God must be even greater than we dreamed”? Instead they say, “No, no, no! My god is a little god, and I want him to stay that way.”

To be quoted in the review. :D

8. The First New Planet

Page 102 @ March 2, 2017

In every culture, the sky and the religious impulse are intertwined. I lie back in an open field and the sky surrounds me. I’m overpowered by its scale. It’s so vast and so far away that my own insignificance becomes palpable. But I don’t feel rejected by the sky. I’m a part of it—tiny, to be sure, but everything is tiny compared to that overwhelming immensity. And when I concentrate on the stars, the planets, and their motions, I have an irresistible sense of machinery, clockwork, elegant precision working on a scale that, however lofty our aspirations, dwarfs and humbles us.

On scientific romanticism.

15. The Gates of the Wonder World Open

Page 201 @ Aprli 3, 2017

But whether or not we have compelling, coherent reasons, I am sure—unless we destroy ourselves first—that the day will come when we humans set foot on Mars. It is only a matter of when.

A prophecy.

17. Routine Interplanetary Violence

Page 223 @ Aprli 3, 2017

There was something funny about Saturn. When, in 1610, Galileo used the world’s first astronomical telescope to view the planet—then the most distant world known—he found two appendages, one on either side. He likened them to “handles.” Other astronomers called them “ears.” The Cosmos holds many wonders, but a planet with jug ears is dismaying. Galileo went to his grave with this bizarre matter unresolved.

বেচারা গ্যালিলিও! :p

20. Darkness

Page 285 @ Aprli 4, 2017

but this would be self-indulgent and foolish. We must surrender our skepticism only in the face of rock-solid evidence. Science demands a tolerance for ambiguity. Where we are ignorant, we withhold belief. Whatever annoyance the uncertainty engenders serves a higher purpose: It drives us to accumulate better data. This attitude is the difference between science and so much else. Science offers little in the way of cheap thrills. The standards of evidence are strict. But when followed they allow us to see far, illuminating even a great darkness.

On Science…

On the origin of species_ by means of natural selection

2025-03-04T11:02:04.000Z

On the Origin of Species

Charles Darwin

Introduction

Page: 18 (3.31%) @ 01 Mar 2025 08:13:00 PM

He also began to think about breeding in another sense: marriage. Darwin’s bachelor years in London were productive but lonely and, in characteristic fashion, he debated with himself the pros and cons of marriage. It was a male, egocentric view, although he became a loving and caring husband and father. Against the demands that a wife and children would make on his work, he concluded that the companionship and stability were worth the effort: ‘Marry, marry, marry,’ he decided, after totting up the pluses and minuses. And the choice was not far to seek: his cousin and childhood friend, Emma Wedgwood. They married on 29 January 1839: bride and bridegroom were both past the first flush of youth. Darwin was just short of his thirty-first birthday, and his bride was nine months older than him.

[!quote] Quotable/Concept/General Idea: Hehe!

Page: 25 (4.60%) @ 19 Feb 2025 08:14:00 AM

Darwin did not use the philosopher Herbert Spencer’s (1820–1903) phrase ‘survival of the fittest’13 in the first edition of Origin, although he later rather reluctantly adopted it. However, it does sum up succinctly the message of those two powerful chapters in his book. Hereditary variation produces change throughout nature and, in both domesticated organisms and nature at large, ‘a well-marked variety may be justly called an incipient species’ (p. 56).

[!quote] Quotable/Concept/General Idea

Page: 27 (4.97%) @ 19 Feb 2025 08:22:00 AM

He returned on more than one occasion to the old biological adage ‘Natura non facit saltum’ – ‘Nature makes no leaps’. Its traditional use was within the context of the notion of the chain of being, the doctrine that Creation is so full that everything that can exist does exist.

[!important] Striking/Intense: Spinoza's God.

CHAPTER IV: Natural Selection

Page: 110 (20.26%) @ 19 Feb 2025 08:26:00 AM

Man selects only for his own good; Nature only for that of the being which she tends.

[!warning] Unsound
Times and again, Darwin attributed nature with 'intention'. However, it is commonly claimed that Natural selection is blind.

CHAPTER VI: Difficulties on Theory

Page: 175 (32.23%) @ 24 Feb 2025 09:45:00 PM

firstly, because new varieties are very slowly formed, for variation is a very slow process, and natural selection can do nothing until favourable variations chance to occur,

[!question] Thought Provoking
So, the previous highlight, where I have raised my concern regarding wheather Darwin invoked some sort of teleology seems to be just figure of speech.

CHAPTER IX: On the Imperfection of the Geological Record

Page: 246 (45.30%) @ 26 Feb 2025 11:27:00 PM

On the lapse of Time – Independently of our not finding fossil remains of such infinitely numerous connecting links, it may be objected, that time will not have sufficed for so great an amount of organic change, all changes having been effected very slowly through natural selection. It is hardly possible for me even to recall to the reader, who may not be a practical geologist, the facts leading the mind feebly to comprehend the lapse of time. He who can read Sir Charles Lyell’s grand work on the Principles of Geology, which the future historian will recognise as having produced a revolution in natural science, yet does not admit how incomprehensibly vast have been the past periods of time, may at once close this volume. Not that it suffices to study the Principles of Geology, or to read special treatises by different observers on separate formations, and to mark how each author attempts to give an inadequate idea of the duration of each formation or even each stratum. A man must for years examine for himself great piles of superimposed strata, and watch the sea at work grinding down old rocks and making fresh sediment, before he can hope to comprehend anything of the lapse of time, the monuments of which we see around us.

[!stylish] Stylish
A rather unexpectedly stylish paragraph on the lapse of time.

CHAPTER X: On the Geological Succession of Organic Beings

Page: 282 (51.93%) @ 28 Feb 2025 01:14:00 PM

On the theory of descent, the full meaning of the fact of fossil remains from closely consecutive formations, though ranked as distinct species, being closely related, is obvious. As the accumulation of each formation has often been interrupted, and as long blank intervals have intervened between successive formations, we ought not to expect to find, as I attempted to show in the last chapter, in any one or two formations all the intermediate varieties between the species which appeared at the commencement and close of these periods; but we ought to find after intervals, very long as measured by years, but only moderately long as measured geologically, closely allied forms, or, as they have been called by some authors, representative species; and these we assuredly do find. We find, in short, such evidence of the slow and scarcely sensible mutation of specific forms, as we have a just right to expect to find.

[!question] Thought Provoking

Page: 282 (51.93%) @ 28 Feb 2025 01:16:00 PM

On the state of Development of Ancient Forms – There has been much discussion whether recent forms are more highly developed than ancient. I will not here enter on this subject, for naturalists have not as yet defined to each other’s satisfaction what is meant by high and low forms. But in one particular sense the more recent forms must, on my theory, be higher than the more ancient; for each new species is formed by having had some advantage in the struggle for life over other and preceding forms.

[!warning] Unsound
Given a long period of time, even this definition of 'higher' doesn't hold. 'Complex', or 'better adopted' may will be more appropriate.

CHAPTER XIII: Mutual Affinities of Organic Beings: Morphology: Embryology: Rudimentary Organs

Page: 349 (64.27%) @ 01 Mar 2025 06:14:00 PM

Nothing can be more hopeless than to attempt to explain this similarity of pattern in members of the same class, by utility or by the doctrine of final causes.

[!question] Thought Provoking
Here, not only Darwin denies religious creation theories, he also denies teleology.

Page: 358 (65.93%) @ 01 Mar 2025 07:01:00 PM

Descent being on my view the hidden bond of connexion which naturalists have been seeking under the term of the natural system.

[!stylish] Stylish

CHAPTER XIV: Recapitulation and Conclusion

Page: 365 (67.22%) @ 01 Mar 2025 08:11:00 PM

Nothing at first can appear more difficult to believe than that the more complex organs and instincts should have been perfected, not by means superior to, though analogous with, human reason, but by the accumulation of innumerable slight variations, each good for the individual possessor. Nevertheless, this difficulty, though appearing to our imagination insuperably great, cannot be considered real if we admit the following propositions, namely – that gradations in the perfection of any organ or instinct, which we may consider, either do now exist or could have existed, each good of its kind – that all organs and instincts are, in ever so slight a degree, variable – and, lastly, that there is a struggle for existence leading to the preservation of each profitable deviation of structure or instinct. The truth of these propositions cannot, I think, be disputed.

[!important] Striking/Intense

Page: 380 (69.98%) @ 01 Mar 2025 08:38:00 PM

But the chief cause of our natural unwillingness to admit that one species has given birth to other and distinct species, is that we are always slow in admitting any great change of which we do not see the intermediate steps. The difficulty is the same as that felt by so many geologists, when Lyell first insisted that long lines of inland cliffs had been formed, and great valleys excavated, by the slow action of the coast-waves. The mind cannot possibly grasp the full meaning of the term of a hundred million years; it cannot add up and perceive the full effects of many slight variations, accumulated during an almost infinite number of generations.

[!quote] Quotable/Concept/General Idea

Page: 380 (69.98%) @ 01 Mar 2025 08:39:00 PM

Although I am fully convinced of the truth of the views given in this volume under the form of an abstract, I by no means expect to convince experienced naturalists whose minds are stocked with a multitude of facts all viewed, during a long course of years, from a point of view directly opposite to mine. It is so easy to hide our ignorance under such expressions as the ‘plan of creation’, ‘unity of design,’ &c., and to think that we give an explanation when we only restate a fact. Any one whose disposition leads him to attach more weight to unexplained difficulties than to the explanation of a certain number of facts will certainly reject my theory. A few naturalists, endowed with much flexibility of mind, and who have already begun to doubt on the immutability of species, may be influenced by this volume; but I look with confidence to the future, to young and rising naturalists, who will be able to view both sides of the question with impartiality. Whoever is led to believe that species are mutable will do good service by conscientiously expressing his conviction; for only thus can the load of prejudice by which this subject is overwhelmed be removed.

[!important] Striking/Intense

APPENDIX I: An Historical Sketch

Page: 385 (70.90%) @ 01 Mar 2025 08:54:00 PM

It is interesting to contemplate an entangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, and dependent on each other in so complex a manner, have all been produced by laws acting around us. These laws, taken in the largest sense, being Growth with Reproduction; Inheritance which is almost implied by reproduction; Variability from the indirect and direct action of the external conditions of life, and from use and disuse; a Ratio of Increase so high as to lead to a Struggle for Life, and as a consequence to Natural Selection, entailing Divergence of Character and the Extinction of less-improved forms. Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.

[!stylish] Stylish

On Photography by Susan Sontag

2024-06-24T11:04:35.000Z

On Photography

Susan Sontag

In Plato’s Cave

Page: 7 (5.15%) @ 30 Dec 2023 01:49:37 AM

While a painting or a prose description can never be other than a narrowly selective interpretation, a photograph can be treated as a narrowly selective transparency. But despite the presumption of veracity that gives all photographs authority, interest, seductiveness, the work that photographers do is no generic exception to the usually shady commerce between art and truth.

[!question] Thought Provoking

Page: 9 (6.62%) @ 30 Dec 2023 10:25:46 PM

Most tourists feel compelled to put the camera between themselves and whatever is remarkable that they encounter. Unsure of other responses, they take a picture. This gives shape to experience: stop, take a photograph, and move on. The method especially appeals to people handicapped by a ruthless work ethic—Germans, Japanese, and Americans. Using a camera appeases the anxiety which the work-driven feel about not working when they are on vacation and supposed to be having fun. They have something to do that is like a friendly imitation of work: they can take pictures.

[!question] Thought Provoking

Page: 10 (7.35%) @ 31 Dec 2023 01:27:39 PM

A photograph is not just the result of an encounter between an event and a photographer; picture-taking is an event in itself, and one with ever more peremptory rights—to interfere with, to invade, or to ignore whatever is going on. Our very sense of situation is now articulated by the camera’s interventions. The omnipresence of cameras persuasively suggests that time consists of interesting events, events worth photographing. This, in turn, makes it easy to feel that any event, once underway, and whatever its moral character, should be allowed to complete itself—so that something else can be brought into the world, the photograph. After the event has ended, the picture will still exist, conferring on the event a kind of immortality (and importance) it would never otherwise have enjoyed. While real people are out there killing themselves or other real people, the photographer stays behind his or her camera, creating a tiny element of another world: the image-world that bids to outlast us all.

[!question] Thought Provoking

Page: 11 (8.09%) @ 31 Dec 2023 05:39:25 PM

In fact, using a camera is not a very good way of getting at someone sexually. Between photographer and subject, there has to be distance. The camera doesn’t rape, or even possess, though it may presume, intrude, trespass, distort, exploit, and, at the farthest reach of metaphor, assassinate—all activities that, unlike the sexual push and shove, can be conducted from a distance, and with some detachment.

[!question] Thought Provoking

Page: 13 (9.56%) @ 31 Dec 2023 05:43:43 PM

Guns have metamorphosed into cameras in this earnest comedy, the ecology safari, because nature has ceased to be what it always had been—what people needed protection from. Now nature—tamed, endangered, mortal—needs to be protected from people. When we are afraid, we shoot. But when we are nostalgic, we take pictures.

[!important] Striking/Intense

Page: 13 (9.56%) @ 31 Dec 2023 05:45:01 PM

Photography is an elegiac art, a twilight art. Most subjects photographed are, just by virtue of being photographed, touched with pathos. An ugly or grotesque subject may be moving because it has been dignified by the attention of the photographer. A beautiful subject can be the object of rueful feelings, because it has aged or decayed or no longer exists. All photographs are memento mori. To take a photograph is to participate in another person’s (or thing’s) mortality, vulnerability, mutability. Precisely by slicing out this moment and freezing it, all photographs testify to time’s relentless melt.

[!important] Striking/Intense

Page: 15 (11.03%) @ 01 Jan 2024 01:29:08 PM

One’s first encounter with the photographic inventory of ultimate horror is a kind of revelation, the prototypically modern revelation: a negative epiphany. For me, it was photographs of Bergen-Belsen and Dachau which I came across by chance in a bookstore in Santa Monica in July 1945. Nothing I have seen—in photographs or in real life —ever cut me as sharply, deeply, instantaneously. Indeed, it seems plausible to me to divide my life into two parts, before I saw those photographs (I was twelve) and after, though it was several years before I understood fully what they were about. What good was served by seeing them? They were only photographs—of an event I had scarcely heard of and could do nothing to affect, of suffering I could hardly imagine and could do nothing to relieve. When I looked at those photographs, something broke. Some limit had been reached, and not only that of horror; I felt irrevocably grieved, wounded, but a part of my feelings started to tighten; something went dead; something is still crying.

[!important] Striking/Intense

Page: 16 (11.76%) @ 01 Jan 2024 01:31:37 PM

The vast photographic catalogue of misery and injustice throughout the world has given everyone a certain familiarity with atrocity, making the horrible seem more ordinary—making it appear familiar, remote (“it’s only a photograph”), inevitable.

[!question] Thought Provoking

Page: 16 (11.76%) @ 01 Jan 2024 01:32:59 PM

A photograph of 1900 that was affecting then because of its subject would, today, be more likely to move us because it is a photograph taken in 1900. The particular qualities and intentions of photographs tend to be swallowed up in the generalized pathos of time past. Aesthetic distance seems built into the very experience of looking at photographs, if not right away, then certainly with the passage of time. Time eventually positions most photographs, even the most amateurish, at the level of art.

[!question] Thought Provoking

Page: 18 (13.24%) @ 01 Jan 2024 01:41:56 PM

Photography implies that we know about the world if we accept it as the camera records it. But this is the opposite of understanding, which starts from not accepting the world as it looks. All possibility of understanding is rooted in the ability to say no.

[!important] Striking/Intense

Page: 18 (13.24%) @ 01 Jan 2024 04:20:30 PM

Nevertheless, the camera’s rendering of reality must always hide more than it discloses. As Brecht points out, a photograph of the Krupp works reveals virtually nothing about that organization. In contrast to the amorous relation, which is based on how something looks, understanding is based on how it functions. And functioning takes place in time, and must be explained in time. Only that which narrates can make us understand.

[!question] Thought Provoking

America, Seen Through Photographs, Darkly

Page: 25 (18.38%) @ 02 Jan 2024 04:21:16 PM

The authority of Arbus’s photographs derives from the contrast between their lacerating subject matter and their calm, matter-of-fact attentiveness. This quality of attention—the attention paid by the photographer, the attention paid by the subject to the act of being photographed —creates the moral theater of Arbus’s straight-on, contemplative portraits. Far from spying on freaks and pariahs, catching them unawares, the photographer has gotten to know them, reassured them—so that they posed for her as calmly and stiffly as any Victorian notable sat for a studio portrait by Julia Margaret Cameron. A large part of the mystery of Arbus’s photographs lies in what they suggest about how her subjects felt after consenting to be photographed. Do they see themselves, the viewer wonders, like that? Do they know how grotesque they are? It seems as if they don’t.

[!question] Thought Provoking

Page: 30 (22.06%) @ 02 Jan 2024 08:31:32 PM

Who could have better appreciated the truth of freaks than someone like Arbus, who was by profession a fashion photographer—a fabricator of the cosmetic lie that masks the intractable inequalities of birth and class and physical appearance. But unlike Warhol, who spent many years as a commercial artist, Arbus did not make her serious work out of promoting and kidding the aesthetic of glamour to which she had been apprenticed, but turned her back on it entirely. Arbus’s work is reactive—reactive against gentility, against what is approved. It was her way of saying fuck Vogue, fuck fashion, fuck what’s pretty. This challenge takes two not wholly compatible forms. One is a revolt against the Jews’ hyper-developed moral sensibility. The other revolt, itself hotly moralistic, turns against the success world. The moralist’s subversion advances life as a failure as the antidote to life as a success. The aesthete’s subversion, which the sixties was to make peculiarly its own, advances life as a horror show as the antidote to life as a bore.

[!important] Striking/Intense

Melancholy Object

Page: 35 (25.74%) @ 03 Jan 2024 12:31:19 PM

Surrealism has always courted accidents, welcomed the uninvited, flattered disorderly presences. What could be more surreal than an object which virtually produces itself, and with a minimum of effort? An object whose beauty, fantastic disclosures, emotional weight are likely to be further enhanced by any accidents that might befall it? It is photography that has best shown how to juxtapose the sewing machine and the umbrella, whose fortuitous encounter was hailed by a great Surrealist poet as an epitome of the beautiful.

[!question] Thought Provoking

Page: 36 (26.47%) @ 03 Jan 2024 12:38:41 PM

Surrealism is a bourgeois disaffection; that its militants thought it universal is only one of the signs that it is typically bourgeois. As an aesthetics that yearns to be a politics, Surrealism opts for the underdog, for the rights of a disestablished or unofficial reality. But the scandals flattered by Surrealist aesthetics generally turned out to be just those homely mysteries obscured by the bourgeois social order: sex and poverty. Eros, which the early Surrealists placed at the summit of the tabooed reality they sought to rehabilitate, was itself part of the mystery of social station. While it seemed to flourish luxuriantly at extreme ends of the scale, both the lower classes and the nobility being regarded as naturally libertine, middle-class people had to toil to make their sexual revolution. Class was the deepest mystery: the inexhaustible glamour of the rich and powerful, the opaque degradation of the poor and outcast.

[!question] Thought Provoking

Page: 42 (30.88%) @ 04 Jan 2024 12:10:07 AM

The photographer both loots and preserves, denounces and consecrates. Photography expresses the American impatience with reality, the taste for activities whose instrumentality is a machine. “Speed is at the bottom of it all,” as Hart Crane said (writing about Stieglitz in 1923), “the hundredth of a second caught so precisely that the motion is continued from the picture indefinitely: the moment made eternal.” Faced with the awesome spread and alienness of a newly settled continent, people wielded cameras as a way of taking possession of the places they visited.

[!quote] Quotable/Concept/General Idea

Page: 45 (33.09%) @ 04 Jan 2024 09:36:35 AM

Influenced by the photographers and the pop artists, architects like Robert Venturi learn from Las Vegas and find Times Square a congenial successor to the Piazza San Marco; and Reyner Banham lauds Los Angeles’s “instant architecture and instant townscape” for its gift of freedom, of a good life impossible amid the beauties and squalors of the European city—extolling the liberation offered by a society whose consciousness is built, ad hoc, out of scraps and junk. America, that surreal country, is full of found objects. Our junk has become art. Our junk has become history.

[!important] Striking/Intense

Page: 47 (34.56%) @ 04 Jan 2024 04:16:24 PM

Rehabilitating old photographs, by finding new contexts for them, has become a major book industry. A photograph is only a fragment, and with the passage of time its moorings come unstuck. It drifts away into a soft abstract pastness, open to any kind of reading (or matching to other photographs). A photograph could also be described as a quotation, which makes a book of photographs like a book of quotations. And an increasingly common way of presenting photographs in book form is to match photographs themselves with quotes.

[!question] Thought Provoking

Page: 50 (36.76%) @ 04 Jan 2024 04:36:13 PM

The history of photography discloses a long tradition of ambivalence about its capacity for partisanship: the taking of sides is felt to undermine its perennial assumption that all subjects have validity and interest.

[!important] Striking/Intense

The Heroism of Vision

Page: 55 (40.44%) @ 06 Jan 2024 01:51:13 PM

The history of photography could be recapitulated as the struggle between two different imperatives: beautification, which comes from the fine arts, and truth-telling, which is measured not only by a notion of value-free truth, a legacy from the sciences, but by a moralized ideal of truth-telling, adapted from nineteenth-century literary models and from the (then) new profession of independent journalism.

[!quote] Quotable/Concept/General Idea

Photographic Evangels

Page: 75 (55.15%) @ 09 Jan 2024 11:22:19 AM

For Moholy-Nagy the genius of photography lies in its ability to render “an objective portrait: the individual to be photographed so that the photographic result shall not be encumbered with subjective intention.” For Lange every portrait of another person is a “self-portrait” of the photographer, as for Minor White—promoting “self-discovery through a camera”—landscape photographs are really “inner landscapes.” The two ideals are antithetical. Insofar as photography is (or should be) about the world, the photographer counts for little, but insofar as it is the instrument of intrepid, questing subjectivity, the photographer is all.

[!question] Thought Provoking

Page: 80 (58.82%) @ 12 Jan 2024 03:52:51 PM

But it is unlikely that the defense of photography as art will ever completely subside. As long as photography is not only a voracious way of seeing but one which needs to claim that it is a special, distinctive way, photographers will continue to take shelter (if only covertly) in the defiled but still prestigious precincts of art.

[!question] Thought Provoking

Page: 81 (59.56%) @ 12 Jan 2024 04:03:06 PM

cannot be a coincidence that just about the time that photographers stopped discussing whether photography is an art, it was acclaimed as one by the general public and photography entered, in force, into the museum. The museum’s naturalization of photography as art is the conclusive victory of the century-long campaign waged by modernist taste on behalf of an open-ended definition of art, photography offering a much more suitable terrain than painting for this effort. For the line between amateur and professional, primitive and sophisticated is not just harder to draw with photography than it is with painting—it has little meaning. Naive or commercial or merely utilitarian photography is no different in kind from photography as practiced by the most gifted professionals: there are pictures taken by anonymous amateurs which are just as interesting, as complex formally, as representative of photography’s characteristic powers as a Stieglitz or an Evans.

[!question] Thought Provoking

Page: 84 (61.76%) @ 12 Jan 2024 04:13:53 PM

much more inclusive one, with criteria which shift the center of judgment from the individual photograph, considered as a finished object, to the photograph considered as an example of “photographic seeing.” What is meant by photographic seeing would hardly exclude Weston’s work but it would also include a large number of anonymous, unposed, crudely lit, asymmetrically composed photographs formerly dismissed for their lack of composition. The new position aims to liberate photography, as art, from the oppressive standards of technical perfection; to liberate photography from beauty, too. It opens up the possibility of a global taste, in which no subject (or absence of subject), no technique (or absence of technique) disqualifies a photograph.

[!question] Thought Provoking

Page: 85 (62.50%) @ 12 Jan 2024 04:22:50 PM

Indeed, the difference between a good photograph and a bad photograph is not at all like the difference between a good and a bad painting. The norms of aesthetic evaluation worked out for painting depend on criteria of authenticity (and fakeness), and of craftsmanship—criteria that are more permissive or simply non-existent for photography.

[!question] Thought Provoking

Page: 88 (64.71%) @ 12 Jan 2024 04:36:40 PM

As photography takes the whole world as its subject, there is room for every kind of taste. Literary taste does exclude: the success of the modernist movement in poetry elevated Donne but diminished Dryden. With literature, one can be eclectic up to a point, but one can’t like everything.

[!question] Thought Provoking
Literature can, and does express philosophy more elaborately. Therefore, it is more prone to being outdated.

A Brief Anthology of Quotations

Page: 112 (82.35%) @ 12 Jan 2024 10:07:30 PM

I photograph what I do not wish to paint and I paint what I cannot photograph.
—Man Ray

[!quote] Quotable/Concept/General Idea

Page: 113 (83.09%) @ 12 Jan 2024 10:10:49 PM

I always prefer to work in the studio. It isolates people from their environment. They become in a sense … symbolic of themselves. I often feel that people come to me to be photographed as they would go to a doctor or a fortune teller—to find out how they are. So they’re dependent on me. I have to engage them. Otherwise there’s nothing to photograph. The concentration has to come from me and involve them. Sometimes the force of it grows so strong that sounds in the studio go unheard. Time stops. We share a brief, intense intimacy. But it’s unearned. It has no past … no future. And when the sitting is over—when the picture is done—there’s nothing left except the photograph … the photograph and a kind of embarrassment. They leave … and I don’t know them. I’ve hardly heard what they’ve said. If I meet them a week later in a room somewhere, I expect they won’t recognize me. Because I don’t feel I was really there. At least the part of me that was … is now in the photograph. And the photographs have a reality for me that the people don’t. It’s through the photographs that I know them. Maybe it’s in the nature of being a photographer. I’m never really implicated. I don’t have to have any real knowledge. It’s all a question of recognitions.
—Richard Avedon

[!quote] Quotable/Concept/General Idea

Page: 116 (85.29%) @ 12 Jan 2024 10:24:31 PM

… Suddenly a small boy dropped to the ground next to me. I realized then that the police were not firing warning shots. They were shooting into the crowd. More children fell … . I began taking pictures of the little boy who was dying next to me. Blood poured from his mouth and some children knelt next to him and tried to stop the flow of blood. Then some children shouted they were going to kill me … . I begged them to leave me alone. I said I was a reporter and was there to record what happened. A young girl hit me on the head with a rock. I was dazed, but still on my feet. Then they saw reason and some led me away. All the time helicopters circled overhead and there was the sound of shooting. It was like a dream. A dream I will never forget.
—from the account by Alf Khumalo, a black reporter on the Johannesburg Sunday Times, of the outbreak of riots in Soweto, South Africa, published in The Observer [London], Sunday, June 20, 1976

[!quote] Quotable/Concept/General Idea

Notes from Thought is Your Enemy

2024-02-28T07:42:53.000Z

Thought is Your Enemy

Uppaluri Gopala Krishnamurti

A Note at the Beginning

Page: 8 (9.09%) @ 19 Feb 2024 03:57:04 PM

U.G. dismisses the possibility of any experience except through knowledge. According to him, it is knowledge which creates an experience, and it is the experience which in turn strengthens the knowledge. 'Knowledge' does not have any metaphysical or epistemological overtones. It is simply that something is a chair or a table, or that some sensation is pleasurable or painful. In fact, even the process of recognition and naming of something is part of knowledge. The total operation is designated 'thinking'.

[!important] Striking/Intense

Page: 8 (9.09%) @ 19 Feb 2024 03:58:43 PM

What distinguishes us from U.G. is that this knowledge which is operating through the process of thinking is in a declutched state in U.G., while there is a constant undercurrent of thinking activity within us whether we like it or not. Our mind is constantly churning out thought after thought in various shapes, colors, and sizes. U.G. says that it is through this constant thinking that we are maintaining the continuity of what we call the 'I' or 'self'.

[!quote] Quotable/Concept/General Idea: Anatma

CHAPTER 1

Page: 10 (11.36%) @ 19 Feb 2024 05:45:43 PM

Thought is not the instrument to help us to live in harmony with the life around us. That is why you create all these ecological problems. But the planet is not in danger; we are in danger.

[!question] Thought Provoking

No Mind, No Soul, Only the Body

Page: 11 (12.50%) @ 19 Feb 2024 05:46:49 PM

Thought is something dead and can never touch anything living. It cannot capture life, contain it, and give expression to it. The moment it tries to touch life, it is destroyed by the living quality of life.

[!important] Striking/Intense

Page: 11 (12.50%) @ 19 Feb 2024 05:48:29 PM

Q: U.G., I would like to probe into the very essence of your revolutionary and uncompromising statement that there is no soul.
A: There is no self, there is no I, there is no spirit, there is no soul, and there is no mind. That knocks off the whole list, and you have no way of finding out what you are left with. You may very well ask me the question, "Why do you go on telling people about the way you are functioning?" It is only to emphasize that we have been for centuries using some instrument, that is, thinking or mind, or whatever you want to call it, to free ourselves from the whole of what you call the 'I' or the 'self', and all kinds of things. That is what the whole quest of spirit is all about. But once it dawns on you that there is nothing to be free from, then these questions don't arise at all. How that dawned on me, I have no way of finding out for myself.

[!question] Thought Provoking: So, one of the core ideas of U.G. is Anatma.

Page: 11 (12.50%) @ 19 Feb 2024 05:50:28 PM

Q: What you are trying to say is that there is only the physical body and nothing else. Is that it?
A: Even that statement cannot be experienced by what is left there. When once the whole thing is flushed out of your system, the statement, "We are left with only the physical body and the universe -- " that statement also cannot stand any more.

[!question] Thought Provoking

Page: 15 (17.05%) @ 20 Feb 2024 04:43:30 PM

Q: So thinking has really no place in understanding….
A: There is no thinking at all. If there is no thinker, there are no thoughts at all. You cannot say there is only thought and there is no thinker. The thoughts do not come from here (pointing to his head), they are coming from outside. The translation of a sensory perception within the framework of your experiencing structure is thought. And you are using those thoughts to achieve a goal.

[!question] Thought Provoking

Page: 17 (19.32%) @ 20 Feb 2024 05:49:33 PM

Q: Why is it that human beings have developed some traits which have made them masterful destroyers of the earth, the air, the water, and everything around them?
A: As I said the last time, this separateness from the totality of things around us, and the idea that the whole thing is created for our benefit and that we are created for a grander and nobler purpose than all the other species on this, planet, are the causes of this destruction. This powerful use of thought is what is destructive. Thought is a self-protective mechanism. So anything that is born out of thought is destructive -whether it is religious thought or scientific thought or political thought -- all of them are destructive. But we are not ready to accept that it is thought that is our enemy.

[!question] Thought Provoking

Page: 18 (20.45%) @ 20 Feb 2024 05:51:47 PM

Q: Why do you think that we have allowed an illusion and unreality to persist in consciousness or human thought….?
A: You are not separate from that illusion. You are the illusion. If one illusion goes, it is always replaced with another illusion. Why? Because the ending of the illusion is the ending of 'you'. That is the death. The ending of belief is the ending of the 'you' that is there. So, that is not the poetic, romantic death -- of "dying to your yesterdays." Physical death is the only way through which you flush out what your whole culture has put in there.

[!question] Thought Provoking

CHAPTER 2

Page: 20 (22.73%) @ 20 Feb 2024 05:57:32 PM

Q: If the pain is in your knee, in your back, or in your head, it is already there….
A: May I say something? Anything that we discuss about pain at this moment has no meaning, because we are not having any pain now. If some pain is really there then we wouldn't discuss it; some action would be there. Q: Yes, that is right. A:Your value system is the one that is responsible for the human malady, human tragedy, forcing everybody to fit into that model.

[!question] Thought Provoking

Throw Away Your Crutches!

Page: 22 (25.00%) @ 22 Feb 2024 12:55:07 AM

We are made to believe that there is such a thing as mind. But there is no such thing as your mind or my mind. Society or culture, or whatever you want to call it, has created us solely and wholly for the purpose of maintaining its own continuity and status quo. At the same time, it has also created the idea that there is such a thing as the individual. But actually, there is a conflict between the two -- the idea of the individual and the impossibility of functioning as an individual separate and distinct from the totality of man's thoughts and experiences.

[!danger] In Discord: This is not consistent with the history entirely.

Page: 23 (26.14%) @ 22 Feb 2024 12:58:32 AM

Q: Can we not at least attempt to refine this thought process to make it constructive and positive?
A: Thought is not the instrument for achieving anything other than the goals set before us by our culture or society, or whatever you want to call it. The basic problem we have to face today is this: the cultural input, or what society has placed before us as the goal for all of us to reach and attain, is the enemy of this living organism. Thought can only create problems; it cannot help us to solve any.

[!question] Thought Provoking

Page: 23 (26.14%) @ 22 Feb 2024 12:59:17 AM

Q: Then is it desirable to be thoughtless?
A: What I am talking about is not a thoughtless state. Even the invention of what is called a thoughtless state, placed before us by many spiritual teachers as a goal to be reached, is created by thought so that it can, by pursuing what it calls a thoughtless state, maintain its own continuity. So whatever we experience in this process of achieving the goal of a thoughtless state strengthens and fortifies the very thing that we are trying to be free from.

[!important] Striking/Intense

CHAPTER 3

Page: 26 (29.55%) @ 22 Feb 2024 01:09:30 AM

The fact of the matter is that when once you have everything that you can reasonably ask for in this world, when all the material needs are taken care of, naturally the question arises, "Is that all?" When once you pose that question "Is that all?" to yourself, you have created a tremendous market for this kind of business, the holy business. These people are exploiting the gullibility and credulity of the people, rather than helping them to resolve the basic problems, the human problems. It is not that simple. So we have to ask such questions over and over again. But all the questions we are asking are born out of the answers that we already have. It never occurs to us to ask why we keep asking the questions when we already have the answers given by the sages, saints, and saviors of mankind. We fail to realize that the answers that they have given us are the ones that are responsible for the tragedy of mankind. We don't question them. If we question the answers, we would be questioning the teachers. If humanity is to be saved from the chaos of its own making, it has to be freed from the saviors of mankind. That does not mean that you would destroy everything. You will have to ask questions not born out of the answers we already have. But is there any answer? That is all. There it stops. And the solution is there for mankind.

[!quote] Quotable/Concept/General Idea

The Robot is Dreaming

Page: 30 (34.09%) @ 22 Feb 2024 04:37:44 PM

Q: Why should you not say that each of us has an individual and unique life-path and out of that comes whatever that is?
A: The uniqueness of every individual cannot express itself because of the stranglehold of the experiences of others. After all, you don't exist, and I don't exist. You and I have been created by the totality of those experiences, and we have to use them in order to function sanely and intelligently in this world. Q: So you are creating me now? A:You are creating me. Q: You are creating me now? A:No. I am not creating you because I don't have an image of myself here. So, whatever you see here (pointing to himself) is your own creation and the projection of the knowledge you have of me. I don't know if you get what I am trying to say. I am not involved in what is going on there in you. What is involved here is only a reflection of whatever is there in front of me on the retina. But the translation of it is absent because it is part of that movement that is going on there.

[!important] Striking/Intense

A Jolt of Lightning

Page: 36 (40.91%) @ 24 Feb 2024 01:15:16 AM

The goals that I had set for myself -- self-realization, God-realization, transformation, radical or otherwise, or even enlightenment -- were all false, and there was nothing there to be realized, and nothing to be found there. The very demand to be free from anything, even from the physical needs of the body, just disappeared, and I was left with nothing. Therefore, whatever comes out of me now depends upon what you draw out of me.

[!question] Thought Provoking

CHAPTER 5

Page: 40 (45.45%) @ 26 Feb 2024 05:29:49 PM

Q: The Buddhists also talk about no mind.
A: They made a tremendous structure out of that philosophical thought. They talked of the void. They talked of emptiness. You know the whole Buddhist philosophy is built on the foundation of that 'no mind'. Yet they have created tremendous techniques of freeing themselves from the mind. All the Zen techniques of meditation try to free you from the mind. The very instrument that we are using to free ourselves from the thing called 'mind' is the mind. Mind is nothing other than what you are doing to free yourself from the mind. But when it once dawns on you, by some strange chance or miracle, that the instrument that you are using to understand everything is not the instrument, and that there is no other instrument, it hits you like a jolt of lightning.

[!question] Thought Provoking

Love is Only a Trump Card

Page: 42 (47.73%) @ 26 Feb 2024 05:32:31 PM

Basically, human nature is exactly the same whether in India or in Russia or in America or in Africa. Human problems are exactly the same. All the problems are artificially created by the various structures created by human thinking. As I said, there is some sort of (I can't make a definitive statement) neurological problem in the human body. Human thinking is born out of this neurological defect in the human species. Anything that is born out of human thinking is destructive. Thought is destructive. Thought is a protective mechanism. It draws frontiers around itself, and it wants to protect itself. It is for the same reason that we also draw lines on this planet and extend them as far as we can. Do you think these frontiers are going to disappear? They are not. Those who have entrenched themselves, those who have had the monopoly of all the world's resources so far and for so long, if they are threatened to be dislodged, what they would do is anybody's guess. All the destructive weapons that we have today are here only to protect that monopoly.

[!important] Striking/Intense

Page: 43 (48.86%) @ 26 Feb 2024 05:34:24 PM

The whole mischief originated in the religious thinking of man. Now there is no use in blaming the religious thinking of man, because all the political ideologies, even your legal structures, are the warty outgrowth of the religious thinking of man. It is not so easy to flush out the whole series of experiences which have been accumulated through centuries, and which are based upon the religious thinking of man. There is a tendency to replace one belief with another belief, one illusion with another illusion. That is all we can do.

[!important] Striking/Intense

Page: 43 (48.86%) @ 26 Feb 2024 05:36:54 PM

Q: Whatever you say, I feel that the only way for humanity to survive is to bring about a change in the heart -- and that is Love.
A: No, not at all, because love implies division, separation. As long as there is division, as long as there is a separation within you, so long do you maintain that separation around you. When everything fails, you use the last card, the trump in the pack of cards, and call it love. But it is not going to help us, and it has not helped us at all. Even religion has failed to free man from violence and from ten other different things that it is trying to free us from. You see, it is not a question of trying to find new concepts, new ideas, new thoughts, and new beliefs.

[!question] Thought Provoking

Page: 44 (50.00%) @ 26 Feb 2024 05:40:18 PM

The basic question that we all have to ask for ourselves is, what kind of a human being do you want? The only answer to this human problem, if there is any answer, is not to be found through new ideas, new concepts, or new ideologies, but through bringing about a change in the chemistry of the human body. But there is a danger even there. When once we perfect genetic engineering and change the human being, there will be a tendency to hand this technology over to the state. It will then be a lot easier for them to push all the people into war and see that they can kill without a second thought. You don't have to brainwash them. You don't have to teach them love or patriotism. Brainwashing takes a century, [as, for example,] brainwashing to believe in God took centuries. The Communists took decades to brainwash their people not to believe in God. But with genetic engineering, there is no need for that kind of brainwashing process. It is a lot easier to change human beings by giving just one injection.

[!question] Thought Provoking

Page: 47 (53.41%) @ 26 Feb 2024 08:13:46 PM

Q: You spoke about the state's collecting taxes and said that the state should do everything to give security to the people and their children.
A: I do not see any reason why anybody should starve on this planet. What are you doing to solve these problems? You may very well throw that same question at me. But I have not set myself up in the business of running this world. They have set themselves up in the business of ruling this or that country. What justification do you have for the fact that forty percent of the people are allowed to starve in India today? It is not spiritual; it is not human either. It is inhuman to let your fellow beings starve. Religion has invented that wonderful thing called charity. Not only that, you don't stop there, but you give a Nobel prize to somebody because of the charitable work that particular individual is doing. That is the most vicious and vulgar thing that the religious man has come up with today.

[!important] Striking/Intense

We Are Heading Towards Disaster

Page: 49 (55.68%) @ 26 Feb 2024 08:19:02 PM

Q: What are your views regarding those who want to understand what this life is all about?
A: The demand to understand and bring about a change in you is the one that is responsible for the demand to understand the world and then bring about a change in the world. They are one and the same. That is why you are interested in listening to others. Through that listening you think you will be able to bring about a change in you and then also a change in the world around you. Basically there is no difference between what is here (pointing towards himself) and what is out there in the world. There is no way you can draw a line of demarcation.

[!important] Striking/Intense

The End of Illusion is Death

Page: 55 (62.50%) @ 26 Feb 2024 10:30:43 PM

Q: Do you mean to say that all the life that we experience is only through the body, through the senses, and that the body contains the whole human being?
A: What exactly do you mean by 'life'? Nobody knows anything about life, and there is no point in defining it. Anything that we say of life is a speculation on our part. What we are trying to understand or experience, life or whatever, is through the help of the knowledge we have of it. But thought is something dead. It is something that can never touch anything living. The moment it tries to touch life and capture it, contain it and give expression to it, it is destroyed by the living quality of life. What we mean by life, however, is not actually life but living. Living is our relationship with the people around us, the life around us, with the whole world around us. And that is all we know. That relationship is actually not a basic relationship, but a relationship that is born out of our demand to become one with life. So, anything we do, any attempt we make to become one with it, is fruitless because there is no way we can establish any relationship with the life around us.

[!question] Thought Provoking

Page: 55 (62.50%) @ 26 Feb 2024 10:31:52 PM

Q: Why do you say that we are not part of it?
A: I am not for a moment assuming or emphasizing that we are not part of it. We are part of it. But the most important question which we should ask ourselves is, "What is it that separates us from the life around us, and what is it that maintains the separateness, or division, if I may use the word, all the time?" Actually, what divides us is thought. Thought is matter. But that matter cannot stay there for long. The moment the matter is born it has to become part of the energy again. But this demand on our part, or on the part of thought, to maintain continuity, is the demand that drives us to experience the same thing over and over and over again. And thus we are maintaining this superficial, artificial, non-existent duality, division there between our life and the life around us.

[!question] Thought Provoking

Page: 57 (64.77%) @ 26 Feb 2024 10:56:58 PM

Q: Why do you think that we live in this illusion, and why does it persist?
A: The illusion persists because if the illusion comes to an end, what can be called clinical death will take place. So, if we give up one illusion, we will always replace it with another.
Q: Why?
A: That is the thing that gives us the feeling of conquering the inevitable end called death. That is the only death that is there. Otherwise, there is no such thing as death at all. And death is the end of the illusion, end of the fear, end of the knowledge that we have of ourselves and of the world around us.

[!question] Thought Provoking

Lost in the Jungle

Page: 63 (71.59%) @ 26 Feb 2024 11:12:39 PM

Q: Would it be possible to have thought without these ideas and still take advantage of nature?
A: I maintain and very often say that thought in its birth, in its content, in its expression, and in its action, is fascist. It is very aggressive. Our very demand to understand nature's laws is to use them for the purpose of maintaining the continuity of thought. All the talk that thought is altruistic and that we are curious to know the laws of nature just for the sake of knowing them is bluff. The very motivation, the drive behind our demand to understand the laws of nature is to use them for the purpose of continuing the human species at the expense of every other form of life on this planet.

[!important] Striking/Intense

Page: 68 (77.27%) @ 27 Feb 2024 11:30:30 AM

Q: And the search for meaning is absurd?
A: Obviously you do not see any meaning. You do not see any purpose in life. Obviously you don't see. (Laughs) I don't mean only you. I mean people. To me to ask that question is so silly, so meaningless, so absurd -- "What is the meaning of life?" It is not life that we are really interested in but living. The problem of living has become a very tiring business -- to live with somebody else, to live with our feelings, to live with our ideas. In other words, it is the value system that we have been thrown into. You see, the value system is false.

[!question] Thought Provoking

Death is a Reshuffling of Atoms

Page: 73 (82.95%) @ 27 Feb 2024 11:38:46 AM

Q: What happens?
A: The balance of energy in nature has to be maintained for some reason. I don't know why. So death occurs only when there is a need for the atoms to maintain the balance of energy in the universe. It is nothing but a reshuffling of atoms. This organism has no way of finding out that it was born at a particular point of time and is going to die at another point of time, and also that it is living at this moment and not dead. The knowledge we have of this living organism -- the birth, the death, and all that -- is absent here (pointing to himself).

[!danger] In Discord: This whole thing of balance is unsound.

Notes from Cosmos by Carl Sagan

2023-01-10T18:02:58.000Z

Cosmos

by Carl Sagan

CHAPTER II : One Voice in the Cosmic Fugue

Page 47 @ March 24, 2016

we do not yet know how to assemble alternative sequences of nucleotides to make alternative kinds of human beings. In the future we may well be able to assemble nucleotides in any desired sequence, to produce whatever characteristics we think desirable - a sobering and disquieting prospect.

হয়ত পারবো, কিন্তু বোরিং হবে, না?

CHAPTER III : The Harmony of Worlds

Page 59 @ March 25, 2016

In contemporary Western society, buying a magazine on astrology - at a newsstand, say - is easy; it is much harder to find one on astronomy. Virtually every newspaper in America has a daily column on astrology; there are hardly any that have even a weekly column on astronomy. There are ten times more astrologers in the United States than astronomers.

আর কনটেম্পরারি বাঙলা কালচারে এস্ট্রোনমার পাওয়াই যায় না আর এস্ট্রোলজাররা সবাই “স্বর্ণপদকপ্রাপ্ত”!

Page 64 @ March 25, 2016

‘Mortal as I am,’ he wrote, ‘I know that I am born for a day. But when I follow at my pleasure the serried multitude of the stars in their circular course, my feet no longer touch the Earth…’

Ptolemy's Quote.

Page 67 @ March 25, 2016

Geometry existed before the Creation. It is co-eternal with the mind of God … Geometry provided God with a model for the Creation … Geometry is God Himself.

Kepler on Geometry.

CHAPTER IV : Heaven and Hell

Page 108 @ March 26, 2016

But science is a self-correcting enterprise. To be accepted, all new ideas must survive rigorous standards of evidence. The worst aspect of the Velikovsky affair is not that his hypotheses were wrong or in contradiction to firmly established facts, but that some who called themselves scientists attempted to suppress Velikovsky’s work. Science is generated by and devoted to free inquiry: the idea that any hypothesis, no matter how strange, deserves to be considered on its merits. The suppression of uncomfortable ideas may be common in religion and politics, but it is not the path to knowledge; it has no place in the endeavor of science. We do not know in advance who will discover fundamental new insights.

সত্যিই…

CHAPTER VI : Travelers’ Tales

Page 175 @ April 02, 2016

How does a picture from the outer solar system get to us? Sunlight shines on Europa in its orbit around Jupiter and is reflected back to space, where some of it strikes the phosphors of the Voyager television cameras, generating an image. The image is read by the Voyager computers, radioed back across the

Digital photography?

CHAPTER VII : The Backbone of Night

Page 189 @ April 03, 2016

Bur Aristarchus of Samos

First one to say The Earth revolves around The Sun?

Page 210 @ April 03, 2016

He held that the Sun was so huge that it was probably larger than the Peloponnesus, roughly the southern third of Greece. His critics thought this estimate excessive and absurd.

Such Critics, Much Wow! "D

Page 212 @ April 03, 2016

Alcmaeon, is the first person known to have dissected a human body; he distinguished between arteries and veins, was the first to discover the optic nerve and the eustachian tubes, and identified the brain as the seat of the intellect (a contention later denied by Aristotle, who placed intelligence in the heart, and then revived by Herophilus of Chalcedon).

Okay, Aristotle was one bloody Jackass!

CHAPTER VIII : Travels in Space and Time

Page 231 @ April 03, 2016

you might have come upon a somewhat long-haired teenage high school dropout on the road to Pavia. His teachers in Germany had told him that he would never amount to anything, that his questions destroyed classroom discipline, that he would be better off out of school. So he left and wandered, delighting in the freedom of Northern Italy, where he could ruminate on matters remote from the subjects he had been force-fed in his highly disciplined Prussian schoolroom. His name was Albert Einstein, and his ruminations changed the world.

Here comes the making of Einstein. :D

Page 235 @ April 03, 2016

(There are no penalties for breaking laws of Nature, because there are no crimes: Nature is self-regulating and merely arranges things so that its prohibitions are impossible to transgress.)

That means: তুমি মানো বা না মানো, সায়েন্সের ছেঁড়া যায় না।

CHAPTER X : The Edge of Forever

Page 294 @ April 07, 2016

Before heaven and earth had taken form all was vague and amorphous …

This Chinese creation myth is far much compatible with big bang than Hindu or Abrahamic myths.

Page 296 @ April 07, 2016

The dates on Mayan inscriptions also range deep into the past and occasionally far into the future. One inscription refers to a time more than a million years ago and another perhaps refers to events of 400 million years ago, although this is in some dispute among Mayan scholars. The events memorialized may be mythical, but the time scales are prodigious. A millennium before Europeans were willing to divest themselves of the Biblical idea that the world was a few thousand years old, the Mayans were thinking of millions, and the Indians of billions.

Culture and geology effect society, therefore freethinking span of a single man. India, being diverse in nature and culture can embrace different ideas easily. On the contrary this is not so easy in semitic or Semitism driven culture.

CHAPTER XIII : Who Speaks for Earth?

Page 371 @ April 08, 2016

Who speaks for Earth?

No one is worthy till today

Page 376 @ April 08, 2016

There is no other species on Earth that does science. It is, so far, entirely a human invention, evolved by natural selection in the cerebral cortex for one simple reason: it works. It is not perfect. It can be misused. It is only a tool. But it is by far the best tool we have, self-correcting, ongoing, applicable to everything. It has two rules. First: there are no sacred truths; all assumptions must be critically examined; arguments from authority are worthless. Second: whatever is inconsistent with the facts must be discarded or revised. We must understand the Cosmos as it is and not confuse how it is with how we wish it to be. The obvious is sometimes false; the unexpected is sometimes true.

Science

Page 384 @ April 08, 2016

But the Darwinian lesson is clear: There will be no humans elsewhere. Only here. Only on this small planet. We are a rare as well as an endangered species. Every one of us is, in the cosmic perspective, precious. If a human disagrees with you, let him live. In a hundred billion galaxies, you will not find another.

This is how science provide ethics.

Page 385 @ April 20, 2016

The choice is stark and ironic. The same rocket boosters used to launch probes to the planets are poised to send nuclear warheads to the nations. The radioactive power sources on Viking and Voyager derive from the same technology that makes nuclear weapons. The radio and radar techniques employed to track and guide ballistic missiles and defend against attack are also used to monitor and command the spacecraft on the planets and to listen for signals from civilizations near other stars. If we use these technologies to destroy ourselves, we surely will venture no more to the planets and the stars. But the converse is also true. If we continue to the planets and the stars, our chauvinisms will be shaken further. We will gain a cosmic perspective. We will recognize that our explorations can

And another on ethics and humanity

Narrow Road to the Interior and Other Writings

2026-02-04T15:13:18.000Z

Notes & Highlights: Narrow Road to the Interior and Other Writings

Matsuo Bashō (Translated by Sam Hamill)

Translator’s Introduction

Time：2021-06-26 16:18

Ki-no-Tsurayuki’s co-compiler of the Kokinshū, Mibu-no-Tadamine (868–965), introduced another new term to the Japanese critical canon by praising a quality in certain poems which he called yūgen, a word borrowed from Chinese Buddhist writingto identify “depth of meaning,” a character made by combining the character for “dim” or “dark” with the character identifying a deep, reddish black color. Tadamine use dyūgen to identify “aesthetic feeling not explicitly expressed.” He wanted a term by which to identify subtleties and implications. Over the course of the next hundred or so years, yūgen would also be adopted by Zennists to define “ghostly qualities,” as in ink paintings. But the term’s origin lies within seventh-century Chinese Buddhist literary terminology. As an aesthetic concept, it was esteemed throughout the medieval period. An excellent study of Buddhism and literary arts in medieval Japan, William R. LaFleur’s The Karma of Words, devotes an entire chapter to yūgen.

Page Number:12

Time：2021-06-26 00:02

The fourteenth-century Zen monk Ikkyū Sōjun wrote, “Ame furaba fure, kazefukaba fuke.” If it rains, let it rain; if the wind blows, let it blow. Bashō spent many years struggling to “learn how to listen as things speak for themselves.” No regrets. He refused to be anthropocentric.

Page Number:14

Time：2021-06-26 00:03

Matsushima ya
ah Matsushima ya
Matsushima ya

This is the sort of poem that can be done once, and once only. But it is quintessentially Bashō, both playful and inspired, yet with a hint of mono no aware, a trace of the pathos of beautiful mortality. A literal translation: “PineIslands, ah! / Oh, Pine Islands, ah! / Pine Islands, ah!” Simple as it is, the poem implies co-dependent origination, physical landscape, and a breathless—almost speechless—reverence.

Page Number:14

Time：2021-06-26 00:33

“Abide by rules,” Bashō taught, “then throw them out!— only then may you achieve true freedom.”

Page Number:22

Narrow Road to the Interior

Time：2021-06-26 02:54

With every pilgrimage one encounters the temporality of life. To die along the road is destiny. Or so I told myself.

Page Number:34

Time：2021-06-26 02:57

To have blue irises
blooming on one’s feet—
walking-sandal straps

Page Number:35

Time：2021-06-26 03:03

On the eleventh day, fifth moon, we visited Zuigan Temple, and were met by the thirty-second-generation descendent of the founder. Established by Makabe-no-Heishiro at the time he returned from religious studies in T’ang China, the temple was enlarged under Ungo Zenji into seven main structures with new blue tile roofs, walls of gold, a jeweled buddha-land. But my mind wandered, wondering if the priest Kembutsu’s tiny temple might be found.

Page Number:37

Time：2021-06-26 03:05

Summer grasses:
all that remains of great soldiers’
imperial dreams

Page Number:38

Time：2021-06-26 03:09

In Yamagata Province, the ancient temple founded by Jikaku Daishi in 860, Ryūshaku Temple is stone quiet, perfectly tidy. Everyone told us to see it. It meant a few miles extra, doubling back toward Obanazawa to find shelter. Monks at the foot of the mountain offered rooms, then we climbed the ridge to the temple, scrambling up through ancient gnarled pine and oak, gray smooth stones and moss. The temple doors, built on rocks, were bolted. I crawled among boulders to make my bows at shrines. The silence was profound. I sat, feeling my heart begin to open.

Page Number:40

Time：2021-06-26 03:12

The winds that blow
through South Valley Temple
are sweetened by snow [footnote: See the Li Chi or Confucian Book of Rites: “A sweet wind from the South”indicates warmth and clarity]

Page Number:41

Time：2021-06-26 03:14

Together with Moon Mountain and Bath Mountain, Feather Black Mountain completes the Dewa Sanzan, orThree Holy Mountains of Dewa. This temple is Tendai sect, like the one in Edo on Toei Hill. Both follow the doctrine of shikantaza, “deep-sitting concentration and insight,” a way of enlightenment as transparent as moonlight, its light infinitely increasing, spreading from hermitage to mountain top and back, reverence and compassion shining in everything it touches. Its blessing flows down from these mountains, enriching all our lives.

Page Number:41

Time：2021-06-26 14:24

Sitting in the temple chamber with the blinds raised, we saw the whole lagoon, Mount Chōkai holding up the heavens inverted on the water. To the westthe road leads to the Muyamuya Barrier; to the east it curves along a bank toward Akita; to the north, the sea comes in on tide flats at Shiogoshi. The whole lagoon, though only a mile or so across, reminds one of Matsushima, although Matsushima seems much more contented, whereas Kisakata seems bereaved. A sadness maybe in its sense of isolation here where nature’s darker spirits hide— like a strange and beautiful woman whose heart has been broken.

Page Number:43

Time：2021-06-26 14:29

Under one roof,
courtesans and monks asleep—
moon and bush clover — Sora

Page Number:45

Time：2021-06-26 14:42

Pitifully—under
a great soldier’s empty helmet,
a cricket sings

Page Number:46

Time：2021-06-26 14:45

Sweep the garden—
all kindnesses falling
willow leaves repay

Page Number:48

Time：2021-06-26 14:45

At the Echizen Province border, at an inlet town called Yoshizaki, I hired a boat and sailed for the famous pines of Shiogoshi. Saigyō wrote:

All the long night
salt-winds drive
storm-tossed waves
and moonlight drips
through Shiogoshi pines.

This one poem says enough. To add another would be like adding a sixth finger to a hand.

Page Number:48

Travelogue of Weather-Beaten Bones

Time：2021-06-26 16:11

My older brother opened a small amulet, saying, “Bow to your mother’s white hair. This is like the famous jeweled box of Urashima Tarō— your own eyebrows have already turned gray!” I wrote this after we had all shed our tears:

If I took it in hand,
it would melt in my hot tears—
heavy autumn frost

Page Number:54

Time：2021-06-26 16:13

With clear melting dew,
I’d try to wash away the dust
of this floating world

Page Number:55

Time：2021-06-26 16:21

Karasaki’s pine,
compared to blossoming cherry,
looks a bit hazy

Page Number:59

Time：2021-06-26 16:22

After twenty years, I met an old friend at Minakuchi:

While we’ve lived our lives
they’ve survived to still blossom,
these old cherry trees

Page Number:60

The Knapsack Notebook

Time：2021-06-26 16:25

Saigyō in poetry, Sōgi in linked verse, Sesshū in painting, Rikyū in the teaceremony— the spirit that moves them is one spirit. Achieving artistic excellence, each holds one attribute in common: each remains attuned to nature throughout the four seasons. Whatever is seen by such a heart and mind is a flower, whatever is dreamed is a moon. Only a barbarian mind could fail to see the flower; only an animal mind could fail to dream a moon. The first task for each artist is to overcome the barbarian or animal heart and mind, to become one with nature.

Page Number:63

Time：2021-06-26 16:36

Moved to tears by
finding my umbilical cord—
the year concludes

Page Number:67

Time：2021-06-26 16:37

A world of memory
returns to me when I see
blossoming cherries

Page Number:68

Time：2021-06-26 16:39

We ceremoniously wrote on our hats, “No home in the world— we are two wanderers,” and set out

Page Number:69

Time：2021-06-26 16:41

Mile after mile
falls away each day I search
for cherry blossoms

Blossoming cherries,
a gloomy sky, and, sadly,
one arborvitae
My fan for a cup,
I drink from a downpour
of cherry blossoms.

Page Number:71

Time：2021-06-26 16:42

Throughout my three days in Yoshino, I enjoyed the opportunity to study cherry blossoms at various hours, predawn to dusk and past midnight when the moon was growing pale. I was too moved to write even one poem, especially when my melancholy heart remembered famous poems by Saigyō and other ancient poets. All my lofty pretenses and ambitions aside, my journey produced no poetry.

Page Number:71

Selected Haiku

Time：2021-06-26 16:53

New Year’s first snow—ah—
just barely enough to tilt
the daffodil

Hatsuyuki ya
suisen no ha no
tawamu made

Page Number:83

Time：2021-06-26 16:53

Now spring has arrived
on a mountain with no name
in early morning haze

Haru nare ya
na mo naki ya
ma noasagasumi

Page Number:84

Time：2021-06-26 17:06

All hundred thousand
homes in Kyoto empty—
cherry blossom time

Kyō wa kuman
kusen kunju no
hana mi kana

Page Number:86

Time：2021-06-26 17:07

Flowers are best seen
by the eyes of poor people—
devilish thistle!

Hana wa shizu no
me ni mo mie keri
oni azami

Page Number:88

Time：2021-06-26 17:08

Between our two lives
there is also the life of
the cherry blossom

Inochi futatsu no
naka ni ikitaru
sakura kana

Page Number:88

Time：2021-06-26 17:11

Flitting butterflies
in the middle of a field—
sunlit shadows

Chō no tobu
bakari nonaka no
hikage kana

Page Number:90

Time：2021-06-26 17:14

Saigyō’s hermitage
must be hidden somewhere in
this blossoming garden

Saigyō no
iori ma aran
hana no niwa

Page Number:91

Time：2021-06-26 17:18

At breaking sunrise,
glistening whitefish—an inch
of utter whiteness

Akebono ya
shirau shiroki
koto issun

Page Number:96

Time：2021-06-26 17:22

Live the lonely life!
Sing the Lonely Moon-Watcher’s
songs of Nara

Wabi te sume
tsuki wabi sai ga
Nara cha-uta

Page Number:100

Time：2021-06-26 17:23

On a bare branch,
a solitary crow—
autumn evening

Kare eda ni
karasu no tomari keri
aki no kure

Page Number:101

Time：2021-06-26 17:24

Old spider, what is
your song, how do you cry
in the autumn wind?

Kumo nani to
ne o nani to naku
aki no kaze

Page Number:102

Time：2021-06-26 17:27

At the ancient pond
a frog plunges into
the sound of water

Furuike ya
kawazu tobikomu
mizu no oto

Page Number:103

Time：2021-06-26 17:27

Now I see her face,
the old woman, abandoned,
the moon her only companion

Omokage ya
oba hitori naku
tsuki no tomo

Page Number:104

Time：2021-06-26 17:28

Nothing in the cry
of cicadas suggests they
are about to die

Yagate shinu
keshiki wa miezu
semi no koe

Page Number:104

Time：2021-06-26 17:29

Seen in bright daylight,
its neck is burning red,
this little firefly!

Hiru mireba
kubisuji akaki
hotaru kana

Page Number:106

Time：2021-06-26 17:30

On a white poppy,
a butterfly’s torn wing
is a keepsake

Shirageshi ni
hane mogu chō no
katami ka na

Page Number:107

Time：2021-06-26 17:30

With a warbler for
a soul, it sleeps peacefully,
this mountain willow

Uguisu wo
tama ni nemuru ka
tao yanagi

Page Number:108

Time：2021-06-26 17:32

I slept at a temple—
and now with such seriousness
I watch the moon

Tera ni nete
makotogao naru
tsukimi kana

Page Number:110

Time：2021-06-26 17:32

I’d like to be drunk
and sleep among blooming pinks
on a cool stone

You te nen
nadeshiko sakeru
ishi no ue

Page Number:111

Time：2021-06-26 17:34

Crossing long fields,
frozen in its saddle,
my shadow creeps by

Samuki ta ya
bajō ni sukumu
kagebōshi

Page Number:113

Time：2021-06-26 17:34

The morning glories
ignore our drinking party
and burst into bloom

Asagao wa
sakamori shiranu
sakari kana

Page Number:114

Time：2021-06-26 17:34

Old morning glory,
even you, as it turns out,
cannot be my friend

Asagao ya
kore mo mata waga
tomo narazu

Page Number:114

Time：2021-06-26 17:34

A traveler’s heart
is what you should emulate,
pasania bloom

Tabibito no
kokoro ni mo niyo
shii no hana

Page Number:114

Time：2021-06-26 17:35

Grass for a pillow,
the traveler knows best how
to see cherry blossoms

Kusamakura
makoto no hanami
shite mo ko yo

Page Number:116

Time：2021-06-26 17:35

Wake up! Wake up!
Then we’ll become good friends,
sleeping butterfly

Okiyo okiyo
waga tomo ni sen
nuru kochō

Page Number:116

Time：2021-06-26 17:38

Lonely stillness—
a single cicada’s cry
sinking into stone

Shizukasa ya
iwa ni shimi iru
semi no koe

Page Number:120

Time：2021-06-26 17:39

The oak’s nobility—
indifferent to flowers—
or so it appears

Kashi no ki no
hana ni kamawanu
sugata kana

Page Number:121

Time：2021-06-26 17:40

A wanderer,
so let that be my name—
the first winter rain

Tabibito to
waga na yobare-n
hatsushigure

Page Number:122

Time：2021-06-26 17:43

All along this road
not a single soul—only
autumn evening

Kono michi ya
yuku hito nashi ni
aki no kure

Page Number:129

Time：2021-06-26 17:44

Why just this autumn
have I grown suddenly old—
a bird in the clouds

Kono aki wa
nande toshiyoru
kumo ni tori

Page Number:130

Time：2021-06-26 17:45

Rested from your journey,
now you’ll understand my haiku,
old autumn wind

Tabineshite
waga ku o shire ya
aki no kaze

Page Number:131

Time：2021-06-26 17:45

Tremble, oh my grave—
in time my cries will be
only this autumn wind

Tsuka mo ugoke
waga naku koe wa
aki no kaze

Page Number:131

Time：2021-06-26 17:46

Your song caresses
the depths of loneliness,
high mountain bird

Uki ware wo
sabishi garase yo
kankodori

Page Number:133

Time：2021-06-26 17:46

The whole household—
each with white hair and cane—
visiting a grave

Ie wa mina
tsue ni shiraga no
hakamairi

Page Number:134

Time：2021-06-26 17:47

With plum blossom scent,
this morning sun emerges
along a mountain trail

Mume ga ka ni
notto hi no deru
yamaji kana

Page Number:134

Time：2021-06-26 17:48

Bashō’s Death Poem

Sick on my journey,
only my dreams will wander
these desolate moors

Tabi ni yande
yume wa kareno wo
kakemeguru

Page Number:137

Afterword

Time：2021-06-26 17:50

It was during this stay in Ueno that he first began to advocate the poetic principle of karumi, “lightness,” urging his followers to “seek beauty in plain, simple, artless language” by observing ordinary things very closely. Karumi, together with existential Zen loneliness (sabi) and elegantly understated, unpretentious natural beauty (shibumi), characterize his final work. His life had been profoundly shaped by wabi, a principle as much moral as aesthetic, and which suggests a spiritual prosperity achieved through material poverty together with a deep appreciation of things old, worn, modest, and simple

Page Number:138

Time：2021-06-26 17:51

Near the end of his stay, he wrote a short prose meditation, Genjū-an-no-ki, in which he concludes, “In the end, without skill or talent, I’ve given myself over entirely to poetry. Po Chu-i labored at it until he nearly burst. Tu Fu starved rather than abandon it. Neither my intelligence nor my writing is comparable to such men. Nevertheless, in the end, we all live in phantom huts.”

Page Number:138

Time：2021-06-26 17:54

He wrote to a friend in Zeze in the spring of 1692, complaining, “Everywhere in this city I see people writing poetry to try to win prizes or notoriety. You can imagine what they write. Anything I might say to them would no doubt end in harsh words, so I pretend not to hear or see them.”

Page Number:140

Time：2021-06-26 17:57

Bashō’s longtime friend Kyorai asked about the master’s jisei (death poem), and was told, “Tell anyone who asks that all of my everyday poems are my jisei.”

Page Number:142

Time：2021-06-26 18:00

His fundamental teaching remained his conviction that in composing a poem, “There are two ways: one is entirely natural, in which the poem is born from within itself; the other way is to make it through the mastery of technique.” His notion of the poem being “born within itself” should under no circumstances be confused with its being self-originating. A fundamental tenet of Buddhism runs exactly to the contrary: nothing is self-originating. Bashō’s poems were in fact a natural product of his close observation of the natural relationships of people and things, our presence in “nature.” He prized sincerity and clarity and instructed, “Follow nature, return to nature, be nature.” He had learned to meet each day with fresh eyes. “Yesterday’s self is already worn out!”

Page Number:143

My Name Is Red

2023-07-12T03:18:50.000Z

My Name Is Red

By Orhan Pamuk

CHAPTER 11

Page 84 @ December 17, 2016

In one wagon I saw precisely how Sea-Captain Kılıç Ali Pasha had forced the infidels he’d captured at sea to make an “infidels’ mountain” out of clay; he’d then loaded all the slaves into the cart, and when he was right before the Sultan, he exploded the powder within the “mountain” to demonstrate how he’d made infidel lands wail and moan with cannon fire.

Religion always provokes cruelty at its height.

Page 89 @ December 17, 2016

Esther was all atwitter in the pink dress she was forced to wear as a Jew,

Hitler is not the first.

CHAPTER 31

Page 257 @ December 21, 2016

I hear the question upon your lips: What is it to be a color? Color is the touch of the eye, music to the deaf, a word out of the darkness.

Wow!

Midnight's Children

2024-10-03T08:14:46.000Z

Midnight's Children (25th Anniversary Edition)

By Salman Rushdie

Book One

Page 27 @ April 10, 2016

Nakkoo, listen, listen. I have seen plenty. Yara, you should’ve seen that Isa when he came, beard down to his balls, bald as an egg on his head. He was old and fagged-out but he knew his manners. ‘You first, Taiji,’ he’d say, and ‘Please to sit’; always a respectful tongue, he never called me crackpot, never called me tu either. Always aap . Polite, see? And what an appetite! Such a hunger, I would catch my ears in fright. Saint or devil, I swear he could eat a whole kid in one go. And so what? I told him, eat, fill your hole, a man comes to Kashmir to enjoy life, or to end it, or both. His work was finished. He just came up here to live it up a little.

চাপাবাজির চূড়ান্ত! :D

Page 61 @ April 11, 2016

I started off as a Kashmiri and not much of a Muslim. Then I got a bruise on the chest that turned me into an Indian. I’m still not much of a Muslim, but I’m all for Abdullah. He’s fighting my fight.

A wrong decision… Very wrong.

Page 74 @ April 16, 2016

The songs and dances were good and there was a beautiful nautch girl who would have looked more graceful if they hadn’t made her dance in a ten-gallon cowboy hat. Rashid sat on a bench in the front stalls and joined in the whistles and cheers. He ate two samosas, spending too much money; his mother would be hurt but he’d had a fine time. As he pedalled his rickshaw home he practiced some of the fancy riding he’d seen in the film, hanging down low on one side, freewheeling down a slight slope, using the rickshaw the way Gai-Wallah used his horse to conceal him from his enemies. Eventually he reached up, turned the handlebars and to his delight the rickshaw moved sweetly through the gate and down the gully by the cornfield

Amusing… :D

Page 86 @ April 16, 2016

bride’s veil—giving Aziz a sudden shock, making him young for a moment, and in Kashmir again, sitting on a dais while people put rupees in his lap—my grandfather made them all swear an oath not to reveal the presence in their cellar of their new brother-in-law. Emerald, reluctantly, gave her promise last of all. After that Aadam Aziz made his sons help him carry all manner of furnishings down through the trap-door in the drawing-room floor: draperies and cushions and lamps and a big comfortable bed. And at last Nadir and Mumtaz stepped down into the vaults; the trap-door was

The whole wedding thing is like a fable… :)

Meditations_ The Annotated Edition by Marcus Aurel

2023-02-12T15:55:08.000Z

Meditations: The Annotated Edition

Marcus Aurelius, Robin Waterfield (editor)

Introduction

Time: 2022-02-08 13:43

Marcus was drawn to Stoicism by its austerity (1.6) and by the quality he perceived in those who professed themselves Stoics (1.6–1.9), but an aspect of Stoicism to which he frequently returns, especially when contrasting it with Epicureanism, is the orderliness of its universe.Not only does everything have its place in the hierarchical order of things, but also the whole world has been created by a benign deity and is maintained by the providential care of that deity. Every one of a person’s experiences, therefore, has been specifically designed for that individual alone; the world is thus full of meaning. The Epicureans, by contrast, saw the world as a randomly generated conglomeration of atoms, indivisible lumps of matter; they denied the existence of gods, except as special formations of atoms, which in their view exercised no care for human beings or any other aspect of the world. And they denied that it was natural for human beings to care for others.

Time: 2022-02-08 14:00

The Stoics came up with a pretty good response.48 They claimed that, although everything has antecedent causes, things are not always necessitated by their antecedent causes. A cylindrical roller has the capacity to roll downhill. Someone can push it to start it rolling, but that person has not given it the capacity to roll, which is simply an attribute of what it is to be a cylinder. So, when an impression of some kind impinges on us (either a sense impression or an internally generated thought), it is bound to make a mark, but we do not have to give the impression the kind of assent that leads to action. The sight of a beautiful woman provokes lust in a man who lacks self-control; her beauty is the antecedent cause, but his reaction is still up to him, because it is part of his makeup, not part of the antecedent cause.

Notebook 1

Time: 2022-02-08 23:37

From Sextus: kindness; the example of a household governed by paternal authority; the true meaning of living in accord with nature;20 an unfeigned grace; paying solicitous attention to friends; tolerance of ordinary people and those whose opinions are not guided by philosophical theories; accommodating oneself to everyone (this was a feature which made his conversation more soothing than any flattery and yet at the same time made his companions treat him with the greatest respect); the convincing and methodical explication and systematization of the essential principles of life; never presenting as angry or in the grip of any other passion, but being simultaneously completely impassive and yet highly affectionate;21 praising without making a song and dance about it; and wearing one’s learning lightly.

Notebook 2

Time: 2022-02-09 01:33

Here are things you should always bear in mind: what the nature of the whole is; what my nature is; how my nature is related to the nature of the whole; what kind of part it is of what kind of whole; and that no one is stopping you from being in accord with the nature of which you are a part, in all you ever say or do.

Time: 2022-02-09 01:43

Even if you were to live for three thousand years or ten times as long, remember that the only life anyone loses is this one, the one he’s living, and the only life anyone lives is the one he loses.

Time: 2022-02-09 01:52

A person’s lifetime is a moment, his existence a flowing stream,49 his perception dull,the entire fabric of his body readily subject to decay, his soul an aimless wanderer, his fortune erratic, his fame uncertain. In short: the body is nothing but a river; the soul is dream and delusion; life is war and a sojourn in a strange land; and oblivion is all there is to posthumous fame.

Notebook 4

Time: 2022-02-09 16:58

Never act without purpose; make sure that all your actions conform to the philosophical principles that constitute the art of living.

Time: 2022-02-09 21:20

Will you be diverted by fame? Focus on the speed with which everything and everyone is forgotten, the infinite temporal gulf that stretches before and after a lifetime, the hollowness of applause, the haphazard fickleness of those who appear to speak well of you, and the narrowness of the place where fame is confined. The whole earth is just a speck. How tiny is the little corner of it where you reside? How many people are there here to praise you? What kind of men will they be?

Time: 2022-02-10 01:45

[35] Everything is ephemeral—not just the rememberer but the remembered as well.

Notebook 6

Time: 2022-02-12 00:44

[12] If you had both a stepmother and a mother, you’d do your duty by your stepmother, and yet you’d constantly return to your mother. That’s how you stand today in relation to the imperial court and philosophy. Return, then, at frequent intervals to philosophy and lean on it for rest. With its help, even court business seems tolerable to you, and you become tolerable while attending to it.

Marcus's temperament in a nutshell.

Time: 2022-02-12 00:56

[15] Some things are rushing toward existence, others rushing to have done with existence,and in a certain respect anything that comes into existence is already extinguished.17 The world is continuously being renewed by flux and alteration, just as infinite time is forever being renewed by the uninterrupted flow of time. In this torrent of instability, which of the things that are flying past might one value? It’s as if one were to begin to feel affection for a certain sparrow as it flew past—but it’s already gone from sight. In fact, life itself, the life of every individual, is no different from the vapor that’s given off by blood or a breath drawn from the outside air,18 in the sense that there’s no real difference between our momentary drawing in and releasing of air, and releasing the ability to breathe as a whole—an ability you acquired at birth yesterday or the day before—back to the place from where you first drew it.

Stoics were very similar to Buddhists in this matter. However,they accepted gods and soul wholesale.

Time: 2022-02-12 01:23

[24] Alexander of Macedon and the man who tended his mules were made equal by death,either because they were received back into the same seminal principles of the universe or because they were both equally dispersed into atoms.

Time: 2022-02-12 01:34

Beware of becoming Caesarified, dyed in purple.

Notebook 7

Time: 2022-02-13 19:39

[12] Stand straight, not straightened.

Time: 2022-02-13 19:45

[18] Is change something to fear? But can anything happen without change? Is there anything that’s nearer and dearer to universal nature? What about you personally? Can you take a warm bath unless the firewood undergoes change? Can you be nourished unless your food undergoes change? Can anything else worthwhile take place without change? So don’t you see that the changes that you experience are no different and are similarly necessary to universal nature?

Time: 2022-02-15 21:22

[61] Living is more like wrestling than dancing: one should stand ready for every contingency and avoid being thrown even by unforeseen developments.

Notebook 8

Time: 2022-02-17 08:14

[33] Accept graciously, let go easily.

Notebook 9

Time: 2022-02-17 09:23

[5] Wrongdoing is the outcome not just of action but often of inaction as well.

Notebook 10

Time: 2022-02-17 10:08

[1] My soul, will you ever be good, simple, single, and naked, brighter than the body that encases you?

Man’s Search For Meaning by Viktor E Frankl

2023-01-29T16:25:11.000Z

Man’s Search For Meaning

Viktor E Frankl

Part One: Experience in a Concentration Camp

Page 25 @ 2021-04-25 00:20

Do you know what we mean by a ‘Moslem’? A man who looks miserable, down and out, sick and emaciated, and who cannot manage hard physical labor any longer… that is a ‘Moslem.’ Sooner or later, usually sooner, every ‘Moslem’ goes to the gas chambers.

Page 31 @ 2021-04-25 00:39

Because of the high degree of undernourishment which the prisoners suffered, it was natural that the desire for food was the major primitive instinct around which mental life centered. Let us observe the majority of prisoners when they happened to work near each other and were, for once, not closely watched. They would immediately start discussing food. One fellow would ask another working next to him in the ditch what his favorite dishes were. Then they would exchange recipes and plan the menu for the day when they would have a reunion—the day in a distant future when they would be liberated and returned home. They would go on and on, picturing it all in detail, until suddenly a warning was passed down the trench, usually in the form of a special password or number: “The guard is coming.”I always regarded the discussions about food as dangerous. Is it not wrong to provoke the organism with such detailed and affective pictures of delicacies when it has somehow managed to adapt itself to extremely small rations and low calories? Though it may afford momentary psychological relief, it is an illusion which physiologically, surely, must not be without danger.

Page 40 @ 2021-04-25 14:19

The attempt to develop a sense of humor and to see things in a humorous light is some kind of a trick learned while mastering the art of living. Yet it is possible to practice the art of living even in a concentration camp, although suffering is omnipresent. To draw an analogy: a man’s suffering is similar to the behavior of gas. If a certain quantity of gas is pumped into an empty chamber, it will fill the chamber completely and evenly, no matter how big the chamber. Thus suffering completely fills the human soul and conscious mind, no matter whether the suffering is great or little. Therefore the “size” of human suffering is absolutely relative.

Part Two: Logotherapy in a Nutshell

Page 54 @ 2021-04-25 18:55

An active life serves the purpose of giving man the opportunity to realize values in creative work, while a passive life of enjoyment affords him the opportunity to obtain fulfillment in experiencing beauty, art, or nature. But there is also purpose in that life which is almost barren of both creation and enjoyment and which admits of but one possibility of high moral behavior: namely, in man’s attitude to his existence, an existence restricted by external forces. A creative life and a life of enjoyment are banned to him. But not only creativeness and enjoyment are meaningful. If there is a meaning in life at all, then there must be a meaning in suffering. Suffering is an ineradicable part of life, even as fate and death. Without suffering and death human life cannot be complete.

Page 60 @ 2021-04-25 19:13

What was really needed was a fundamental change in our attitude toward life. We had to learn ourselves and, furthermore, we had to teach the despairing men, that it did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us. We needed to stop asking about the meaning of life, and instead to think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life—daily and hourly. Our answer must consist, not in talk and meditation, but in right action and inright conduct. Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual.

Page 66 @ 2021-04-25 19:35

From all this we may learn that there are two races of men in this world, but only these two—the “race” of the decent man and the “race” of the indecent man. Both are found everywhere; they penetrate into all groups of society. No group consists entirely of decent or indecent people. In this sense, no group is of “pure race”— and therefore one occasionally found a decent fellow among the camp guards

Page 80 @ 2021-04-25 22:25

In logotherapy, love is not interpreted as a mere epiphenomenon of sexual drives and instincts in the sense of a so-called sublimation. Love is as primary a phenomenon as sex. Normally, sex is a mode of expression for love. Sex is justified, even sanctified, as soon as, but only as long as, it is a vehicle of love. Thus love is not understood as a mere side-effect of sex; rather, sex is a way of expressing the experience of that ultimate togetherness which is called love.

Page 81 @ 2021-04-25 22:28

In some way, suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning, such as the meaning of a sacrifice.

Page 92 @ 2021-04-25 23:13

Freedom, however, is not the last word. Freedom is only part of the story and half of the truth. Freedom is but the negative aspect of the whole phenomenon whose positive aspect is responsibleness. In fact, freedom is in danger of degenerating into mere arbitrariness unless it is lived in terms of responsibleness. That is why I recommend that the Statue of Liberty on the East Coast be supplemented by a Statue of Responsibility on the West Coast.

In the World

2025-05-27T13:47:06.000Z

In the World

By Maxim Gorky

CHAPTER V

Page 90 @ March 25, 2016

On one of these occasions, however, I asked him: “Why is every one afraid of you? For you are good.”

ভালো লেখকদের একটা ব্যাপার কমন মনে হচ্ছে। তারা কথা কম বলেন, বেশি দেখেন এবং বোল্ডলি ইনোসেন্ট।

CHAPTER XIV

Page 244 @ April 02, 2016

It is painful to remember how many good people in my life I have seen senselessly ruined. People of all nations wear themselves out, and to ruin themselves comes natural, but nowhere do they wear themselves out so terribly quickly, so senselessly, as in our own Russia.

এই ব্যথা, এই সমবেদনাই বড় মানুষ তৈরী করে।

CHAPTER XV

Page 256 @ April 03, 2016

Nothing more than a small boy, an orphan, thirteen years old — and I, nearly four times your age, praise you and approve of you, because you always stand with your face to people and not sideways! Stand like that always, and you will be all right!

And once again, simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.

CHAPTER XVI

Page 279 @ April 04, 2016

Not wishing to be behind them in anything, I also fell in love with Miss Ptitzin.

হাহাহাহা!

CHAPTER XX

Page 341 @ April 05, 2016

Why do I relate these abominations? So that you may know, kind sirs, that is not all past and done with! You have a liking for grim fantasies; you are delighted with horrible stories well told; the grotesquely terrible excites you pleasantly. But I know of genuine horrors, everyday terrors, and I have an undeniable right to excite you unpleasantly by telling you about them, in order that you may remember how we live, and under what circumstances. A low and unclean life it is, ours, and that is the truth! I am a lover of humanity and I have no desire to make any one miserable, but one must not be sentimental, nor hide the grim truth with the motley words of beautiful lies. Let us face life as it is!

So true…

How Religion Evolved by Robin Dunbar

2023-07-12T08:27:53.000Z

How Religion Evolved, And Why it Endures

Robin Dunbar

INTRODUCTION

Page 10 @ 01 April 2023 05:34:09 PM

A more drastic attempt was made to suppress religion and replace it with state atheism in post-revolutionary Russia. Church property was confiscated, believers harassed and religion ridiculed. Later, in Communist China, religion was outlawed, the possession of religious texts criminalized, mosques and historic Buddhist monasteries bulldozed, religious minorities harassed or forced into ‘re-education’ centres, and their clergy imprisoned. Yet, despite these determined onslaughts, religious belief and religious institutions survived, often underground. As soon as the restrictions were lifted, religion bounced back. Why are people so predisposed to be religious?

Historically speaking, this never works.

CHAPTER 1: How to Study Religion

Page 16 @ 02 April 2023 05:59:03 PM

The word Easter as used in the Roman (as opposed to Greek Orthodox) tradition, for example, derives from the Old English Eostre, the month dedicated to the Germanic goddess of that name – herself an ancient Indo-European goddess of dawn who, given the spring date associated with her, may well have been a fertility goddess.

Page 21 @ 02 April 2023 07:55:26 PM

Biologists commonly differentiate between four different kinds of questions that we can ask. These are known as Tinbergen’s Four Whys in reference to the fact that the ethologist Niko Tinbergen spelled them out in a seminal paper in 1963. Though they were originally formulated as four different ‘Why’ questions (just as a child keeps asking ‘… but why?’), they are perhaps better thought of as questions about why, what, how, and when: what is the function or purpose of a trait (the ‘why’ question), what mechanism allows it to produce that effect, how does the trait develop in the organism during the process of ontogeny (the process whereby the fertilized egg develops eventually into an adult – a combination of inherited genes, learning and the environment it develops in), and when in its history did a species acquire the trait?

CHAPTER 2: The Mystical Stance

Page 26 @ 03 April 2023 10:27:54 PM

The mystical stance seems to emerge out of two separate, but related psychological components. One is a need to believe in a spiritual dimension to human life. This may well derive from a deep-seated reluctance to believe that death really is death, the end of life and being. The other has to do with altered states of consciousness, both those induced by trance and those that arise from accidents of experience (such as epileptic fits) or the use of mind-altering drugs.

Page 27 @ 03 April 2023 10:31:24 PM

The experience of trance also bears a close similarity to those that occur during near-death experiences. Indeed, near-death experiences often lead to ‘born again’ religious conversions. An analysis of over two hundred cases of near-death experience found that these were often associated with a suite of psychological states of mind, including a sense of invulnerability, a feeling of special importance or destiny, a belief in having received a special favour from God or fate, and a strengthened belief in a continued existence after death.10 Raymond Prince referred to this as the ‘omnipotence maneuver’.11 We feel empowered to take on the world, undaunted by the worst it can throw at us. Invariably, this is accompanied by a desperate need to persuade others of this extraordinary new knowledge we have acquired.

Page 28 @ 03 April 2023 10:37:45 PM

In most cases, these benign spirit-guides are good ancestors – who no doubt have a vested evolutionary interest in ensuring that their relative gets back to the real world where they can continue with the evolutionary business of producing descendants for them!

Sarcasm?

CHAPTER 3: Why Believing Might Be Good for You

Page 35 @ 04 April 2023 12:17:38 PM

Over the last century or so, a number of scholars have made suggestions. Broadly speaking, these boil down to five general themes: religion as a form of primitive science, religion as a form of medical intervention, religion as an enforcer of cooperation, religion as a mechanism of political oppression (in the words of Karl Marx, the opium of the people), and religion as a mechanism for community bonding. Each has its ardent defenders and each looks plausible on the grounds articulated by their respective protagonists.

Page 38 @ 04 April 2023 01:06:18 PM

So far, then, contrary to the claims often made, at least in the evolutionary literature, there is clear evidence that being actively religious does provide benefits at the personal level that are likely to have a direct effect on individuals’ evolutionary fitness. The evidence is probably stronger for the direct effects of religion on health than for indirect effects that come through interventions by a shaman healer or saint. Whether or not it works in the way religion claims it does is, of course, neither here nor there. The only question is whether it works, even if this is via a placebo effect.

CHAPTER 4: Communities and Congregations

Page 65 @ 12 April 2023 09:12:42 PM

The core of the social brain hypothesis is a simple linear relationship between the typical social group size of a species and the size of its brain – or, more strictly, the size of its neocortex. The neocortex (literally, ‘new cortex’) is the part of the brain that supports all the clever thinking that we do. It has evolved out of all proportion to the size of the rest of the brain in the primate lineage. In mammals as a whole, it occupies 10–40 per cent of brain volume, but in primates it begins at 50 per cent and rises to 80 per cent in humans. This relationship between neocortex size and group size in primates allows us to estimate the equivalent ‘natural’ group size for humans: it is simply a matter of plugging human neocortex size into the equation for the monkeys and apes, and then reading off the corresponding group size. The group size for humans predicted by this equation is 150, to the nearest round number.

Page 77 @ 12 April 2023 10:12:52 PM

mentalizing is the ability to understand someone else’s intentions. The concept was originally proposed by the English philosopher of language Paul Grice, who in the 1950s suggested that much of the work in conversational exchanges was done by the listener rather than the speaker: the listener has to work out what the speaker is intending to mean, not least because the actual words uttered by the speaker are often ambiguous – we often find it difficult to express in words our inner feelings and emotions. This capacity is exemplified by the ability to use words like knowing, thinking, supposing, wondering, imagining, intending – known collectively to philosophers of language as intentional terms.

Page 81 @ 13 April 2023 09:20:01 PM

If I can graduate to third-order intentionality, I can believe that you think that there is some other world in which God exists. The important point here is not just that you have a belief about some physical fact (‘I believe the tree in front of me exists’) but that you have a belief about an invisible world that you have to be able to imagine. It’s a two-step process, involving two orders of intentionality. At this point, we now have what I would call a simple religious fact – a belief about the existence of a transcendal world, but not about the impact that world would have on us in our world. To be able to imagine that God also has an intentional mind, I have to be able to achieve a further order of intentionality. Once I can do that (with fourth-order intentionality), I can imagine that God has intentions that might affect our world. At this level, we have what I call personal religion. It is a personal belief that only the believer is committed to; when I think about your belief in this respect, however, I do not have to accept that it is true. Only with fifth-order intentionality is it possible to formulate a proposition about God’s intentional status that we can both sign up to. At this point, we are both committed to our belief in God’s intentions, and so we can have a genuinely communal religion. This seems to be a real Rubicon, or phase shift.

Page 81 @ 13 April 2023 09:20:24 PM

Intentionality level	Possible statements of belief	Form of religion
1st	I believe that [rain is falling]	not possible
2nd	I believe that you think [rain is falling]	not possible
3rd	I believe that you think that God exists [in a transcendental world]	religious fact
4th	I believe that you think that God exists and intends to punish us	personal religion
5th	I believe that you think that we both know that God exists and intends to punish us	communal religion

Table 1: Forms of religious belief that are made possible by different levels of intentionality.

Page 81 @ 12 April 2023 10:15:42 PM

Schizotypal thinking is the tendency to have unusual perceptual experiences (seeing ghosts or hearing voices) and disorganized thought processes, and has been explicitly linked to religiosity. In its extreme, clinical form it manifests as schizophrenia, a condition that often involves perceptual and mental-state misattribution – attributing your thoughts to others or their thoughts to you, or, in extreme cases, hearing God telling you what to do.

Page 82 @ 12 April 2023 10:16:34 PM

The results of this study suggest that mentalizing positively influences religiosity quite independently of agency detection and schizotypal thinking, both of which are extremely closely correlated. In fact, people who are predisposed to schizotypal thinking tend to have an unusually active hyperactive agency detection mechanism. This suggests that you can be religious either because you are prone to seeing visions or because you can reflect deeply on the mental states of God in his transcendental world. This is interesting because it suggests there might be two types of religious people who engage in two very different types of religion – reactive religion and reflective religion, or as I put it in Chapter 1, shamanic/immersive religion versus doctrinal religion.

CHAPTER 7: Religion in Prehistory

Page 105 @ 13 April 2023 05:58:38 PM

In one such study, six religious traits were mapped across thirty-three contemporary hunter-gatherer societies distributed across southern Africa, South and East Asia, Australia and the Americas, and then the ancestral states of these traits reconstructed statistically. The six traits were: animistic beliefs, shamanism, ancestor worship, belief in an afterlife, belief in local gods who keep to their own domain, and belief in High Gods who interfere in human affairs (Moralizing High Gods). The study found that animism is likely to have been the oldest of these traits, being present, uniquely, in all the cultures in the sample, despite their wide geographical distribution. On the other hand, belief in an afterlife is by no means universal and, along with shamanism and ancestor worship, appears to form a suite of traits that evolved together later. In contrast, belief in High Gods seemed to be completely divorced from all the other traits (very few hunter-gatherers actually believe in High Gods); instead, it seems to be a trait exclusively associated with the rise of agriculture and pastoralism.

CHAPTER 8: A Crisis in the Neolithic

Page 133 @ 14 April 2023 12:56:58 AM

A Moralizing High God, of the kind found in many of the world religions, seems to represent a final stage of development that appears only when the civic units are very large.

CHAPTER 9: Cults, Sects and Charismatics

Page 141 @ 14 April 2023 11:36:15 AM

In a detailed examination of the relationship between religiosity and psychological characteristics, the psychiatrist and anthropologist Simon Dien has suggested that schizophrenia and religious experience draw on the same cognitive processes in the brain.

Generated at: 2023-04-14-23-59-35

House Of Leaves

2025-05-27T11:16:30.000Z

House Of Leaves

Mark Z. Danielewski

Introduction

Page: 19 (2.57%) @ 26 Feb 2025 12:51:45 AM

As I discovered, there were reams and reams of it. Endless snarls of words, sometimes twisting into meaning, sometimes into nothing at all, frequently breaking apart, always branching off into other pieces I'd come across later- on old napkins, the tattered edges of an envelope, once even on the back of a postage stamp; everything and anything but empty; each fragment completely covered with the creep of years and years of ink pronouncements; layered, crossed out, amended; handwritten, typed; legible, illegible; impenetrable, lucid; torn, stained, scotch taped; some bits crisp and clean, others faded, burnt or folded and refolded so many times the creases have obliterated whole passages of god knows what-sense? truth? deceit? a legacy of prophecy or lunacy or nothing of the kind?, and in the end achieving, designating, describing, recreating-find your own words; I have no more; or plenty more but why? and all to tell what?

[!stylish] Stylish

Page: 22 (2.97%) @ 28 Feb 2025 10:35:31 PM

[!stylish] Stylish

Page: 22 (2.97%) @ 28 Feb 2025 10:37:03 PM

"Irony? Irony can never be more than our own personal Maginot Line; the drawing of it, for the most part, purely arbitrary."

[!stylish] Stylish

Page: 23 (3.11%) @ 28 Feb 2025 10:38:16 PM

Zampanò writes constantly about seeing. What we see, how we see and what in turn we can't see. Over and over again, in one form or another, he returns to the subject of light, space, shape, line, color, focus, tone, contrast, movement, rhythm, perspective and composition. None of which is surprising considering Zampanò's piece centers on a documentary film called The Navidson Record made by a Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist who must somehow capture the most difficult subject of all: the sight of darkness itself.

[!question] Thought Provoking

Page: 23 (3.11%) @ 02 Mar 2025 06:28:20 PM

Well that, of course, was Zampanò's greatest ironic gesture; love of love written by the broken-hearted; love of life written by the dead: all this language of light, film and photography, and he hadn't seen a thing since the mid-fifties.

[!stylish] Stylish

Page: 24 (3.24%) @ 02 Mar 2025 06:43:17 PM

With a little luck, you'll dismiss this labor, react as Zampanò had hoped, call it needlessly complicated, pointlessly obtuse, prolix-your word, ridiculously conceived, and you'll believe all you've said, and then you'll put it aside though even here, just that one word, "aside", makes me shudder, for what is ever really just put aside? -and you'll carry on, eat, drink, be merry and most of all you'll sleep well. Then again there's a good chance you won't. This much I'm certain of: it doesn't happen immediately. You'll finish and that will be that, until a moment will come, maybe in a month, maybe a year, maybe even several years. You'll be sick or feeling troubled or deeply in love or quietly uncertain or even content for the first time in your life. It won't matter. Out of the blue, beyond any cause you can trace, you'll suddenly realize things are not how you perceived them to be at all. For Some reason, you will no longer be the person you believed you once were

[!stylish] Stylish
I felt this way after reading the Book of Disquiet.
Normally it means a piece of work that is unapologetically personal.

Page: 25 (3.38%) @ 02 Mar 2025 06:47:27 PM

You might try then, as I did, to find a sky so full of stars it will blind you again. Only no sky can blind you now. Even with all that iridescent magic up there, your eye Will no longer linger on the light, it will no longer trace constellations. You'll care only about the darkness and you'll watch it for ho for days, maybe even for years, trying in vain to believe you're some kind of indispensable, universe-appointed sentinel, as if just by looking you could actually keep it all at bay. It will get so bad you'll be afraid to look away, you'll be afraid to sleep.

[!stylish] Stylish

1004

Page: 32 (4.32%) @ 02 Mar 2025 07:12:01 PM

Even today many people still feel The Navidson Record, in spite of all its existential refinements and contemporary allusions, continues to reflect those exact sentiments. In fact, a few eager intellectuals have already begun to treat the film as a warning in and of itself, perfectly suited for hanging whole above the gates of such schools as Architectonics, Popomo, Consequentialism, Neo-Plasticism, Phenomenology, Information Theory, Marxism, Biosemiotics, to say nothing of psychology, medicine, New Age spirituality, art and even Neo-Minimalism.

[!question] Thought Provoking: Why?

1012

Page: 40 (5.41%) @ 02 Mar 2025 07:38:14 PM

In that peculiar contradiction that serves as connective tissue in so many relationships, it is possible to see that she loves Navidson almost as much as she has no room for him.

[!stylish] Stylish

1021

Page: 49 (6.62%) @ 02 Mar 2025 08:41:30 PM

What can I say, I'm a sucker for abandoned stuff, misplaced stuff, forgotten stuff, any old stuff which despite the light of progress and all that, still vanishes every day like shadows at noon, goings unheralded, passings unmourned, well, you get the drift.

[!stylish] Stylish

1030

Page: 58 (7.84%) @ 03 Mar 2025 12:35:07 AM

Karen refuses the knowledge. A reluctant Eve who prefers tangerines to apples.

[!stylish] Stylish

1031

Page: 59 (7.97%) @ 03 Mar 2025 12:42:37 AM

Zampanò himself probably would of insisted on corrections and edits, he was his own harshest critic, but I've come to believe errors, especially written errors, are often the only markers left by a solitary life: to sacrifice them is to lose the angles of personality, the riddle of a soul. In this case a very old soul. A very old riddle.

[!question] Thought Provoking

1032

Page: 60 (8.11%) @ 03 Mar 2025 12:45:03 AM

At first glance, it seems hard to believe these two men are even related let alone brothers. Tom is content if there happens to be a game on and a soft place from which to watch it. Navidson works out every day, devours volumes of esoteric criticism, and constantly attaches the world around him to one thing: photography. Tom gets by, Navidson succeeds. Tom just wants to be, Navidson must become. And yet despite such obvious differences, anyone who looks past Tom's wide grin and considers his eyes will find surprisingly deep pools of sorrow. Which is how we know they are brothers, because like Tom, Navidson's eyes share the same water.

[!stylish] Stylish

Page: 60 (8.11%) @ 03 Mar 2025 12:46:27 AM

As science writer and sometime theologian David Conte wrote: "God for all intents and purposes is an equal sign, and at least up until now, something humanity has always been able to believe in is that the universe adds up.

[!question] Thought Provoking

1033

Page: 61 (8.24%) @ 03 Mar 2025 01:04:46 AM

It is beneficial to consider the origins of "riddle." The Old English rēdelse means "opinion, conjure" which is related to the Old English radon "to interpret" in turn belonging to the same etymological history of "read." "Riddling" is an offshoot of "reading" calling to mind the participatory nature of that act-to interpret-which is all the adult world has left when faced with the unsolvable.

[!important] Striking/Intense

1035

Page: 63 (8.51%) @ 03 Mar 2025 01:28:45 AM

imperceivable and alone, though not I think so lonely

[!important] Striking/Intense

1039

Page: 67 (9.05%) @ 03 Mar 2025 12:16:13 PM

When confronting the spatial disparity in the house, Karen set her mind on familiar things while Navidson went in search of a solution. The children, however, just accepted it. They raced through the closet. They played in it. They inhabited it. They denied the paradox by swallowing it whole. Paradox, after all, is two irreconcilable truths. But children do not know the laws of the world well enough yet to fear the ramifications of the irreconcilable. There are certainly no primal associations with spatial anomalies.

[!question] Thought Provoking

1041

Page: 69 (9.32%) @ 03 Mar 2025 12:22:50 PM

To illustrate the multiple resonances found in an echo, the Greeks conjured up the story of a beautiful mountain nymph. Her name was Echo and she made the mistake of helping Zeus succeed in one of his sexual conquests. Hera found out and punished Echo, making it impossible for her to say anything except the last words spoken to her. Soon after, Echo fell in love with Narcissus whose obsession with himself caused her to pine away until only her voice remained. Another lesser-known version of this myth is Pan falling in love with Echo. Echo, however, rejects his amorous offers and Pan, being the god of civility and restraint, tears her to pieces, burying all of her except her voice. Adonta ta mele, In both cases, unfulfilled love results in the total negation of Echo's body and the near negation of her voice,

[!quote] Quotable/Concept/General Idea

1044

Page: 72 (9.73%) @ 03 Mar 2025 12:31:56 PM

On page 4, he even provides a woodcut from Athanasius Kircher's Neue Hall -und Thonkunst (Nördlingen, 1684) illustrating an artificial echo machine designed to exchange "clamore" for four echoes: "amore,""more" ore," and finally " re."

[!important] Striking/Intense
"O outcry" returns as "love," "delays," "hours" and "king".

1045

Page: 73 (9.86%) @ 03 Mar 2025 12:43:20 PM

In 1989, however, the noted southern theologian Hanson Edwin Rose dramatically revised this reading. In a series of lectures delivered at Chapel Hill, Rose referred to "God's Grand Utterance" as "The Biggest Bang Of Them All" After discussing in depth the difference between the Hebrew davhar and the Greek logos, Rose took a careful accounting of St. John, chapter 1, Verse 1–"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." It was a virtuoso performance but one that surely would have been relegated to those dusty shelves already burdened with a thousand years of seminary discourse had he not summed up his ruminations with this incendiary and still infamous conclusion: "Look to the sky, look to yourself and remember: we are only god's echoes and god is Narcissus,"

[!question] Thought Provoking

Page: 73 (9.86%) @ 03 Mar 2025 12:44:44 PM

Why did god create a dual universe? So he might say, "Be not like me. I am alone." And it might be heard.

[!stylish] Stylish

1050

Page: 78 (10.54%) @ 03 Mar 2025 01:05:24 PM

Myth makes Echo the subject of longing and desire. Physics makes Echo the subject of distance and design. Where emotion and reason are concerned both claims are accurate. And where there is no Echo there is no description of space or love. There is only silence.

[!stylish] Stylish

1053

Page: 81 (10.95%) @ 03 Mar 2025 01:14:33 PM

Quick note here: if this crush-slash-swooning stuff is hard for you to stomach; if you've never had a similar experience, then you should come to grips with the fact that you've got a TV dinner for a heart and might want to consider climbing inside a microwave and turning it on high for at least an hour, which if you do consider only goes to show what kind of idiot you truly are because microwaves are way too small for anyone, let alone you, to climb into. Quick second note: if that last paragraph didn't apply to you, you may skip it and proceed to this next part.

[!stylish] Stylish
I laughed so hard reading this that my wife came to check on me.

1087

Page: 115 (15.54%) @ 05 Mar 2025 12:50:32 AM

Even after seeing Navidson's accomplished shots, it is hard to disagree with Holloway. The darkness recreated in a lab or television set does not begin to tell the true story. Whether chemical clots determining black or video grey approximating absence, the images still remain two-dimensional. In order to have a third dimension, depčh cues are required, which in the case of the stairway means more light. The flares, however, barely illuminate the size of that bore. In fact, they are easily extinguished by the very thing they are supposed to expose. Only knowledge illuminates that bottomless place, disclosing the deep ultimately absent in all the tapes and stills -those strange cartes de visites. It is unfortunate that Holloway's images cannot even be counted as approximations of that vast abrupt, where as Rilke wrote, "aber da, an diesem schwarzen Fellel wird dein stärkstes Schauen aufgelöst"

[!question] Thought Provoking

1112

Page: 140 (18.92%) @ 08 Mar 2025 02:27:35 AM

This is why classical thought concerning structure could say that the center is, paradoxically, within the structure and outside it. The center is at the center of the totality, and yet, since the center does not belong to the totality (is not part of the totality), the totality has its center elsewhere. The center is not the center.

[!question] Thought Provoking

1123

Page: 151 (20.41%) @ 08 Mar 2025 03:14:03 AM

"Goethe once remarked in a letter to Johann Peter Eckermann [March 23, 1829]: 'I call architecture frozen music.'

[!important] Striking/Intense

1326

Page: 354 (47.84%) @ 13 Mar 2025 03:20:13 PM

I wash the sweat off my face, do my best to suppress a shiver, can't, return to the body, spread out across the table like papers-and let me tell you there's more than just The Navidson Record lying there-bloodless and still but not at all dead, calling me to it, needing me now like a child, depending on me despite its age. After all, I'm its source, the one who feeds it, nurses it back. to health not life, I fear-bones of bond paper, trans fusions of ink, genetic encryption in xerox; monstrous, maybe inaccurate correlates, but nonetheless there. And necessary to animate it all? For is that not an ultimate, the ultimate goal? Not some heaven-sent blast of electricity but me, and not me unto me, but me unto it, if those two things are really at all different, which is still to say state the obvious-without me it would perish.

[!stylish] Stylish

1366

Page: 394 (53.24%) @ 17 Mar 2025 05:45:14 PM

I don't think I'm alone in feeling the immutable sadness contained in these fragments. Perhaps that is the price of remembering, the price of perceiving accurately. At least with such sorrow must come knowledge.

[!stylish] Stylish

1368

Page: 396 (53.51%) @ 17 Mar 2025 05:52:34 PM

There are only 8,160 frames in Karen's film and yet they serve as the perfect counterpoint to that infinite stretch of hallways, rooms and stairs. The house is empty, her piece is full. The house is dark, her film glows. A growl haunts that place, her place is blessed by Charlie Parker. On Ash Tree Lane stands a house of darkness, cold, and emptiness. In 16mm stands a house of light, love, and colour.

[!stylish] Stylish

1497

Page: 525 (70.95%) @ 23 Mar 2025 01:50:49 PM

Here then at long last is my darkness. No cry of light, no glimmer, not even the faintest shard of hope to break free across the hold. I will become, I have become, a creature unstirred by history, no longer moved by the present, just hungry, blind and at long last full of mindless Wrath.

[!stylish] Stylish

1502

Page: 530 (71.62%) @ 23 Mar 2025 02:12:00 PM

A quick re-read of all this and I begin to see I'm tracing the wrong history. Virginia may have meant a great deal to Zampanò's imagination. doesn't to mine. I'm following something else. Maybe parallel. Possibly harmonic. Certainly personal. A vein of it inhabiting every place I've visited so far, whether in Texsus, I finally went New Orleans, Asheville, North Carolina or any other twist of road or broken town I happened to cross on my way east. I cannot tell you why I didn't see her until now. And it wasn't a scent that brought her back either or the wistful edges of some found object or any other on-the-road revelation. It was my own hand that did this. Maybe you saw her first? Caught a glimpse, between the lines, between the letters, like a ghost in the mirror, a ghost in the wings? My mother is right before me now, right before you. There as the docent, as the interpreter, maybe even as this strange and tangled countryside. Her shallow face, the dark lyric in her eyes and of course her words, in those far-reaching letters she used to send me when I was young, secretly alluding to how she could sit and watch the night seal the đusk, year after year, waiting it out like a cat. Or observe how WOrds themselves can also Write. Or even, in her own beautiful, and yes horrifying way, instruct me on how to murder. One day even demonstrate it. She is here now. She has always been here.

[!stylish] Stylish

1509

Page: 537 (72.57%) @ 25 Mar 2025 01:19:17 AM

I went outside. Tried taking in the billions of stars above, lingering long enough to allow each point of light the chance to scratch a deep hole in the back of my retina, so that when I finally did turn to face the dark surrounding forest I thought I saw the billion eyes of a billion cats blinking out, in the math of the líving, the sum of the universe, the stories of history, a life older than anyone could have ever imagined. And even after they were gone-fading away together, as if they really were one-something still lingered in those sweet folds of black pine, sitting quietly, almost as if it too were waiting for something to wake.

[!stylish] Stylish

1518

Page: 546 (73.78%) @ 25 Mar 2025 01:42:03 AM

The book is burning. At last. A strange light scans each page, memorizing all of it even as each character twists into ash. At least the fire is warm, warming my hands, warming my face, parting the darkest waters of the deepest eye, even if at the same time it casts long shadows on the world, the cost of any pyre, finally heated beyond recovery, shattered into specters of đust, stolen by the sky, flung to sea and sand.

[!stylish] Stylish

1545

Page: 573 (77.43%) @ 25 Mar 2025 02:10:17 AM

Stars to live by. Stars to steer by. Stars to die by.

[!stylish] Stylish

1546

Page: 574 (77.57%) @ 25 Mar 2025 02:11:43 AM

Prometheus, thief of light, giver of light, bound by the gods, must have been a book.

[!stylish] Stylish

1563

Page: 591 (79.86%) @ 25 Mar 2025 02:17:02 AM

Little solace comes to those who grieve when thoughts keep drifting as walls keep shifting and this great blue world of ours seems a house of leaves moments before the wind.

[!stylish] Stylish

1587

Page: 615 (83.11%) @ 04 Mar 2025 12:51:14 AM

Remember your mother loves you, despite her crumbling biology. Also remember, love inhabits more than just the heart and mind. If need be it can take shelter in a big toe.

[!stylish] Stylish

1595

Page: 623 (84.19%) @ 04 Mar 2025 01:01:08 AM

Well if you must strike then I certainly won't stand in your way. Just remember words can exceed the might of all blows. In some cases, they can be fatal For the rare few, even immortal. Try them out now and then on your foes

[!important] Striking/Intense

1646

Page: 674 (91.08%) @ 25 Mar 2025 02:21:25 AM

Le coeur a ses raisons, gue la raison ne connair point

[!stylish] Stylish
"The heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing. " - Blaise Pascal (Pensées)

Page: 674 (91.08%) @ 25 Mar 2025 02:28:29 AM

Je ne vois qu'infini par toutes les fenêtres

[!stylish] Stylish
"Through all windows, I see only Infinity." - Charles Baudelaire (Les Fleurs du Mal)

Page: 674 (91.08%) @ 25 Mar 2025 02:30:55 AM

Un livre est un grand cimetière où sur la plupart des tombes on ne peut plus lire les noms effacés

[!stylish] Stylish
"A book is a vast cemetery where for the most part one can no longer read the faded names on the tombstones" - Marcel Proust

1650

Page: 678 (91.62%) @ 25 Mar 2025 02:32:58 AM

As I dig for wild orchids
in the autumn fields,
it is the deeply-bedded root
that I desire,
not the flower.

[!stylish] Stylish: Izumi Shikibu

Homage to Catalonia

2023-01-30T17:42:18.000Z

Homage to Catalonia

by George Orwell

3

Page 24 @ March 22, 2019

In trench warfare five things are important: firewood, food, tobacco, candles, and the enemy. In winter on the Zaragoza front they were important in that order, with the enemy a bad last.

Indeed.

Page 29 @ March 22, 2019

‘Revolutionary’ discipline depends on political consciousness — on an understanding of why orders must be obeyed; it takes time to diffuse this, but it also takes time to drill a man into an automaton on the barrack-square.

Indeed.

Page 37 @ March 23, 2019

Nothing will convince a Spaniard, at least a young Spaniard, that fire-arms are dangerous. Once, rather later than this, I was photographing some machine-gunners with their gun, which was pointed directly towards me. ‘Don't fire,’ I said half-jokingly as I focused the camera. ‘Oh no, we won't fire.’ The next moment there was a frightful roar and a stream of bullets tore past my face so close that my cheek was stung by grains of cordite. It was unintentional, but the machine-gunners considered it a great joke.

😂😂😂😂

4

Page 42 @ March 23, 2019

As a matter of fact, on this front and at this period of the war the real weapon was not the rifle but the megaphone. Being unable to kill your enemy you shouted at him instead.

😂😂😂

5

Page 66 @ March 23, 2019

One of the dreariest effects of this war has been to teach me that the Left-wing press is every bit as spurious and dishonest as that of the Right (7).

6

Page 87 @ March 23, 2019

In the daytime the guns thundered fitfully. Torre Fabián, now our cookhouse, was shelled and partially destroyed. It is curious that when you are watching artillery-fire from a safe distance you always want the gunner to hit his mark, even though the mark contains your dinner and some of your comrades.

😂😂😑😑

13

Page 204 @ March 26, 2019

Bands of armed Assault Guards roamed everywhere in the streets, the Civil Guards were still holding cafés and other buildings in strategic spots, and many of the P.S.U.C. buildings were still sandbagged and barricaded. At v

14

Page 230 @ March 26, 2019

I record this, trivial though it may sound, because it is somehow typical of Spain — of the flashes of magnanimity that you get from Spaniards in the worst of circumstances. I have the most evil memories of Spain, but I have very few bad memories of Spaniards.

Hm.

Gödel, Escher, Bach_ An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas R. Hofstadter

2026-02-16T20:53:09.000Z

Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid

Douglas R. Hofstadter

[!WARNING] OCR-ed text
These annotations contain OCR-ed texts. Minor inaccuracies are expected.

Preface

Page: 6 (0.73%) @ 16 Mar 2025 06:12:31 PM

In a word, GEB is a very personal attempt to say how it is that animate beings can come out of inanimate matter. What is a self, and how can a self come out of stuff that is as selfless as a stone or a puddle? What is an "I", and why are such things found (at least so far) only in association with, as poet Russell Edson once wonderfully phrased it, "teetering bulbs of dread and dream"– that is, only in association with certain kinds of gooey lumps encased in hard protective shells mounted atop mobile pedestals that roam the world on pairs of slightly fuzzy, jointed stilts?

[!question] Thought Provoking

Page: 10 (1.22%) @ 16 Mar 2025 08:10:08 PM

In short, an "I" comes about – in my view, at least via a kind of vortex whereby patterns in a brain mirror the brain's mirroring of the world, and eventually mirror themselves, whereupon the vortex of "I" becomes a real, causal entity.

[!question] Thought Provoking

Page: 11 (1.34%) @ 16 Mar 2025 08:13:04 PM

I can't help but recall, at this point, a horribly elitist but very droll remark by one of mny favorite writers, the American "critic of the seven arts", James Huneker, in his scintillating biography of Frédéric Chopin, on the subject of Chopin's étude Op. 25, No. 11 in A minor, which for me, and for Huneker, is one of the most stirring and most sublime pieces of music ever written: "Small-souled men, no matter how agile their fingers, should avoid it."

[!stylish] Stylish

Page: 16 (1.95%) @ 16 Mar 2025 08:36:48 PM

Only at this stage did the book's unusual stylistic hallmarks really emerge the sometimes-silly playing with words, the concocting of novel verbal structures that imitate musical forms, the wallowing in analogies of every sort, the spinning of stories whose very structures exemplify the points they are talking about, the mixing of oddball personaliues in fantastic scenarios. As I was writing, I certainly knew that my book would be quite different from other books on related topics, and that I was violating quite a number of conventions. Nonetheless, I blithely continued, because I felt confident that what I was doing simply had to be done, and that it had an intrinsic rightness to it. One of the key qualities that made me so believe in what I was doing is that this was a book in which form was being given equal billing with content - and that was no accident, since GEB is in large part about how content is inseparable from form, how semantics is of a piece with syntax, how inextricable pattern and matter are from each other

[!question] Thought Provoking

Introduction: A Musical-logical Offering

Page: 53 (6.46%) @ 20 Mar 2025 07:21:19 PM

There is one canon in the Musical Offering which is particularly unusual. Labelled simply "Canon per Tonos", it has three voices. The uppermost voice sings a variant of the Royal Theme, while underneath it, two voices provide a canonic harmonization based on a second theme. The lower of this pair sings its theme in C minor (which is the key of the canon as a whole), and the upper of the pair sings the same theme displaced upwards in pitch by an interval of a fifth. What makes this canon different from any other, however, is that when it concludes-or, rather, seems to conclude-it is no longer in the key of C minor, but now is in D minor. Somehow, Bach has contrived to modulate (change keys) right under the listener's nose. And it is so constructed that this "ending" ties smoothly onto the beginning again; thus, one can repeat the process and return in the key of E, only to join again to the beginning. These successive modulations lead the car to increasingly remote provinces of tonality, so that after several of them, one would expect to be hopelessly far away from the starting key. And yet magically, after exactly six such modulations, the original key of C minor has been restored! All the voices are exactly one octave higher than they were at the beginning, and here the piece may be broken off in a musically agreeable way. Such, one imagines, was Bach's intention; but Bach undoubtedly also relished the implication that this process could go on ad infinitum, which is perhaps why he wrote in the margin, "As the modulation rises, so may the King's Glory." To emphasise its potentially infinite aspect, I like to call this the "Endlessly Rising Canon

[!important] Striking/Intense

Page: 53 (6.46%) @ 20 Mar 2025 07:24:36 PM

In this canon, Bach has given us our first example of the notion of Strange Loops. The "Strange Loop" phenomenon occurs whenever, by moving upwards (or downwards) through the levels of some hierarchical system, we unexpectedly find ourselves right back where we started. (Here, the system is that of musical keys.)

[!question] Thought Provoking

Page: 64 (7.80%) @ 20 Mar 2025 07:56:08 PM

Russell and Whitehead did subscribe to this view, and accordingly, Principia Mathematica was a mammoth exercise in exorcising Strange Loops from logic, set theory, and number theory. The idea of their system was basically this. A set of the lowest "type" could contain only "objects" as members, not sets. A set of the next type up could only contain objects or sets of the lowest type. In general, a set of a given type could only contain sets of a lower type or objects. Every set would belong to a specific type. Clearly, no set could contain itself because it would have to belong to a type higher than its own type. Only "run-of-the-mill" sets exist in such a system; furthermore, old R—the set of all run-of-the-mill sets—no longer is considered a set at all, because it does not belong to any finite type. To all appearances, then, this theory of tybes, which we might also call the "theory of the abolition of Strange Loops", successfully rids set theory of its paradoxes, but only at the cost of introducing an artificial-seeming hierarchy, and of disallowing the formation of certain kinds of sets such as the set of all run-of-the-mill sets. Intuitively, this is not the way we imagine sets.

[!question] Thought Provoking: This hierarchy doesn't look artificial to me.

Page: 65 (7.92%) @ 20 Mar 2025 08:00:29 PM

Now in set theory, which deals with abstractions that we don't use all the time, a stratification like the theory of types seems acceptable, even if a little strange—but when it comes to language, an all-pervading part of life, such stratification appears absurd.

[!sceptic] Sceptic
It may seem absurd in day-to-day use, but the most trivial of 'specialised communication' requires jargon—formal concepts—contextual and rigid in definition. These jargons are not easily transferable with a specific method of conversion.

Page: 66 (8.04%) @ 20 Mar 2025 08:11:09 PM

It is of course important to try to maintain consistency, but when this effort forces you into a stupendously ugly theory, you know something is wrong.

[!sceptic] Sceptic: Beauty is a dubious standard for the validity of a theory.

Page: 69 (8.40%) @ 21 Mar 2025 03:26:56 AM

Here, one runs up against a seeming paradox. Computers, by their very nature, are the most inflexible, desireless, rule-following of beasts. Fast though they may be, they are nonetheless the epitome of unconsciousness. How, then, can intelligent behavior be programmed? Isn't this the most blatant of contradictions in terms? One of the major theses of this book is that it is not a contradiction at all. One of the major purposes of this book is to urge each reader to confront the apparent contradiction head on, to savor it, to turn it over, to take it apart, to wallow in it, so that in the end the reader might emerge with new insights into the seemingly unbreachable gulf between the formal and the informal, the animate and the inanimate, the flexible and the inflexible

[!important] Striking/Intense

Two-part Intervention

Page: 88 (10.72%) @ 26 Mar 2025 08:29:49 AM

Here the narrator, having pressing business at the Bank, was obliged to leave the happy pair, and did not again pass the spot until some months afterwards. When he did so, Achilles was still seated on the back of the much-enduring Tortoise, and was writing in his notebook, which appeared to be nearly full. The Tortoise was saying, "Have you got that last step written down? Unless I've lost count, that makes a thousand and one. There are several millions more to come. And WOULD you mind, as a personal favour, considering what a lot of instruction this colloquy of ours will provide for the Logicians of the Nineteenth Century-WOULD you mind adopting a pun that my cousin the Mock-Turtle will then make, and allowing yourself to be renamed TAUGHT-US

[!question] Thought Provoking
While Zeno talked about literal motion, here, the author is using the paradox to talk about the recursive logical loop.

Page: 90 (10.96%) @ 26 Mar 2025 08:36:28 AM

As is typical of rules of production, the statement establishes a causal connection between the theoremhood of two strings, but without asserting theoremhood for either one on its own.

[!question] Thought Provoking

Page: 91 (11.08%) @ 26 Mar 2025 08:43:47 AM

There is, incidentally, a fact about the pq-system which would enable us to say with confidence that it has a decision procedure, even before finding the addition criterion. That fact is that the pq-system is not complicated by the opposing currents of lengthening and shortening rules; it has only lengthening rules. Any formal system which tells you how to make longer theorems from shorter ones, but never the reverse, has got to have a decision procedure for its theorems. For suppose you are given a string. First check whether it's an axiom or not (I am assuming that there is a decision procedure for axiomhood- otherwise, things are hopeless). If it is an axiom, then iţ is by definition a theorem, and the test is over. So suppose instead that it's not an axiom. Then, to be a theorem, it must have come from a shorter string, via one of the rules. By going over the various rules one by one, you can pinpoint not only the rules that could conceivably produce that string, but also exactly which shorter strings could be its forebears on the "family tree". In this way, you "reduce" the problem to determining whether any of several new but shorter strings is a theorem. Each of them can in turn be subjected to the same test. The worst that can happen is a proliferation of more and more, but shorter and shorter, strings to test. As you continue inching your way backwards in this fashion, you must be getting closer to the source of all theorems— the axiom schemata. You just can't get shorter and shorter indefnitely; therefore, eventually either you will find that one of your short strings is an axiom, or you'll come to a point where you're stuck, in that none of your short strings is an axiom, and none of them can be further shortened by running some rule or other backwards. This points out that there really is not much deep interest in formal systems with lengthening rules only; it is the interplay of lengthening and shortening rules that gives formal systems a certain fascination.

[!quote] Quotable/Concept/General Idea

Chapter 2: Meaning and Form of Mathematics

Page: 95 (11.57%) @ 26 Mar 2025 08:53:42 AM

in a language, when we have learned a meaning for a word, we then make new statements based on the meaning of the word. In a sense the meaning becomes active, since it brings into being a new rule for creating sentences. This means that our command of language is not like a finished product: the rules for making sentences increase when we learn new meanings. On the other hand, in a formal system, the theorems are predefined, by the rules of production. We can choose "meanings" based on an isomorphism (if we can find one) between theorems and true statements. But this does not give us the license to go out and add new theorems to the established theorems. That is what the Requirement of Formality in Chapter I was warning you of

[!question] Thought Provoking

Page: 95 (11.57%) @ 26 Mar 2025 08:59:18 AM

In a formal system, the meaning must remain passive; we can read each string according to the meanings of its constituent symbols, but we do not have the right to create new theorems purely on the basis of the meanings we've assigned the symbols. Interpreted formal systems straddle the line between systems without meaning, and systems with meaning. Their strings can be thought of as expressing" things, but this must come only as a consequence of the formal properties of the system.

[!important] Striking/Intense

Page: 99 (12.06%) @ 26 Mar 2025 10:53:23 AM

Multiplicative commutativity and associativity are just the assumptions that when you rotate the solid in various ways, the number of cubes will not change. Now these assumptions are not verifiable in all possible cases, because the number of such cases is infinite. We take them for granted; we believe them (if we ever think about them) as deeply as we could believe anything. The amount of money in our pocket will not change as we walk down the street, jostling it up and down; the number of books we have will not change if we pack them up in a box, load them into our car, drive one hundred miles, unload the box, unpack it, and place the books in a new shelf. All of this is part of what we mean by number.

[!important] Striking/Intense

Chapter 3: Figure and Ground

Page: 115 (14.01%) @ 26 Mar 2025 11:44:45 PM

There exist recursively enumerable sets which are not recursive.

[!important] Striking/Intense

Chapter 4: Consistency, Completeness and Geometry

Page: 135 (16.44%) @ 29 Mar 2025 01:43:16 PM

You must not attempt this approach to parallels. I know this way to its very end. I have traversed this bottomless night, which extinguished all light and joy of my life. I entreat you, leave the science of parallels alone. I thought I would sacrifice myself for the sake of the truth. I was ready to become a martyr who would remove the flaw from geometry and return it purified to mankind. I accomplished monstrous, enormous labors; my creations are far better than those of others and yet I have not achieved complete satisfaction. For here it is true that si paullum a sunmo discessit, vergit ad imum. I turned back when I saw that no man can reach the bottom of this night. I turned back unconsoled, pitying myself and all mankind…. I have travelled past all reefs of this infernal Dead Sea and have always come back with a broken mast and torn sail. The ruin of my disposition and my fall date back to this time. I thoughtlessly risked my life and happiness—aut Caesar aut nihil.

[!quote] Quotable/Concept/General Idea
Mathematical depression is the worst of all depressions.

Page: 140 (17.05%) @ 30 Mar 2025 08:11:24 PM

The preceding example, in which some symbols could have interpretations while others didn't, is reminiscent of doing geometry in natural language, using some words as undefined terms. In such a case, words are divided into two classes: those whose meaning is fixed and immutable, and those whose meaning is to be adjusted until the system is consistent (these are the undefined terms). Doing geometry in this way requires that meanings have already been established for words in the first class, somewhere outside of geometry. Those words form a rigid skeleton, giving an underlying structure to the system; filling in that skeleton comes other material, which can vary (Euclidean or non-Euclidean geometry).

Formal systems are often built up in just this type of sequential, or hierarchical, manner. For example, Formal System I may be devised, with rules and axioms that give certain intended passive meanings to its symbols. Then Formal System I is incorporated fully into a larger system with more symbols—Formal System II. Since Formal System I's axioms and rules are part of Formal System II, the passive meanings of Formal System I's symbols remain valid; they form an immutable skeleton which then plays a large role in the determination of the passive meanings of the new symbols of Formal System II. The second system may in turn play the role of a skeleton with respect to a third system, and so on. It is also possible—and geometry is a good example of this—to have a system (e.g., absolute geometry) which partly pins down the passive meanings of its undefined terms, and which can be supplemented by extra rules or axioms, which then further restrict the passive meanings of the undefined terms. This is the case with Euclidean versus non-Euclidean geometry.

[!question] Thought Provoking
Now, instead of hierarchy, what if we think in a dimensional outlook?

What if we think of undefined terms as values in another dimension projected in a dimension where full comprehension cannot be achieved without some transformations?

Page: 145 (17.66%) @ 30 Mar 2025 08:29:20 PM

What does it mean to say, as I did above, that "completeness is the maximal confirmation of passive meanings"? It means that if a system is consistent but incomplete, there is a mismatch between the symbols and their interpretations. The system does not have the power to justify being interpreted that way. Sometimes, if the interpretations are "trimmed" a little, the system can become complete

[!question] Thought Provoking

Chapter 5: Recursive Structures and Processes

Page: 171 (20.83%) @ 03 Apr 2025 11:42:25 PM

In the preceding example, I have introduced some basic terminology of recursion at least as seen through the eyes of computer scientists. The terms are push, pop, and stack (or push-down stack, to be precise), and they are all related. They were introduced in the late 1950s as part of IPL, one of the first languages for Artificial Intelligence.

[!question] Thought Provoking
It seems, many useful things we see in modern programming languages have originated from early AI research. However, the researchers themselves have mostly failed. But to achieve greater value from limited resources, they used clever programming techniques.

I have to dig in more, namely,

What did they used before the current stack-heap system?

How pre- and post-IPL/LISP Programming differ.

Hardware limitations.

Page: 183 (22.29%) @ 04 Apr 2025 12:51:40 AM

I should not keep you too much in the dark about the origin of these beautiful graphs. INT—standing for "interchange" comes from a problem involving "Eta-sequences", which are related to continued fractions. The basic idea behind INT is that plus and minus signs are interchanged in a certain kind of continued fraction. As a consequence, INT(INT(x)) =x. INT has the property that if x is rational, so is INT(x); if x is quadratic, so is INT(x). I do not know if this trend holds for higher algebraic degrees. Another lovely feature of INT is that at all rational values of x, it has a jump discontinuity, but at all irrational values of x, it is continuous.

[!quote] Quotable/Concept/General Idea

Page: 183 (22.29%) @ 04 Apr 2025 12:53:12 AM

Gplot comes from a highly idealized version of the question, "What are the allowed energies of electrons in a crystal in a magnetic field?" This problem is interesting because it is a cross between two very simple and fundamental physical situations: an electron in a perfect crystal and an electron in a homogeneous magnetic field. These two simpler problems are both well understood, and their characteristic solutions seem almost incompatible with each other. Therefore, it is of quite some interest to see how nature manages to reconcile the two. As it happens, the crystal without-magnetic-held situation and the magnetic-field-without-crystal situation do have one feature in common: in each of them, the electron behaves periodically in time. It turns out that when the two situations are combined, the ratio of their two time periods is the key parameter. In fact, that ratio holds all the information about the distribution of allowed electron energies—but it only gives up its secret upon being expanded into a continued fraction.

[!question] Thought Provoking

Page: 185 (22.53%) @ 04 Apr 2025 12:54:38 AM

Gplot shows that distribution. The horizontal axis represents energy, and the vertical axis represents the above-mentioned ratio of time periods, which we can call "a". At the bottom, a is zero, and at the top, a is unity. When a is zero, there is no magnetic field. Each of the line segments making up Gplot is an "energy band" that is, it represents allowed values of energy. The empty swaths traversing Gplot on all different size scales are therefore regions of forbidden energy. One of the most startling properties of Gplot is that when a is rational (say plq in lowest terms), there are exactly q such bands (though when q is even, two of them "kiss" in the middle). And when a is irrational, the bands shrink to points, of which there are infinitely many, very sparsely distributed in a so-called "Cantor set", another recursively defined entity which springs up in topology. You might well wonder whether such an intricate structure would ever show up in an experiment. Frankly, I would be the most surprised person in the world if Gplot came out of any experiment. The physicality of Gplot lies in the fact that it points the way to the proper mathematical treatment of less idealized problems of this sort. In other words, Gplot is purely a contribution to theoretical physics, not a hint to experimentalists as to what to expect to see! An agnostic friend of mine once was so struck by Gplot's infinitely many infinities that he called it "a picture of God", which I don't think is blasphemous at all

[!question] Thought Provoking: Continued.

Page: 195 (23.75%) @ 04 Apr 2025 01:20:06 AM

Hofstadter's Law: It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter's Law.

[!stylish] Stylish: 😂😂😂

Chapter 6: The Location of Meaning

Page: 213 (25.94%) @ 05 Apr 2025 11:57:24 PM

This happens because our intelligence is not disembodied, but is instantiated in physical objects: our brains. Their structure is due to the long process of evolution, and their operations are governed by the laws of physics. Since they are physical entities, our brains run without being told how to run. So it is at the level where thoughts are produced by physical law that Carroll's rule-paradox breaks down; and likewise, it is at the level where a brain interprets incoming data as a message that the message-paradox breaks down.

[!question] Thought Provoking

Chapter 7: The Propositional Calculus

Page: 230 (28.01%) @ 06 Apr 2025 04:35:14 PM

You probably have noticed that each theorem, when interpreted, says something absolutely trivial and self-evident. (Sometimes they are so self-evident that they sound vacuous and-paradoxically enough-confusing or even wrong!) This may not be very impressive, but just remember that there are plenty of falsities out there which could have been produced-yet they weren't. This system—the Propositional Calculus—steps neatly from truth to truth, carefully avoiding all falsities, just as a person who is concerned with staying dry will step carefully from one stepping-stone in a creek to the next, following the layout of stepping-stones no matter how twisted and tricky it might be. What is impressive is that—in the Propositional Calculus—the whole thing is done purely typographically. There is nobody down "in there", thinking about the meaning of the strings. It is all done mechanically, thoughtlessly, rigidly, even stupidly.

[!question] Thought Provoking

Page: 239 (29.11%) @ 06 Apr 2025 08:43:44 PM

It is intended only for use in connection with mathematical concepts-which are themselves quite rigid. As a rather interesting example of this, let us make a derivation in which a very peculiar string is taken as a premise in a fantasy: <PA-P>, At least its semi-interpretation is peculiar. The Propositional Calculus, however, does not think about semi-interpretations; it just manipulates strings typographically—and typographically, there is really nothing peculiar about this string. Here is a fantasy with this string as its premise:

(1) [ (2) (3) (4) 196 (5) (6) (7 (8 (9) (10) (11) (12) (13) | <PA~P> P P <~Q-~P> <~PDQ Q (14) <<PA~P>DQ>

push premise separation separation push premise carry-over line 3 double-tilde pop fantasy contrapositive detachment (Lines 4,11) Pop fantasy Now this theorem has a very strange semi-interpretation: P and not P together imply Q Since Q is interpretable by any statenment, we can loosely take the theorem to say that "From a contradiction, anything follows"! Thus, in systems based on the Propositional Calculus, contradictions cannot be contained; they infect the whole system like an instantaneous global cancer.

[!question] Thought Provoking
This seems less like a contradiction and more like an error or incompleteness.

I think a premise introduced in a scope shouldn't be allowed to be carried on to outer scopes.

Chapter 8: Typographical Number Theory

Page: 250 (30.45%) @ 07 Apr 2025 12:26:37 AM

2 plus 2 is not equal to 3: ~(SSO+SS0) = SSS0

[!quote] Quotable/Concept/General Idea
This is rather odd. 'not' is a property of 'equality', not of the lhs.

Page: 253 (30.82%) @ 07 Apr 2025 12:38:26 AM

Now these three translations of "6 is even" are quite different strings, and it is by no means obvious that theoremhood of any one of them is tied to theoremhood of any of the others. (Similarly, the fact that --p-q----- was a theorem had very little to do with the fact that its "equivalent" string -p--q--- was a theorem. The equivalence lies in our minds, since, as humans, we almost automatically think about interpretations, not structural properties of formulas.)

[!question] Thought Provoking

Page: 258 (31.43%) @ 07 Apr 2025 01:01:35 AM

Someone might suggest the following way of constructing TNT: (1) Do not have any rules of inference; they are unnecessary, because (2) We take as axioms all true statements of number theory (as written in TNT notation). What a simple prescription! Unfortunately, it is as empty as one's instantaneous reaction says it is.

[!quote] Quotable/Concept/General Idea: Author has no chill!

Page: 259 (31.55%) @ 07 Apr 2025 01:07:52 AM

This harks back to a celebrated statement by the German mathematician and logician Leopold Kronecker, archenemy of Georg Cantor: "God made the natural numbers; all the rest is the work of man."

[!important] Striking/Intense

Page: 266 (32.40%) @ 07 Apr 2025 01:25:51 AM

This kind of inconsistency, created by the opposition of (1) a pyramidal family of theorems which collectively assert that all natural numbers have some property, and (2) a single theorem which seems to assert that not all numbers have it, is given the name of inconsistency. An ω-inconsistent system is more like the at-the-outset-distasteful-but-in-the-end-acceptable non-Euclidean geometry.

[!question] Thought Provoking

Page: 270 (32.89%) @ 07 Apr 2025 01:48:15 AM

The mathematician's sense of tension is intimately related to his sense of beauty, and is what makes mathematics worthwhile doing.

[!stylish] Stylish
Ah! How far from what I wanted. How wasted my life is!

Page: 271 (33.01%) @ 07 Apr 2025 01:53:20 AM

As it is now formulated, TNT has reached "critical mass" (perhaps a strange metaphor to apply to something called "TNT"). It is of the same strength as the system of Principia Mathematica; in TNT, one can now prove every theorem which you would find in a standard treatise on number theory. Of course, no one would claim that deriving theorems in TNT is the best way to do number theory. Anybody who felt that way would fall in the same class of people as those who think that the best way to know what 1000 × 1000 is, is to draw a 1000 by 1000 grid, and count all the squares in it… No, after total formalization, the only way to go is towards relaxation of the formal system. Otherwise, it is so enormously unwieldy as to be, for all practical purposes, useless. Thus, it is important to embed TNT within a wider context, a context which enables new rules of inference to be derived, so that derivations can be speeded up. This would require formalization of the language in which rules of inference are expressed—that is, the metalanguage. And one could go considerably further. However, none of these speeding-up tricks would make TNT any more powerful; they would simply make it more usable. The simple fact is that we have put into TNT every mode of thought that number theorists rely on. Embedding it in ever larger contexts will not enlarge the space of theorems; it will just make working in TNT-or in each "new, improved version"-look more like doing conventional number theory.

[!question] Thought Provoking

A Mu Offering

Page: 276 (33.62%) @ 07 Apr 2025 02:07:56 AM

That matter has troubled me quite a bit. But I think I have finally worked out an answer. It seems to me that you may begin approaching Zen through any path you know-even if it is completely antithetical to Zen. As you approach it, you gradually learn to stray from that path. The more you stray from the path, the closer you get to Zen.

[!question] Thought Provoking
I never thought I would get the most profound understanding of Buddhism from such a Book!

Page: 276 (33.62%) @ 07 Apr 2025 02:10:39 AM

I doubt it. However, in my opinion, a delight in kõans comes a million times closer to real Zen than reading volume after volume about Zen, written in heavy philosophical jargon

[!question] Thought Provoking
I need to find a book of kõans, perhaps with commentary.

Chapter 9: Mumon and Godel

Page: 294 (35.81%) @ 10 Apr 2025 12:35:29 AM

If any kõan serves to bewilder, this one does. And most likely, causing bewilderment is its precise purpose, for when one is in a bewildered state, one's mind does begin to operate nonlogically, to some extent. Only by stepping outside of logic, so the theory goes, can one make the leap to enlightenment. But what is so bad about logic? Why does it prevent the leap to enlightenment?

[!question] Thought Provoking: Not so bewildering, if you understand Anatta.

Page: 294 (35.81%) @ 10 Apr 2025 12:39:16 AM

At the core of dualism, according to Zen, are wordsjust plain words. The use of words is inherently dualistic, since each word represents, quite obviously, a conceptual category. Therefore, a major part of Zen is the fight against reliance on words. To combat the use of words, one of the best devices is the kõan, where words are so deeply abused that one's mind is practically left reeling, if one takes the kõans seriously. Therefore, it is perhaps wrong to say that the enemy of enlightenment is logic; rather, it is dualistic. verbal thinking. In fact, it is even more basic than that: it is perception. As soon as you perceive an object, you draw a line between it and the rest of the world; you divide the world, artificially, into parts, and you thereby miss the Way.

[!important] Striking/Intense

Page: 297 (36.18%) @ 10 Apr 2025 12:43:49 AM

If words are bad, and thinking is bad, what is good? Of course, to ask this is already horribly dualistic, but we are making no pretense of being faithful to Zen in discussing Zen-so we can try to answer the question seriously. I have a name for what Zen strives for: ism, Ism is an antiphilosophy, a way of being without thinking. The masters of ism are rocks, trees, clams, but it is the fate of higher animal species to have to strive for ism, without ever being able to attain it fully. Still, one is occasionally granted glimpses of ism

[!question] Thought Provoking

Page: 297 (36.18%) @ 10 Apr 2025 12:46:42 AM

A master was asked the question, "What is the Way?" by a curious monk. "It is right before your eyes," said the master. 254 "Why do I not see it for myself?" "Because you are thinking of yourself." "What about you: do you see it?" "So long as you see double, saying '1 don't', and 'you do, and so on, your eyes are clouded," said the master. "When there is neither 'I' nor 'You', can one see it?" "When there is neither '1' nor 'You', who is the one that wants to see it?"

[!stylish] Stylish

Page: 299 (36.42%) @ 10 Apr 2025 02:41:05 AM

Chiyono studied Zen for many years under Bukkõ of Engaku. Still, she could not attain the fruits of meditation. At last, one moonlit night, she was carrying water in an old wooden pail girded with bamboo. The bamboo broke, and the bottom fell out of the pail. At that moment, she was set free. Chiyono said, "No more water in the pail, no more moon in the water."

[!stylish] Stylish

Page: 301 (36.66%) @ 10 Apr 2025 02:45:49 AM

The Buddhist allegory of "Indra's Net" tells of an endless net of threads throughout the universe, the horizontal threads running through space, the vertical ones through time. At every crossing of threads is an individual, and every individual is a crystal bead. The great light of "Absolute Being" illuminates and penetrates every crystal bead; moreover, every crystal bead reflects not only the light from every other crystal in the net, but also every reflection of every reflection throughout the universe

[!stylish] Stylish

Page: 307 (37.39%) @ 10 Apr 2025 03:07:07 AM

CENTRAL PROPOSITIoN: If there is a typographical rule which tells how certain digits are to be shifted, changed, dropped, or inserted in any number represented decimally, then this rule can be rep resented equally well by an arithmetical counterpart which in volves arithmetical operations with powers of 10 as well as addi tions, subtractions, and so forth. More briefly: Typographical rules for manipulating numerals are actually arithmetical rules for operating on numbers.

[!important] Striking/Intense

Chapter 10: Levels of Description, and Computer Systems

Page: 335 (40.80%) @ 13 Apr 2025 03:21:50 AM

There is one interesting difference between the way interpreters work and compilers work. A compiler takes input (a finished Algol program, for instance) and produces output (a long sequence of machine language instructions). At this point, the compiler has done its duty. The output is then given to the computer to run. By contrast, the interpreter is constantly running while the programmer types in one LISP statement after another, and each one gets executed then and there. But this doesn't mean that each statement gets first translated, then executed, for then an interpreter would be nothing but a line-by-line compiler. Instead, in an interpreter, the operations of reading a new line, "understanding" it, and executing it are intertwined: they occur simultaneously. Here is the idea, expanded a little more. Each time a new line of LISP is typed in, the interpreter tries to process it. This means that the interpreter jolts into action, and certain (machine language) instructions inside it get executed. Precisely uhich ones get executed depends on the LISP statement itself, of course. There are many JUMP instructions inside the interpreter, so that the new line of LISP may cause control to move around in a complex way -forwards, backwards, then forwards again, etc. Thus, each LISP statement gets converted into a "pathway" inside the interpreter, and the act of following that pathway achieves the desired effect. Sometimes it is helpful to think of the LISP statements as mere pieces of data which are fed sequentially to a constantly running machine language program (the LISP interpreter). When you think of things this way, you get a different image of the relation between a program written in a higher-level language and the machine which is executing it.

[!question] Thought Provoking

Ant Fugue

Page: 354 (43.12%) @ 14 Apr 2025 01:04:33 AM

"MU" is an ancient Zen answer which, when given to a question, UNASKS the question

[!question] Thought Provoking

Chapter 11: Brains and Thoughts

Page: 380 (46.29%) @ 15 Apr 2025 01:21:39 AM

Descriptions can be manufactured and manipulated in themselves. We can invent nonexistent people by making descriptions of them; we can merge two descriptions when we find they represent a single entity; we can split one description into two when we find it represents two things, not one--and so on. This "calculus of descriptions" is at the heart of thinking. It is said to be intentional and not extensional, which means that descriptions can "float" without being anchored down to specific, known objects. The intensionality of thought is connected to its flexibility; it gives us the ability to imagine hypothetical worlds, to amalgamate different descriptions or chop one description into separate pieces, and so on.

[!question] Thought Provoking

Page: 386 (47.02%) @ 15 Apr 2025 09:06:04 PM

The retinal image is coded in a straightforward way in the firing patterns of the neurons in the lateral geniculate, despite the fact that the neurons there are not arranged on a two-dimensional surface in the form of the retina, but in a three-dimensional block. So two dimensions get mapped onto three, yet the information is preserved: an isomorphism.

[!quote] Quotable/Concept/General Idea: Very interesting!

Page: 393 (47.87%) @ 15 Apr 2025 10:02:33 PM

It seems reasonable to think that the brush strokes of language are also brush strokes of thought, and therefore that symbols represent concepts of about this size. Thus, a symbol would be roughly something for which you know a word or stock phrase, or with which you associate a proper name

[!quote] Quotable/Concept/General Idea: Have to revisit Jeff Hawkins' works.

Page: 402 (48.96%) @ 18 Apr 2025 02:29:05 AM

Our facility for making instances out of classes and classes out of instances lies at the basis of our intelligence, and it is one of the great differences between human thought and the thought processes of other animals. Not that I have ever belonged to another species and experienced at first hand how it feels to think their way but from the outside it is apparent that no other species forms general concepts as we do, or imagines hypothetical worldsvariants on the world as it is, which aid in figuring out which future pathway to choose. For instance, consider the celebrated "language of the bees"information-laden dances which are performed by worker bees returning to the hive, to inform other bees of the location of nectar. While there may be in each bee a set of rudimentary symbols which are activated by such a dance, there is no reason to believe that a bee has an expandable vocabulary of symbols. Bees and other insects do not seem to have the power to generalize—that is, to develop new class symbols from instances which we would perceive as nearly identical

[!question] Thought Provoking: What about our closest kin?

Chapter 12: Minds and Thoughts

Page: 420 (51.16%) @ 19 Apr 2025 11:59:40 PM

aberrant" kinds of thoughts listed above are composed, at rock bottom, completely out of beliefs or pieces of knowledge. That is, any weird and snaky indirect route breaks up into a number of non-weird, non-snaky direct stretches, and these short, straightforward symbol-connecting routes represent simple thoughts that one can rely on--beliefs and pieces of knowledge

[!question] Thought Provoking

Page: 426 (51.89%) @ 20 Apr 2025 05:09:42 PM

Thus, a chunked description of a brain state would give a catalogue of beliefs which would be evoked conditionally, dependent on circumstances. Since not all possible circumstances can be enumerated, one would have to settle for those which one thinks are "reasonable". Furthermore, one would have to settle for a chunked description of the circumstances themselves, since they obviously cannot and should not--be specified down to the atomic level! Therefore, one will not be able to make an exact, deterministic prediction saying which beliefs will be pulled out of the brain state by a given chunked circumstance. In summary, then, a chunked description of a brain state will consist of a probabilistic catalogue, in which are listed those beliefs which are most likely to be induced (and those symbols which are most likely to be activated) by various sets of "reasonably likely" cir cumstances, themselves described on a chunked level. Trying to chunk someone's beliefs without referring to context is precisely as silly as trying to describe the range of a single person's "potential progeny" without referring to the mate.

[!question] Thought Provoking

Page: 427 (52.01%) @ 20 Apr 2025 05:15:07 PM

There is no reason to expect that "I", or "the self", should not be represented by a symbol. In fact, the symbol for the self is probably the most complex of all the symbols in the brain. For this reason, I choose to put it on a new level of the hierarchy and call it a subsystem, rather than a symbol. To be precise, by "subsystem", I mean a constellation of symbols, each of which can be separately activated under the control of the subsystem itself. The image I wish to convey of a subsystem is that it functions almost as an independent "subbrain", equipped with its own repertoire of symbols which can trigger each other internally. Of course, there is also much communication between the subsystem and the "outside" world-that is, the rest of the brain. "Subsystem" is just another name for an overgrown symbol, one which has gotten so complicated that it has many subsymbols which interact among themselves. Thus, there is no strict level distinction between symbols and subsystems.

[!question] Thought Provoking: An aggregation of senses.

Chapter 13: BlooP and FlooP and GlooP

Page: 468 (57.00%) @ 24 Apr 2025 03:29:46 PM

For readers who wish to see an elegant and simple presentation of the Turing approach, I recommend the article by Hoare and Allison, mentioned in the Bibliography

[!question] Thought Provoking: To read.

Chapter 15: Jumping Out of the System

Page: 513 (62.48%) @ 02 May 2025 02:26:13 AM

Once this ability for self-reference is attained, the system has a hole which is tailor-made for itself; the hole takes the features of the system into account and uses them against the system.

[!question] Thought Provoking
This' tailor-made' many have a schema since the system in question has to fulfil some requirements.

Page: 515 (62.73%) @ 02 May 2025 02:48:49 AM

The first comment is about a set of his drawings, all of which are concerned with "the conflict between the flat and the spatial"; the second comment is about Dragon in particular. 1. Our three-dimensional space is the only true reality we know. The two-dimensional is every bit as fictitious as the four-dimensional, for nothing is flat, not even the most finely polished mirror. And yet we stick to the convention that a wall or a piece of paper is flat, and curiously enough, we still go on, as we have done since time immemorial, producing illusions of space on just such plane surfaces as these. Surely it is a bit absurd to draw a few lines and then claim: "This is a house", This odd situation is the theme of the next five pictures [including Dragon]. II. However much this dragon tries to be spatial, he remains completely lat. Two incisions are made in the paper on which he is printed. Then it is folded in such a way as to leave two square openings., But this dragon is an obstinate beast, and in spite of his two dimensions, he persists in assuming that he has three; so he sticks his head through one of the holes and his tail through the other.

[!question] Thought Provoking
Two- or four-dimensional spaces are not unreal. They are just limitedly perceivable by three-dimensional beings like us.

Page: 517 (62.97%) @ 02 May 2025 02:54:24 AM

Against. For the very fact that we cannot write a program to do "Gödelizing" must make us somewhat suspicious that we ourselves could do it in every case. It is one thing to make the argument in the abstract that Gödelizing "can be done"; it is another thing to know how to do it in every particular case. In fact, as the formal systems (or programs) escalate in complexity, our own ability to "Gödelize" will eventually begin to waver

[!question] Thought Provoking
That means, we don't know the "Godelian schema". If there is such a thing.

Page: 519 (63.22%) @ 02 May 2025 03:03:26 AM

An amusing way to see the incorrectness of Lucas' argument is to translate it into a battle between men and women… In his wanderings, Loocus the Thinker one day comes across an unknown object—a woman. Such a thing he has never seen before, and at first he is wondrously thrilled at her likeness to himself; but then, slightly scared of her as well, he cries to all the men about him, "Behold! I can look upon her face, which is something she cannot do-therefore women can never be like me!" And thus he proves man's superiority over women, much to his relief, and that of his male companions. Incidentally, the same argument proves that Loocus is superior to all other males, as well-but he doesn't point that out to them. The woman argues back: "Yes, you can see my face, which is something I can't do—but I can see your face, which is something you can't do! We're even." However, Loocus comes up with an unexpected counter: "I'm sorry, you're deluded if you think you can see my face. What you women do is not the same as what we men do- it is, as I have already pointed out, of an inferior caliber, and does not deserve to be called by the same name. You may call it 'woman-seeing'. Now the fact that you can 'womansee' my face is of no import, because the situation is not symmetric. You see?" "I womansee," womanreplies the woman, and the womanwalks away…
Well, this is the kind of "heads-in-the-sand" argument which you have to be willing to stomach if you are bent on seeing men and women running ahead of computers in these intellectual battles.

[!stylish] Stylish: What have I just read! 😂😂😂😂

Page: 519 (63.22%) @ 02 May 2025 03:08:30 AM

However, there is a lesser ambition which it is possible to achieve: that is, one can certainly jump from a subsystem of one's brain into a wider subsystem.

[!question] Thought Provoking
This ambition is not achievable in current commercial AIs. Or, people will chroot to the base system.

Page: 520 (63.34%) @ 02 May 2025 03:14:19 AM

This drive to jump out of the system is a pervasive onc, and lies behind all progress in art, music, and other human endeavors. It also lies behind such trivial undertakings as the making of radio and television commercials. This insidious trend has been beautifully perceived and described by Erving Goffman in his book Frame Analysis: For example, an obviously professional actor completes a commercial pitch and, with the camera still on him, turns in obvious relief from his task, now to take real pleasure in consuming the product he had been advertising. This is, of course, but one exanıple of the way in which TV and radio commercials are coming to exploit framing devices to give an appearance of naturalness that (it is hoped) will override the reserve auditors have developed. Thus, use is currently being made of children's voices, presumably because these seem unschooled; street noises, and other effects to give the impression of interviews with unpaid respondents: false starts, flled pauses, byplays, and overlapping specch to sinulate actual conversation; and, follow ing Welles, the interception of a firn's jingle commercials to give news of its new product, alternating occasionally with interception by a public interest spot, this presumably keeping the faith of the auditor alive. The more that auditors withdraw to minor expressive details as a test of genuineness, the more that advertisers chase after them. What results is a sort of interaction pollution, a disorder that is also spread by the public relations consultants of political figures, and, more modestly, by micro-sociology.® Here we have yet another example of an escalating "TC-battle"—the antagonists this time being Truth and Commercials.

[!question] Thought Provoking

Chapter 17: Church, Turing, Tarski and Others

Page: 601 (73.20%) @ 05 May 2025 11:44:42 PM

every aspect of thinking can be viewed as a high-level description of a system which, on a low level, is governed by simple, even formal, rules.

[!important] Striking/Intense

Page: 608 (74.06%) @ 06 May 2025 12:46:27 AM

Hardy describes what he perceived as Ramanujan's outstanding intellectual attributes:

With his memory, his patience, and his power of calculation, he combined a power of generalisation, a feeling for form, and a capacity for rapid modification of his hypotheses, that were often really startling, and made him, in his own field, without a rival in his day.

The part of this passage which I have italicized seems to me to be an excellent characterization of some of the subtlest features of intelligence in general

[!important] Striking/Intense: …and capacity to introspect.

Page: 615 (74.91%) @ 06 May 2025 03:08:28 PM

Historically, people have been naive about what qualities, if mechanized, would undeniably constitute intelligence. Sometimes it seems as though each new step towards AI, rather than producing something which everyone agrees is real intelligence, merely reveals what real intelligence is not. If intelligence involves learning, creativity, and emotional responses, a sense of beauty, a sense of self, then there is a long road ahead, and it may be that these will only be realized when we have totally duplicated a living brain.

[!question] Thought Provoking: Jeff Hawkins took this route.

Page: 626 (76.25%) @ 06 May 2025 03:46:34 PM

It is for this reason that I chose to link beauty, in the Magnificrab, with truth, which we have seen is also one of the most intangible notions in all of metamathematics.

[!question] Thought Provoking
Mathematical truths are not truths of a situation. They are the truth or consistency of a formal system.

Chapter 18: Artificial Intelligence: Retrospects

Page: 655 (79.78%) @ 06 May 2025 05:24:15 PM

In any case, the trouble is not that problem reduction per se leads to failures; it is quite a sound technique. The problem is a deeper one: how do you choose a good internal representation for a problem? What kind of "space" do you see it in? What kinds of action reduce the "distance" between you and your goal in the space you have chosen? This can be expressed in mathematical language as the problem of hunting for an appropriate metric (distance function) between states. You want to find a metric in which the distance between you and your goal is very small

[!question] Thought Provoking

Page: 667 (81.24%) @ 06 May 2025 10:56:25 PM

This idea of a language in which false statements are ungrammatical is an old one, going back to Johann Amos Comenius, in 1633. It is very appealing because you have a crystal ball embodied in your grammar: just write down the statement you want to know about, and check to see if it is grammatical… Actually, Comenius went even further, for in his language, false statements were not only ungrammatical-they were inexpressible!

[!quote] Quotable/Concept/General Idea: Interesting!

Page: 668 (81.36%) @ 06 May 2025 11:03:57 PM

Why is some music so much deeper and more beautiful than other music? It is because form, in music, is expressive—expressive to some strange subconscious regions of our minds. The sounds of music do not refer to serfs or city-states, but they do trigger clouds of emotion in our innermost selves; in that sense, musical meaning is dependent on intangible links from the symbols to things in the world—those "things", in this case, being secret software structures in our minds. No, great music will not come out of such an easy formalism as an ATN-grammar. Pseudomusic, like pseudo-fairy tales, may well come out—and that will be a valuable exploration for people to make—but the secrets of meaning in music lie far, far deeper than pure syntax

[!question] Thought Provoking

Chapter 19: Artificial Intelligence: Prospects

Page: 720 (87.70%) @ 08 May 2025 03:14:47 AM

Question: Will there be chess programs that can beat anyone? Speculation: No. There may be programs which can beat anyone at chess, but they will not be exclusively chess players. They will be programs of general intelligence, and they will be just as temperamental as people. "Do you want to play chess?" "No, I'm bored with chess. Let's talk about poetry." That may be the kind of dialogue you could have with a program that could beat everyone. That is because real intelligence inevitably depends on a total overview capacity—that is, a programmed ability to "jump out of the system", so to speak—at least roughly to the extent that we have that ability. Once that is present, you can't contain the program; it's gone beyond that certain critical point, and you just have to face the facts of what you've wrought

[!question] Thought Provoking

Chapter 20: Strange Loops, or Tangled Hierarchies

Page: 735 (89.52%) @ 10 May 2025 02:16:50 AM

Then a seeming anarchy takes over; but anarchy has its own kinds of rules, no less than does civilized society; it is just that they operate from the bottom up, not from the top down. A student of anarchy could try to discover rules according to which anarchic situations develop in time, and very likely, there are some such rules.

[!question] Thought Provoking
Very interesting! This is, by the way, not the anarchy preached by anarcho-syndicalists.

Page: 740 (90.13%) @ 10 May 2025 03:25:29 AM

Consistent or inconsistent, no one is exempt from the mystery of the self. Probably, we are all inconsistent. The world is just too complicated for a person to be able to afford the luxury of reconciling all of his beliefs with each other. Tension and confusion are important in a world where many decisions must be made quickly. Miguel de Unamuno once said, "If a person never contradicts himself, it must be that he says nothing." I would say that we all are in the same boat as the Zen master who, after contradicting himself several times in a row, said to the confused Doko, "I cannot understand myself."

[!important] Striking/Intense

Group Psychology and The Analysis of The Ego

2023-02-21T14:50:08.000Z

Group Psychology and The Analysis of The Ego

by Sigmund Freud

GROUP PSYCHOLOGY AND THE ANALYSIS OF THE EGO

Page 9 @ November 19, 2019

'Moreover, by the mere fact that he forms part of an organised group, a man descends several rungs in the ladder of civilisation. Isolated, he may be a cultivated individual; in a crowd, he is a barbarian—that is, a creature acting by instinct. He possesses the spontaneity, the violence, the ferocity, and also the enthusiasm and heroism of primitive beings.'

By Lu Bon

Page 11 @ November 19, 2019

Some other features in Le Bon's description show in a clear light how well justified is the identification of the group mind with the mind of primitive people. In groups the most contradictory ideas can exist side by side and tolerate each other, without any conflict arising from the logical contradiction between them.

Doublethink

Page 12 @ November 19, 2019

And, finally, groups have never thirsted after truth. They demand illusions, and cannot do without them. They constantly give what is unreal precedence over what is real; they are almost as strongly influenced by what is untrue as by what is true. They have an evident tendency not to distinguish between the two (p. 77).

Page 17 @ November 19, 2019

This mechanism for the intensification of emotion is favoured by some other influences which emanate from groups. A group impresses the individual with a sense of unlimited power and of insurmountable peril. For the moment it replaces the whole of human society, which is the wielder of authority, whose punishments the individual fears, and for whose sake he has submitted to so many inhibitions. It is clearly perilous for him to put himself in opposition to it, and it will be safer to follow the example of those around him and perhaps even 'hunt with the pack'. In obedience to the new authority he may put his former 'conscience' out of action, and so surrender to the attraction of the increased pleasure that is certainly obtained from the removal of inhibitions. On the whole, therefore, it is not so remarkable that we should see an individual in a group doing or approving things which he would have avoided in the normal conditions of life; and in this way we may even hope to clear up a little of the mystery which is so often covered by the enigmatic word 'suggestion'.

Page 44 @ November 19, 2019

We see that the object is being treated in the same way as our own ego, so that when we are in love a considerable amount of narcissistic libido overflows on to the object. It is even obvious, in many forms of love choice, that the object serves as a substitute for some unattained ego ideal of our own. We love it on account of the perfections which we have striven to reach for our own ego, and which we should now like to procure in this roundabout way as a means of satisfying our narcissism.

Page 45 @ November 19, 2019

Contemporaneously with this 'devotion' of the ego to the object, which is no longer to be distinguished from a sublimated devotion to an abstract idea, the functions allotted to the ego ideal entirely cease to operate. The criticism exercised by that faculty is silent; everything that the object does and asks for is right and blameless. Conscience has no application to anything that is done for the sake of the object; in the blindness of love remorselessness is carried to the pitch of crime. The whole situation can be completely summarised in a formula: The object has taken the place of the ego ideal.

General System Theory_ Foundations, Development, Applications

2025-01-06T22:24:04.000Z

General System Theory: Foundations, Development, Applications

Ludwig Von Bertalanffy

FOREWORD

Page: Xii (0%) @ 07 Dec 2024 09:32:21 PM

Von Bertalanffy’s project was grounded in the observation that systemic processes recur isomorphically across many disciplines. For instance, systems can be stabilized by means of feedback in the physical world (e.g. atmospheric pressure in weather systems), the biological world (homeostatic temperature regulation in mammals), and the social world (e.g. co-operation in family units). His suggestion was that these isomorphic processes reflect underlying laws applying to systems in general, which would therefore be applicable across all the disciplines.

[!question] Thought Provoking

Page: Xiv (0%) @ 07 Dec 2024 09:39:23 PM

the 1920s and 30s von Bertalanffy suggested that this conflict could be resolved by what he, initially, termed an “organismic” approach—the idea that it is laws of organization that distinguish organisms from non-living matter.

[!important] Striking/Intense

Systems Everywhere

Page: 9 (3.14%) @ 12 Dec 2024 11:59:09 AM

Systems, of course, have been studied for centuries, but something new has been added… . The tendency to study systems as an entity rather than as a conglomeration of parts is consistent with the tendency in contemporary science no longer to isolate phenomena in narrowly confined contexts, but rather to open interactions for examination and to examine larger and larger slices of nature.

[!quote] Quotable/Concept/General Idea

On the History of Systems Theory

Page: 11 (3.83%) @ 12 Dec 2024 12:03:53 PM

As with every new idea in science and elsewhere, the systems concept has a long history. Although the term “system” itself was not emphasized, the history of this concept includes many illustrious names. As “natural philosophy,” we may trace it back to Leibniz; to Nicholas of Cusa with his coincidence of opposites; to the mystic medicine of Paracelsus; to Vico’s and ibn-Khaldun’s vision of history as a sequence of cultural entities or “systems”; to the dialectic of Marx and Hegel, to mention but a few names from a rich panoply of thinkers

[!quote] Quotable/Concept/General Idea

Page: 11 (3.83%) @ 12 Dec 2024 12:05:53 PM

Nevertheless, the necessity and feasibility of a systems approach became apparent only recently. Its necessity resulted from the fact that the mechanistic scheme of isolable causal trains and meristic treatment had proved insufficient to deal with theoretical problems, especially in the biosocial sciences, and with the practical problems posed by modern technology.

[!question] Thought Provoking

Trends in Systems Theory

Page: 24 (8.36%) @ 13 Dec 2024 11:16:03 PM

A verbal model is better than no model at all, or a model which, because it can be formulated mathematically, is forcibly imposed upon and falsifies reality. Theories of enormous influence such as psychoanalysis were unmathematical or, like the theory of selection, their impact far exceeded mathematical constructions which came only later and cover only partial aspects and a small fraction of empirical data.

[!sceptic] Sceptic

Science and Society

Page: 52 (18.12%) @ 19 Dec 2024 08:19:58 PM

Scientific control of society is no highway to Utopia.

[!important] Striking/Intense

The System Concept

Page: 55 (19.16%) @ 20 Dec 2024 12:41:15 AM

A system can be defined as a set of elements standing in interrelations. Interrelation means that elements, p, stand in relations, R, so that the behavior of an element p in R is different from its behavior in another relation, R′. If the behaviors in R and R′ are not different, there is no interaction, and the elements behave independently with respect to the relations R and R′.

[!quote] Quotable/Concept/General Idea

Growth

Page: 62 (21.60%) @ 20 Dec 2024 12:56:19 AM

Mathematically trivial as these examples are, they illustrate a point of interest for the present consideration, namely the fact that certain laws of nature can be arrived at not only on the basis of experience, but also in a purely formal way. The equations discussed signify no more than that the rather general system of equation (3.1), its development into a Taylor series and suitable conditions have been applied. In this sense such laws are “a priori,” independent from their physical, chemical, biological, sociological, etc., interpretation. In other words, this shows the existence of a general system theory which deals with formal characteristics of systems, concrete facts appearing as their special applications by defining variables and parameters. In still other terms, such examples show a formal uniformity of nature.

[!question] Thought Provoking

Wholeness, Sum, Mechanization, Centralization

Page: 67 (23.34%) @ 20 Dec 2024 01:16:19 AM

In Lord Russell’s book (1948), we find a rather astonishing rejection of the “concept of organism.” This concept states, according to Russell, that the laws governing the behavior of the parts can be stated only by considering the place of the parts in the whole. Russell rejects this view. He uses the example of an eye, the function of which as a light receptor can be understood perfectly well if the eye is isolated and if only the internal physico-chemical reactions, and the incoming stimuli and outgoing nerve impulses, are taken into account. “Scientific progress has been made by analysis and artificial isolation… . It is therefore in any case prudent to adopt the mechanistic view as a working hypothesis, to be abandoned only where there is clear evidence against it. As regards biological phenomena, such evidence, so far, is entirely absent.” It is true that the principles of summativity are applicable to the living organism to a certain extent. The beat of a heart, the twitch of a nerve-muscle preparation, the action potentials in a nerve are much the same if studied in isolation or within the organism as a whole. This applies to those phenomena we shall define later as occurring in highly “mechanized” partial systems. But Russell’s statement is profoundly untrue with respect exactly to the basic and primary biological phenomena. If you take any realm of biological phenomena, whether embryonic development, metabolism, growth, activity of the nervous system, biocoenoses, etc., you will always find that the behavior of an element is different within the system from what it is in isolation. You cannot sum up the behavior of the whole from the isolated parts, and you have to take into account the relations between the various subordinated systems and the systems which are super-ordinated to them in order to understand the behavior of the parts. Analysis and artificial isolation are useful, but in no way sufficient, methods of biological experimentation and theory.

[!question] Thought Provoking

Page: 68 (23.69%) @ 20 Dec 2024 11:03:53 PM

As a rule, the organization of physical wholes, such as atoms, molecules, or crystals, results from the union of pre-existing elements. In contrast, the organization of biological wholes is built up by differentiation of an original whole which segregates into parts. An example is determination in embryonic development, when the germ passes from a state of equipotentiality to a state where it behaves like a mosaic or sum of regions which develop independently into definite organs. The same is true in the development and evolution of the nervous system and of behavior starting with actions of the whole body or of large regions and passing to the establishment of definite centers and localized reflex arcs, and for many other biological phenomena.

[!question] Thought Provoking

Page: 69 (24.04%) @ 21 Dec 2024 10:14:02 AM

Mechanization, however, is never complete in the biological realm; even though the organism is partly mechanized, it still remains a unitary system; this is the basis of regulation and of the interaction with changing demands of the environment. Similar considerations apply to social structures.

[!question] Thought Provoking

Approaches and Aims in Systems Science

Page: 91 (31.71%) @ 27 Dec 2024 04:41:52 PM

Up to recent times the field of science as a nomothetic endeavor, i.e., trying to establish an explanatory and predictive system of laws, was practically identical with theoretical physics. Consequently, physical reality appeared to be the only one vouchsafed by science. The consequence was the postulate of reductionism, i.e. the principle that biology, behavior and the social sciences are to be handled according to the paragon of physics, and eventually should be reduced to concepts and entities of the physical level. Owing to developments in physics itself, the physicalistic and reductionist theses became problematic, and indeed appeared as metaphysical prejudices. The entities about which physics is talking—atoms, elementary particles and the like —have turned out to be much more ambiguous than previously supposed: not metaphysical building blocks of the universe, but rather complicated conceptual models invented to take account of certain phenomena of observation. On the other hand, the biological, behavioral and social sciences have come into their own. Owing to the concern with these fields on the one hand, and the exigencies of a new technology, a generalization of scientific concepts and models became necessary which resulted in the emergence of new fields beyond the traditional system of physics.

[!sceptic] Sceptic

Page: 93 (32.40%) @ 27 Dec 2024 10:58:10 PM

What has been said are not metaphysical or philosophic contentions. We are not erecting a barrier between inorganic and living nature which obviously would be inappropriate in view of intermediates such as viruses, nucleoproteins and self-duplicating units. Nor do we protest that biology is in principle “irreducible to physics” which also would be out of place in view of the tremendous advances of physical and chemical explanation of life processes. Similarly, no barrier between biology and the behavioral and social sciences is intended. This, however, does not obviate the fact that in the fields mentioned we do not have appropriate conceptual tools serving for explanation and prediction as we have in physics and its various fields of application.

[!question] Thought Provoking
This clarifies the confusion I had in the previous highlight, I guess.

Advances of General System Theory

Page: 108 (37.63%) @ 29 Dec 2024 11:11:26 PM

Furthermore, that precarious mental equilibrium must not be disturbed: Hence, in what rather ironically is called progressive education, the anxiety not to overload the child, not to impose constraints and to minimize all directing influences— with the result of a previously unheard-of crop of illiterates and juvenile delinquents.

[!question] Thought Provoking

Page: 109 (37.98%) @ 31 Dec 2024 11:20:14 PM

What has been said can also be couched in philosophical terms. If existentialists speak of the emptiness and meaninglessness of life, if they see in it a source not only of anxiety but of actual mental illness, it is essentially the same viewpoint: that behavior is not merely a matter of satisfaction of biological drives and of maintenance in psychological and social equilibrium but that something more is involved. If life becomes unbearably empty in an industrialized society, what can a person do but develop a neurosis? The principle, which may loosely be called spontaneous activity of the psychophysical organism, is a more realistic formulation of what the existentialists want to say in their often obscure language. And if personality theorists like Maslow or Gardner Murphy speak of self-realization as human goal, it is again a somewhat pompous expression of the same.

[!sceptic] Sceptic

Page: 110 (38.33%) @ 31 Dec 2024 11:24:40 PM

A widely held contention says that they are not. This is the concept of “nomothetic” method in science and “idiographic” method in history. While science to a greater or less extent can establish “laws” for natural events, history, concerned with human events of enormous complexity in causes and outcome and presumably determined by free decisions of individuals, can only describe, more or less satisfactorily, what has happened in the past.

[!quote] Quotable/Concept/General Idea

Page: 115 (40.07%) @ 01 Jan 2025 06:11:03 PM

The “principle of rationality” fits—not the majority of human actions but rather the “unreasoning” behavior of animals. Animals and organisms in general do function in a “ratiomorphic” way, maximizing such values as maintenance, satisfaction, survival, etc.; they select, in general, what is biologically good for them, and prefer more of a commodity (e.g., food) to less.

[!important] Striking/Intense

Unsolved Problems

Page: 152 (52.96%) @ 02 Jan 2025 10:51:36 PM

Here we are dealing with fundamental problems which, I believe, “are swept under the carpet” in the present biological creed. Today’s synthetic theory of evolution considers evolution to be the result of chance mutations, after a well-known simile (Beadle, 1963), of “typing errors” in the reduplication of the genetic code, which are directed by selection, i.e., the survival of those populations or genotypes that produce the highest number of offspring under existing external conditions. Similarly, the origin of life is explained by a chance appearance of organic compounds (amino acids, nucleic acids, enzymes, ATP, etc.) in a primeval ocean which, by way of selection, formed reproducing units, viruslike forms, protoorganisms, cells, etc.

[!sceptic] Sceptic

Page: 153 (53.31%) @ 02 Jan 2025 10:52:05 PM

Future research will probably have to take into consideration irreversible thermodynamics, the accumulation of information in the genetic code and “organizational laws” in the latter. Presently the genetic code represents the vocabulary of hereditary substance, i.e., the nucleotide triplets which “spell” the amino acids of the proteins of an organism. Obviously, there must also exist a grammar of the code; the latter cannot, to use a psychiatric expression, be a word salad, a chance series of unrelated words (nucleotide triplets and corresponding amino acids in the protein molecules). Without such “grammar” the code could at best produce a pile of proteins, but not an organized organism. Certain experiences in genetic regulation indicate the existence of such organization of the hereditary substratum; their effects will have to be studied also in macroscopic laws of evolution (von Bertalanffy, 1949a; Rensch, 1961). I therefore believe that the presently generally accepted “synthetic theory of evolution” is at best a partial truth, not a complete theory. Apart from additional biological research, physical considerations have to be taken into account, in the theory of open systems and its present borderline problems.

[!sceptic] Sceptic

7 Some Aspects of System Theory in Biology

Page: 172 (59.93%) @ 04 Jan 2025 02:33:08 PM

The consequence is that curve-fitting may be an indoor sport and useful for purposes of interpolation and extrapolation. However, approximation of empirical data is not a verification of particular mathematical expressions used. We can speak of verification and of equations representing a theory only if (1) the parameters occurring can be confirmed by independent experiment: and if (2) predictions of yet unobserved facts can be derived from the theory.

[!question] Thought Provoking

8 The System Concept in the Sciences of Man

Page: 191 (66.55%) @ 04 Jan 2025 05:40:06 PM

The practical consequence is that human beings are born not only with equal rights but with equal capabilities.

[!sceptic] Sceptic
As opposed to superiority to race? I wonder what was the authors philosophical justification to join the Nazi party.

Page: 192 (66.90%) @ 04 Jan 2025 05:47:01 PM

Biologically, life is not maintenance or restoration of equilibrium but is essentially maintenance of disequilibria, as the doctrine of the organism as open system reveals. Reaching equilibrium means death and consequent decay. Psychologically, behavior not only tends to release tensions but also builds up tensions; if this stops, the patient is a decaying mental corpse in the same way a living organism becomes a body in decay when tensions and forces keeping it from equilibrium have stopped.

[!important] Striking/Intense

Page: 192 (66.90%) @ 04 Jan 2025 05:49:04 PM

Greek sculpture, Renaissance painting. German music—indeed, any aspect of culture— has nothing to do with utility, or with the better survival of individuals or nations.

[!danger] In Discord
No. Art & culture work as a unifying force for a society. Critical enterprises like war make much uses of this unity.

Page: 193 (67.25%) @ 04 Jan 2025 05:54:22 PM

Also the principle of stress, so often invoked in psychology, psychiatry and psychosomatics, needs some reevaluation. As everything in the world, stress too is an ambivalent thing. Stress is not only a danger to life to be controlled and neutralized by adaptive mechanisms; it also creates higher life. If life, after disturbance from outside, had simply returned to the so-called homeostatic equilibrium, it would never have progressed beyond the amoeba which, after all, is the best adapted creature in the world—it has survived billions of years from the primeval ocean to the present day.

[!question] Thought Provoking

Page: 198 (68.99%) @ 04 Jan 2025 06:44:17 PM

It is hard to see that music, say, has any adaptive or survival value;

[!danger] In Discord

9 General System Theory in Psychology and Psychiatry

Page: 209 (72.82%) @ 04 Jan 2025 11:32:12 PM

“Even without external stimuli, the organism is not a passive but an intrinsically active system. Reflex theory has presupposed that the primary element of behavior is response to external stimuli. In contrast, recent research shows with increasing clarity that autonomous activity of the nervous system, resting in the system itself, is to be considered primary. In evolution and development, reactive mechanisms appear to be superimposed upon primitive, rhythmic-locomotor activities. The stimulus (i.e., a change in external conditions) does not cause a process in an otherwise inert system; it only modifies processes in an autonomously active system”

[!quote] Quotable/Concept/General Idea

Page: 211 (73.52%) @ 04 Jan 2025 11:38:11 PM

It is a symptom of mental disease that spontaneity is impaired. The patient increasingly becomes an automaton or S-R machine, is pushed by biological drives, obsessed by needs for food, elimination, sex gratification, and so on. The model of the passive organism is a quite adequate description of the stereotype behavior of compulsives, of patients with brain lesions, and of the waning of autonomous activity in catatonia and related psychopathology. But by the same token, this emphasizes that normal behavior is different.

[!question] Thought Provoking

Page: 213 (74.22%) @ 05 Jan 2025 04:07:02 AM

The origins of language are obscure; but insofar as we can form an idea, it seems that “holophrastic” (W. Humboldt, cf. Werner, 1957a) language and thought—i.e., utterances and thoughts with a broad aura of associations—preceded separation of meanings and articulate speech. Similarly, the categories of developed mental life such as the distinction of “I” and objects, space, time, number, causality, and so forth, evolved from a perceptual-conceptual-motivational continuum represented by the “paleologic” perception of infants, primitives, and schizophrenics (Arieti, 1959; Piaget, 1959; Werner, 1957a). Myth was the prolific chaos from which language, magic, art, science, medicine, mores, morals, and religion were differentiated (Cassirer, 1953–1957).

[!question] Thought Provoking

Page: 218 (75.96%) @ 05 Jan 2025 04:29:49 AM

Mental disease is essentially a disturbance of system functions of the psychophysical organism. For this reason, isolated symptoms or syndromes do not define the disease entity (von Bertalanffy, 1960a). Look at some classical symptoms of schizophrenia. “Loosening of associational structure” (E. Bleuler) and unbridled chains of associations; quite similar examples are found in “purple” poetry and rhetoric. Auditory hallucinations; “voices” told Joan of Arc to liberate France. Piercing sensations; a great mystic like St. Teresa reported identical experience. Fantastic world constructions; those of science surpass any schizophrenic’s. This is not to play on the theme “genius and madness,” but it is apt to show that not single criteria but integration makes for the difference.

[!question] Thought Provoking

10 The Relativity of Categories

Page: 238 (82.93%) @ 05 Jan 2025 09:18:53 PM

It may be mentioned, in passing, that the relation between language and world view is not unidirectional but reciprocal, a fact which perhaps was not made sufficiently clear by Whorf. The structure of language seems to determine which traits of reality are abstracted and hence what form the categories of thinking take on. On the other hand, the world outlook determines and forms the language.

[!quote] Quotable/Concept/General Idea

Page: 238 (82.93%) @ 05 Jan 2025 09:19:15 PM

A good example is the evolution from classical to medieval Latin. The Gothic world view has recreated an ancient language, this being true for the lexical as well as the grammatical aspect. Thus the scholastics invented hosts of words which are atrocities from the standpoint of Cicero’s language (as the humanists of the Renaissance so deeply felt in their revivalistic struggle); words introduced to cope with abstract aspects foreign to the corporeally-thinking Roman mind, like leonitas, quidditas and the rest of them. Equally, although the superficial rules of grammar were observed, the line of thinking and construction was profoundly altered. This also applies to the rhetorical aspect, as in the introduction of the end-rhyme in contrast to the classical meters. Comparison, say, of the colossal lines of the Dies irae with some Virgilian or Horatian stanza makes obvious not only the tremendous gap between different “world-feelings” but the determination of language by the latter as well.

[!quote] Quotable/Concept/General Idea

Page: 240 (83.62%) @ 05 Jan 2025 10:10:36 PM

Speaking in anthropomorphic terms: A group of schizophrenics who share their illusions may get along with each other pretty well; they are, however, utterly unfit to react and adapt themselves to real outside situations, and this is precisely the reason why they are put into the asylum. Or, in terms of Plato’s simile: the prisoners in the cave do not see the real things but only their shadows; but if they are not only looking at the spectacle, but have to take part in the performance, the shadows must, in some way, be representative of the real things. It seems to be the most serious shortcoming of classic occidental philosophy, from Plato to Descartes and Kant, to consider man primarily as a spectator, as ens cogitans, while, for biological reasons, he has essentially to be a performer, an ens agens in the world he is thrown in.

[!question] Thought Provoking

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

2026-03-04T14:44:05.000Z

Fahrenheit 451

Ray Bradbury

PART ONE:

09 Apr 2022 03:31 PM

Picture it. Nineteenth-century man with his horses, dogs, carts, slow motion. Then, in the twentieth century, speed up your camera. Books cut shorter. Condensations, Digests. Tabloids. Everything boils down to the gag, the snap ending. " "Snap ending. " Mildred nodded. "Classics cut to fit fifteen-minute radio shows, then cut again to fill a two-minute book column, winding up at last as a ten- or twelve-line dictionary resume. I exaggerate, of course. The dictionaries were for reference. But many were those whose sole knowledge of Hamlet (you know the title certainly, Montag; it is probably only a faint rumour of a title to you, Mrs. Montag) whose sole knowledge, as I say, of Hamlet was a one-page digest in a book that claimed: now at least you can read all the classics; keep up with your neighbours. Do you see? Out of the nursery into the college and back to the nursery; there's your intellectual pattern for the past five centuries or more.

Well… That's basically Blinkist.

09 Apr 2022 10:19 PM

If you don't want a man unhappy politically, don't give him two sides to a question to worry him; give him one. Better yet, give him none. Let him forget there is such a thing as war. If the Government is inefficient, top-heavy, and tax-mad, better it be all those than that people worry over it. Peace, Montag. Give the people contests they win by remembering the words to more popular songs or the names of state capitals or how much corn Iowa grew last year. Cram them full of non-combustible data, chock them so damned full of 'facts' they feel stuffed, but absolutely 'brilliant' with information. Then they'll feel they're thinking, they'll get a sense of motion without moving. And they'll be happy, because facts of that sort don't change. Don't give them any slippery stuff like philosophy or sociology to tie things up with. That way lies melancholy.

The Metaverse.

PART TWO:

09 Apr 2022 11:28 PM

"I don't talk things, sir, " said Faber. "I talk the meaning of things. I sit here and know I'm alive."

10 Apr 2022 12:04 PM

"It's been a long time. I'm not a religious man. But it's been a long time." Faber turned the pages, stopping here and there to read. "It's as good as I remember. Lord, how they've changed it- in our 'parlours' these days. Christ is one of the 'family' now. I often wonder if God recognizes His own son the way we've dressed him up, or is it dressed him down? He's a regular peppermint stick now, all sugar-crystal and saccharine when he isn't making veiled references to certain commercial products that every worshipper absolutely needs."

10 Apr 2022 12:08 PM

So now do you see why books are hated and feared? They show the pores in the face of life. The comfortable people want only wax moon faces, poreless, hairless, expressionless. We are living in a time when flowers are trying to live on flowers, instead of growing on good rain and black loam.

10 Apr 2022 12:07 PM

Do you know why books such as this are so important? Because they have quality. And what does the word quality mean? To me it means texture. This book has pores. It has features. This book can go under the microscope. You'd find life under the glass, streaming past in infinite profusion. The more pores, the more truthfully recorded details of life per square inch you can get on a sheet of paper, the more 'literary' you are. That's my definition, anyway. Telling detail. Fresh detail. The good writers touch life often. The mediocre ones run a quick hand over her. The bad ones rape her and leave her for the flies.

PART THREE:

11 Apr 2022 11:42 PM

"What is there about fire that's so lovely? No matter what age we are, what draws us to it? " Beatty blew out the flame and lit it again. "It's perpetual motion; the thing man wanted to invent but never did. Or almost perpetual motion. If you let it go on, it'd burn our lifetimes out. What is fire? It's a mystery. Scientists give us gobbledegook about friction and molecules. But they don't really know. Its real beauty is that it destroys responsibility and consequences. A problem gets too burdensome, then into the furnace with it. Now, Montag, you're a burden. And fire will lift you off my shoulders, clean, quick, sure; nothing to rot later. Antibiotic, aesthetic, practical."

12 Apr 2022 11:40 AM

He floated on his back when the valise filled and sank; the river was mild and leisurely, going away from the people who ate shadows for breakfast and steam for lunch and vapours for supper. The river was very real; it held him comfortably and gave him the time at last, the leisure, to consider this month, this year, and a lifetime of years. He listened to his heart slow. His thoughts stopped rushing with his blood.

12 Apr 2022 12:16 PM

"Now, let's get on upstream, " said Granger. "And hold on to one thought: You're not important. You're not anything. Some day the load we're carrying with us may help someone. But even when we had the books on hand, a long time ago, we didn't use what we got out of them. We went right on insulting the dead. We went right on spitting in the graves of all the poor ones who died before us. We're going to meet a lot of lonely people in the next week and the next month and the next year. And when they ask us what we're doing, you can say, We're remembering. That's where we'll win out in the long run. And some day we'll remember so much that we'll build the biggest goddam steam-shovel in history and dig the biggest grave of all time and shove war in and cover it up. Come on now, we're going to go build a mirror-factory first and put out nothing but mirrors for the next year and take a long look in them."

Differance by Jacques Derrida

2026-03-21T10:59:17.000Z

Differance

Jacques Derrida

«DIFFERANCE»

Page: 1 (4.17%) @ 19 Mar 2026 02:12:14 AM

In the one case “to differ” signifies nonidentity; in the other case it signifies the order of the same.

[!quote] Quotable/Concept/General Idea
By same, did he meant order of the same entity, or, order of the signification of nonidentity?

Page: 2 (8.33%) @ 19 Mar 2026 10:38:12 PM

Differance is neither a word nor a concept. In it, however, we shall see the juncture—rather than the summation—of what has been most decisively inscribed in the thought of what is conveniently called our “epoch”: the difference of forces in Nietzsche, Saussure’s principle of semiological difference, differing as the possibility of [neurone] facilitation,2 impression and delayed effect in Freud, difference as the irreducibility of the trace of the other in Levinas, and the ontic-ontological difference in Heidegger.

[!quote] Quotable/Concept/General Idea

Page: 2 (8.33%) @ 19 Mar 2026 10:40:42 PM

I shall speak, then, of a letter—the first one, if we are to believe the alphabet and most of the speculations that have concerned themselves with it.

[!quote] Quotable/Concept/General Idea
While this is very poetic, it is not economical in the way I prefer serious text. This is not about style. This paragraph doesn't contain any information in the current context.

Page: 4 (16.67%) @ 19 Mar 2026 11:05:17 PM

The difference between two phonemes, which enables them to exist and to operate, is inaudible. The inaudible opens the two present phonemes to hearing, as they present themselves. If, then, there is no purely phonetic writing, it is because there is no purely phonetic phone. The difference that brings out phonemes and lets them be heard and understood [entendre] itself remains inaudible.

[!important] Striking/Intense

Page: 4 (16.67%) @ 19 Mar 2026 11:10:52 PM

This differance belongs neither to the voice nor to writing in the ordinary sense, and it takes place, like the strange space that will assemble us here for the course of an hour, between speech and writing and beyond the tranquil familiarity that binds us to one and to the other, reassuring us sometimes in the illusion that they are two separate things.

[!question] Thought Provoking

Page: 4 (16.67%) @ 19 Mar 2026 11:13:36 PM

Now, how am I to speak of the a of differance? It is clear that it cannot be exposed. We can expose only what, at a certain moment, can become present, manifest; what can be shown, presented as a present, a being-present in its truth, the truth of a present or the presence of a present. However, if differance is (I also cross out the “is”) what makes the presentation of being-present possible, it never presents itself as such. It is never given in the present or to anyone. Holding back and not exposing itself, it goes beyond the order of truth on this specific point and in this determined way, yet is not itself concealed, as if it were something, a mysterious being, in the occult zone of the nonknowing. Any exposition would expose it to disappearing as a disappearance. It would risk appearing, thus disappearing.

[!question] Thought Provoking

Page: 7 (29.17%) @ 19 Mar 2026 11:24:43 PM

Within a conceptual system and in terms of classical requirements, differance could be said to designate the productive and primordial constituting causality, the process of scission and division whose dif- ferings and differences would be the constituted products or effects.

[!important] Striking/Intense

Page: 7 (29.17%) @ 20 Mar 2026 12:42:08 AM

But philosophy has perhaps commenced by distributing the middle voice, expressing a certain intransitiveness, into the active and the passive voice, and has itself been constituted in this repression.

[!question] Thought Provoking

Page: 8 (33.33%) @ 20 Mar 2026 12:53:42 AM

I shall only note that between differance as temporalizing-temporalization (which we can no longer conceive within the horizon of the present) and what Heidegger says about temporalization in Sein und Zeit (namely, that as the transcendental horizon of the question of being it must be freed from the traditional and metaphysical domination by the present or the now)—between these two there is a close, if not exhaustive and irreducibly necessary, interconnection.

[!question] Thought Provoking

Page: 8 (33.33%) @ 20 Mar 2026 12:56:14 AM

It was Saussure who first of all set forth the arbitrariness of signs and the differential character of signs as principles of general semiology and particularly of linguistics. And, as we know, these two themes—the arbitrary and the differential—are in his view inseparable. Arbitrariness can occur only because the system of signs is constituted by the differences between the terms, and not by their fullness. The elements of signification function not by virtue of the compact force of their cores but by the network of oppositions that distinguish them and relate them to one another. “Arbitrary and differential” says Saussure “are two correlative qualities.”

[!question] Thought Provoking
This creates an illusion of knowledge. The illusion is of degree, not of quality. We think we know because we know the sign of it. In reality, we only know (and that also, partially) the difference between those words.

Page: 9 (37.50%) @ 20 Mar 2026 02:38:38 AM

What we note as differance will thus be the movement of play that “produces” (and not by something that is simply an activity) these differences, these effects of difference. This does not mean that the differance which produces differences is before them in a simple and in itself unmodified and indifferent present. Differance is the nonfull, nonsimple "origin"; it is the structured and differing origin of differences.

[!important] Striking/Intense

Page: 13 (54.17%) @ 20 Mar 2026 07:42:21 PM

We might be tempted by an objection: to be sure, the subject becomes a speaking subject only by dealing with the system of linguistic differences; or again, he becomes a signifying subject (generally by speech or other signs) only by entering into the system of differences. In this sense, certainly, the speaking or signifying subject would not be self-present, insofar as he speaks or signifies, except for the play of linguistic or semiological differance. But can we not conceive of a presence and self-presence of the subject before speech or its signs, a subject’s self-presence in a silent and intuitive consciousness?

[!question] Thought Provoking
Can there really be an intuitive consciousness? If we observe our discovery of self in our childhood, it obviously comes after a rudimentary language, and a practice of signification, therefore differance, already quite in practice in that stage of our life.

Page: 16 (66.67%) @ 20 Mar 2026 08:03:50 PM

The concept of trace (Spur), of facilitation (Bahnung), of forces of facilitation are, as early as the composition of the Entwurf, inseparable from the concept of difference. The origin of memory and of the psyche as a memory in general (conscious or unconscious) can only be described by taking into account the difference between the facilitation thresholds, as Freud says explicitly. There is no facilitation [Bahnung] without difference and no difference without a trace.

[!quote] Quotable/Concept/General Idea: Thought so.

Page: 17 (70.83%) @ 21 Mar 2026 01:34:44 AM

In this context and under this heading, the unconscious is not, as we know, a hidden, virtual, and potential self-presence. It is differed—which no doubt means that it is woven out of differences, but also that it sends out, that it delegates, representatives or proxies; but there is no chance that the mandating subject “exists” somewhere, that it is present or is “itself,” and still less chance that it will become conscious.

[!question] Thought Provoking

Page: 23 (95.83%) @ 21 Mar 2026 02:42:36 AM

What is unnamable here is not some ineffable being that cannot be approached by a name; like God, for example. What is unnamable is the play that brings about the nominal effects, the relatively unitary or atomic structures we call names, or chains of substitutions for names.

[!important] Striking/Intense

Page: 23 (95.83%) @ 21 Mar 2026 02:52:02 AM

Such is the question: the marriage between speech and Being in the unique word, in the finally proper name. Such is the question that enters into the affirmation put into play by differance. The question bears (upon) each of the words in this sentence: “Being / speaks / through every language; / everywhere and always /.”

[!stylish] Stylish

Between the World and Me by Ta_ Nehisi Coates

2023-02-10T04:53:11.000Z

Between the World and Me

Ta-Nehisi Coates

Chapter I

Note 01

racism is rendered as the innocent daughter of Mother Nature, and one is left to deplore the Middle Passage or the Trail of Tears the way one deplores an earthquake, a tornado, or any other phenomenon that can be cast as beyond the handiwork of men. But race is the child of racism, not the father.

Note 02

But all our phrasing—race relations, racial chasm, racial justice, racial profiling, white privilege, even white supremacy—serves to obscure that racism is a visceral experience, that it dislodges brains, blocks airways, rips muscle, extracts organs, cracks bones, breaks teeth. You must never look away from this. You must always remember that the sociology, the history, the economics, the graphs, the charts, the regressions all land, with great violence, upon the body.

Note 03

The Dream thrives on generalization, on limiting the number of possible questions, on privileging immediate answers. The Dream is the enemy of all art, courageous thinking, and honest writing.

Note 04

I grew up in a house drawn between love and fear. There was no room for softness. But this girl with the long dreads revealed something else—that love could be soft and understanding; that, soft or hard, love was an act of heroism.

Chapter III

Note 05

The power is not divinity but a deep knowledge of how fragile everything—even the Dream, especially the Dream—really is.

Being and Time by Martin Heidegger

2026-03-21T16:51:21.000Z

Being and Time

Martin Heidegger

Introduction: The Exposition of the Question of the Meaning of Being

Chapter One. The Necessity, Structure, and Priority of the Question of the Meaning of Being

§ 2. The Formal Structure of the Question of Being

Time：2021-02-20 07:07

Every questioning is a seeking. Every seeking takes its lead beforehand from what is sought. Questioning is a knowing search for beings in their thatness and whatness. The knowing search can become an "investigation," as the revealing determination of what the question aims at.

Page Number: 34

Chapter Two. The Double Tusk in Working Out the Question of Being: The Method of the Investigation and It's Outline

§ 6. The Task of a Destruction of the History of Ontology

Time：2021-02-21 15:33

The preparatory interpretation of the fundamental structures of Dasein with regard to its usual and average way of being-in which it is also first of all historical-will make the following clear: Dasein not only has the inclination to be entangled in the world in which it is and to interpret itself in terms of that world by its reflected light; at the same time Dasein is also entangled in a tradition which it more or less explicitly grasps. This tradition deprives Dasein of its own leadership in questioning and choosing. This is especially true of that understanding (and its possible development) which is rooted in the most proper being of Dasein-the ontological understanding.

Page Number: 50

Time：2021-02-21 15:35

The tradition uproots the historicity of Dasein to such a degree that it only takes an interest in the manifold forms of possible types, directions, and standpoints of philosophizing in the most remote and strangest cultures, and with this interest tries to veil its own groundlessness

Page Number: 51

§ 7. The Phenomenological Method of the Investigation

C. The Preliminary Concept of Phenomenology

Time：2021-02-21 17:21

Philosophy is universal phenomenological ontology, taking its departure from the hermeneutic of Dasein, which, as an analysis of existence [Existenz],+ has fastened the end of the guideline of all philosophical inquiry at the point from which it arises and to which it returns

Page Number: 66

Division One. THe PreParatory Fundamental Analysis of Dasein

Chapter One. The Exposition of the Task of a Preparatory Analysis of Daseing

§ 9. The Theme of the Analytic of Dasein

Time：2021-02-24 14:43

The being whose analysis our task is, is always we* ourselves. The being of this being is always mine. In the being of this being it is related to its being. As the being of this being, it is entrusted to its own being. It is being about which this being is concerned. From this characteristic of Dasein two things follow.

Beingception! 😌

Page Number: 71

Time：2021-02-22 16:52

Dasein is my own, to be always in this or that way. It has somehow always already decided in which way Dasein is always my own. The being which is concerned in its being about its being is related to its being as its ownmost possibility. Dasein is always its possibility. It does not ''have" that possibility only as a mere attribute of something objectively present. And because Dasein is always essentially its possibility, it can "choose" itself in its being, it can win itself, it can lose itself, or it can never and only "apparently" win itself. It can only have lost itself and it can only have not yet gained itself because it is essentially possible as authentic, that is, it belongs to itself. The two kinds of being [Seinsmodi] of authenticity [Eigentlichkeit] and inauthenticity [Uneigentlichkeit]-these expressions are terminologically chosen in the strictest sense of the word-are based on the fact that Dasein is· in general determined by always being-mine. But the inauthenticity of Dasein does not signify a 'lesser" being or a "lower" degree of being. Rather, inauthenticity can determine Dasein even in its fullest concretion, when it is busy, excited, interested, and capable of pleasure.

Page Number: 72

Chapter Three. The Worldliness of the Being

§ 16. The Worldly Character of Fhe Surrounding WorldAnnouncing Itself in Innerworldly Beings

Time：2021-03-08 21:21

According to our foregoing interpretation, being-in-the-world signifies the unthematic, circumspect absorption in the references constitutive for the handiness of the totality of useful things. Taking care of things always already occurs on the basis of a familiarity with the world. In this familiarity Dasein can lose itself in what it encounters within the world and be numbed by it. With what is Dasein familiar? Why can the worldly character of innerworldly beings appear? How is the referential totality [Verweisungsganzheit] in which circumspection "moves" to be understood more precisely? When this totality is broken, the presence of beings is thrust to the fore.

Page Number: 105

§ 18. Relevance [Bewandtnis] and Significance [Bedeutsamkeit]: The Worldliness of the World

Time：2021-03-12 16:37

A sign is something ontically at hand which, as this definite useful thing, functions at the same time as something which indicates the ontological structure of handiness, referential totality, and worldliness.

Page Number: 111

Chapter Four. Being-in-the-World as Being-with and Being a Self: The "They"

§ 26. The Dasein-with of Others and Everyday Being-with

Time：2021-03-14 14:40

The world of Dasein is a with-world [Mitwelt]. Being-in is being-with [Mitsein] others. The innerworldly being-in-itself of others is Dasein-with [Mitdasein].

Page Number: 146

Chapter Five. Being-in as Such

§ 32. Understanding and Interpretation

Time：2021-04-12 02:01

Things at hand are always already understood in terms of a totality of relevance. This totality need not be explicitly grasped by a thematic interpretation. Even if this totality of relevance has undergone such an interpretation, it recedes again into an undifferentiated understanding. It is precisely in this modality that it is the essential foundation of everyday, circumspect interpretation.

Page Number: 175

Time：2021-04-12 02:03

In each instance Qeweils], the interpretation is grounded in a foresight [Vorsicht] that "approaches" ["anschneidet"] what has been taken in fore-having with a definite interpretation in view.

Page Number: 175

Time：2021-04-12 02:05

The interpretation of something as something is essentially grounded in fore-having, fore-sight, and fore-conception. Interpretation is never a presuppositionless grasping of something previously given. When a specific instance of interpretation (in the sense of a precise textual interpretation) appeals to what "is there" ["dasteht"], then that which initially "is there" is nothing other than the self-evident, undiscussed prejudice [Vormeinung] of the interpreter which necessarily lies in every interpretive approach as that which is already "posited" with interpretation in general, namely, that which is pre-given [vorgegeben] in fore-having, fore-sight, and fore-conception. How are we to conceive the character of this "fore"? Have we done this when we formally say "a priori"? Why is this structure appropriate to understanding, which we have characterized as a fundamental existential of Dasein? How is the structure of the "as" which belongs to what is interpreted as such related to the fore-structure? This phenomenon is obviously not to be dissolved "into pieces." But is a primordial analytic to be ruled out? Should we accept such phenomena as "finalities"? Then the question would remain, why? Or do the fore-structure of understanding and the as-structure of interpretation show an existential-ontological connection with the phenomenon of project? And does this phenomenon refer back to a primordial constitution of being of Dasein?

Page Number:176

§ 34. Da-sein and Discourse. Language

Time：2021-04-13 01:56

Discourse is the structuring of the attuned intelligibility of being-in-the-world. Its constitutive factors are: what discourse is about (what is discussed), what is said as such, communication, and making known. These are not properties which can be just empirically snatched from language, but are existential characteristics rooted in the constitution of being of Dasein which first make something like language ontologically possible. Some of these factors can be lacking or remain unnoticed in the factical linguistic form of a particular discourse. The fact that they often are not "verbally'' expressed is only an indication of a particular kind of discourse which, :insofar as it is discourse, must always lie within the totality of these structures.

Page Number: 187

§ 35. Idle Talk

Time：2021-04-13 19:17

Is not Dasein, as thrown being-in-the-world, initially thrown into the publicness of the they? And what else does this publicness mean than the specific disclosedness of the they?

Page Number: 191

Time：2021-04-13 19:21

Idle talk is constituted in this gossiping and passing the word along, a process by which its initial lack of grounds to stand on increases to complete groundlessness [Bodenlosigkeit]

Page Number: 193

Time：2021-04-13 19:22

And this is not limited to vocal gossip, but spreads to what is written, as "scribbling." In this latter case, gossiping is based not so much on hearsay. It feeds on sporadic superficial reading: the average understanding of the reader will neoer be able to decide what has been drawn from primordial sources with a struggle, and how much is just gossip. Moreover, the average understanding will not even want such a distinction, will not have need of it, since, after all, it understands everything.

Page Number: 193

§ 36. Curiosity

Time：2021-04-13 19:30

Being is what shows itself in pure, intuitive perception, and only this seeing discovers being.

Page Number: 195

Chapter Six.Care as the Being of Dasein

§ 40. The Fundamental Attunement of Anxiety as an Eminent Disclosedness of Dasein

Time：2021-04-14 21:41

Thus neither does anxiety "see" a definite "there" and "over here" from which what is threatening approaches. The fact that what is threatening is nowhere characterizes what anxiety is about. Anxiety "does not know" what it is anxious about. But "nowhere" does not mean nothing; rather, region in general lies therein, and disclosedness of the world in general for essentially spatial being-in. Therefore, what is threatening cannot come closer from a definite direction within nearness, it is already "there"-and yet nowhere. It is so near that it is oppressive and takes away one's breath-and yet it is nowhere.

Page Number: 210

§ 42. Confirmation of the Existential Interpretation of Dasein as Care in Terms of the Pre-ontological Self-interpretation of Dasein

Time：2021-04-15 03:15

In pure urge, care has not yet become free, although it first makes it ontologically possible for Dasein to be urged on by itself. On the other hand, in an inclination care is always already bound. Inclination and urge are possibilities rooted in the thrownness of Dasein. The urge "to live" is not to be destroyed; the inclination to be "lived" by the world is not to be eradicated. But because and only because they are ontologically based in care, both are to be modified ontically and existentielly by care as something authentic.

Page Number: 219

§ 44. Dasein, Disclossedness, and Truth > (c) The Kind of Being of Truth and the Presupposition of Truth

Time：2021-04-23 22:13

The meaning of the presupposition of truth, too, becomes intelligible in terms of the existentially conceived kind of being of truth. Why must we presuppose that there is truth? What does "presuppose" mean? What do "must" and "we" mean? What does it mean, "there is truth"? "We" presuppose truth because, "we," existing in the kind of being of Dasein, are "in the truth." We do not presuppose it as something "outside" and "above" us to which we are related along with other "values" too. We do not presuppose "truth" rather truth makes it ontologically possible that we can be in such a way that we "presuppose" something at all. Truth first makes possible something like presupposition.

Page Number: 248

Division Two. Dasein and Temporality

Chapter Three. The Authentic Potentiality-for-Being-a-Whole of Dasein and Temporality as Ontological Meaning of Care

§ 62. The Existentielly Authentic Potentiality for-Being-Whole of Dasein as Anticipatory Resoluteness

Time：2021-04-29 00:03

Death is not tacked on to Dasein as its "end," but, as care, Dasein is the thrown (that is, null) ground of its death. The nothingness primordially dominant in the being of Dasein is revealed to it in authentic being-toward-death. Anticipation makes being-guilty evident only on the basis of the whole being of Dasein. Care contains death and guilt equiprimordially. Only anticipatory resoluteness understands the potentiality-for-being-guilty authentically and wholly, that is, primordially

Page Number: 323

Time：2021-04-29 00:09

But Dasein is equiprimordially in untruth. Anticipatory resoluteness at the same time gives Dasein the primordial certainty of its being closed off. In anticipatory resoluteness, Dasein holds itself open for its constant lostness in the irresoluteness of the they-a lostness which is possible from the very ground of its own being. As a constant possibility of Dasein, irresoluteness is co-certain.

Page Number: 325

§ 65. Temporality as the Ontological Meaning of Care

Time：2021-04-29 20:06

Only because Dasein is determined as temporality does it make possible for itself the authentic potentiality-of-being-a-whole of anticipatory resoluteness which we characterized. Temporality reveals itself as the meaning of authentic care.

Page Number: 341

Chapter Four. Temporality and Everydayness

§ 69. The Temporality of Being-in-the-World and the Problem of the Transcendence of the World

(b) The Temporal Meaning of the Way in Which Circumspect Taking Care Becomes Modified into the Theoretical Discovery ofThat Which is Present Within the World.

Time：2021-04-30 11:35

The existential concept understands science as a mode of existence and thus a mode of being-in-the-world which discovers or discloses beings or being

Page Number: 370

§ 70. The Temporality of the Spatiality Characteristic of Dasein

Time：2021-04-30 22:49

Dasein can be spatial only as care, in the sense of factically entangled existing. Negatively this means that Dasein is never objectively present in space, not even initially. Dasein does not fill out a piece of space as a real thing or useful thing would do, so that the boundaries dividing it from the surrounding space would themselves just define that space spatially. In the literal sense, Dasein takes space in. It is by no means merely objectively present in the piece of space that its corporeal body [Leibkorper] fills out.

Page Number: 380

Chapter Five. Temporality and Historicity

§ 74. The Essential Constitution of Historicity

Time：2021-04-30 23:34

Factically, Dasein always has its "history," and it can have something of the sort because the being of this being is constituted by historicity. We want to justify this thesis with the intention of setting forth the ontological problem of history as an existential one. The being of Dasein was defined as care. Care is grounded in temporality. Within the scope of temporality we must accordingly search for an occurrence that determines existence as historical. Thus the interpretation of the historicity of Dasein turns out to be basically just a more concrete elaboration of temporality.

Page Number: 394

Time：2021-04-30 23:36

To be sure, as thrown, Dasein is delivered over to itself and its potentiality-of-being, but as being-in-the-world. As thrown, it is dependent upon a "world," and exists factically with others. Initially and for the most part, the self is lost in the they. It understands itself in terms of the possibilities of existence that "circulate" in the present day "average" public interpretedness of Dasein.

Page Number: 395

Chapter Six. Temporality and Within-Timeness as the Origin of the Vulgar Concept of Time

§ 78. The Incompleteness of the Foregoing Temporal Analysis of Dasein

Time: 2021-05-01 22:53

Everyday Dasein taking time initially finds time in things at hand
and objectively present encountered within the world. It understands time thus "experienced" in the horizon of the understanding of being that is closest to it, that is, as something that is itself somehow present.

Page Number: 416

§ 80. Time Taken Care of and Within-Timeness

Time: 2021-05-01 23:09

Making time public does not occur occasionally and subsequently. Rather, since as ecstatic and temporal Dasein is always already disclosed, and because understanding and interpretation belong to existence, time has also already made itself public in taking care. One orients oneself according to it, so that it must somehow be available for everyone.

Page Number: 422

Time: 2021-05-01 23:20

What does reading off the time signify? "To look at the clock" cannot simply mean to contemplate the tool at hand in its changes and to follow the positions of the pointer. Ascertaining what time it is in using the clock, we say, whether explicitly or not, now it is such an hour and so many minutes, now it is time to … , or there is still time … , namely now until… . Looking at the clock is grounded in and guided by a taking-time-for-oneself. What already showed itself in the most elemental reckoning of time becomes clearer here: looking at the clock and orienting oneself according to time is essentially a now-saying. Here the now is always already understood and interpreted in its complete structural content of datability, spannedness, publicness, and worldliness. This is so "obvious" that we do not take any notice of it at all; still less do we know anything about it explicitly.

But now-saying is the discoursing articulation of a making present that temporalizes itself in unity with an awaiting that retains. The dating carried out in the use of the clock turns out to be the eminent making present of something present.

Page Number: 426

Time: 2021-05-01 23:21

We shall not go into the problem of time measurement in the theory of relativity here. The illumination of the ontological foundations of this measurement already presup- poses a clarification of world time and within-timeness on the basis of the temporality of Dasein and the explication of the existential and temporal constitution of the discovery of nature and the temporal meaning of measurement in general as well. An axiomatics of the technique of physical measurement is based on these investigations and can never from its perspective explicate the problem of time as such.

Page Number: 427

§ 81. Within-Timeness and the Genesis of the Vulgar Concept of Time

Time: 2021-05-01 23:32

The succession of nows is uninterrupted and has no gaps. No matter how "far" we penetrate in "dividing" the now, it is still always now.

Page Number: 432

Might be wrong if Planck time is the smallest possible time.

Time: 2021-05-01 23:36

Why do we say that time passes away when we do not emphasize just as much how it comes into being?

Page Number: 434

Barracoon by Zora Neale Hurston

2023-07-10T09:21:43.000Z

Barracoon

By Zora Neale Hurston

Foreword: Those Who Love Us Never Leave Us Alone with Our Grief: Reading Barracoon: The Story of the Last “Black Cargo” by Alice Walker

Page 10 @ January 30, 2019

How the whites simply treated their “slaves” like pieces of machinery. But machinery that could be whipped if it didn’t produce enough. Fast enough. Machinery that could be mutilated, raped, killed, if the desire arose. Machinery that could be cheated, cheerfully, without a trace of guilt.

Introduction

Page 17 @ February 1, 2019

Mules and Men

To read.

Barracoon

Page 43 @ February 2, 2019

So dey wrap de cord around his neck and around de neck of de dead man. Dey wrap de cord around his body an’ around de body of de dead man. Dey wrap his arm an’ de dead man’s arm wid de same cord. His leg is wrapped as one wid de leg of de man he done killed. So dey leave him dere. His nose is tied to de nose of de dead man. His lips touch the lips of de corpse. So dey leave him.

Very interesting!

Page 45 @ February 2, 2019

We say in de Affica soil, ‘We live wid you while you alive, how come we cain live wid you after you die?’ So, you know dey bury a man in his house.

Wow!

Page 62 @ February 2, 2019

De work very hard for us to do ’cause we ain’ used to workee lak dat. But we doan grieve ’bout dat. We cry ’cause we slave. In night time we cry, we say we born and raised to be free people and now we slave. We doan know why we be bring ’way from our country to work lak dis. It strange to us.

It took Europeans hundreds of years to understand this simple truth. Civilized, eh?

Page 67 @ February 3, 2019

When he doan hear de axe on de tree no mo’ he look up and see Cudjo standin’ dere. Derefo’ he astee me, ‘Cudjo, what make you so sad?’ “I tell him, ‘Cap’n Tim, I grieve for my home.’ “He say, ‘But you got a good home, Cudjo.’ “Cudjo say, ‘Cap’n Tim, how big is de Mobile?’ “‘I doan know, Cudjo, I’ve never been to de four corners.’ “‘Well, if you give Cudjo all de Mobile, dat railroad, and all de banks, Cudjo doan want it ’cause it ain’ home. Cap’n Tim, you brought us from our country where we had lan’. You made us slave. Now dey make us free but we ain’ got no country and we ain’ got no lan’! Why doan you give us piece dis land so we kin buildee ourself a home?’

Page 70 @ February 3, 2019

“Derefo’, you unnerstand me, after me and my wife ’gree ’tween ourselves, we seekee religion and got converted. Den in de church dey tell us dat ain’ right. We got to marry by license. In de Afficky soil, you unnerstand me, we ain’ got no license. De man and de woman dey ’gree ’tween deyselves, den dey married and live together. We doan know nothin’ ’bout dey have license over here in dis place. So den we gittee married by de license, but I doan love my wife no mo’ wid de license than I love her befo’ de license. She a good woman and I love her all de time.

Page 84 @ February 3, 2019

I am sure that he does not fear death. In spite of his long Christian fellowship, he is too deeply a pagan to fear death.

Barabbas by Par Lagerkvist

2023-01-30T17:41:46.000Z

Barabbas

Par Lagerkvist

Chapter 7

Time：2021-03-20 23:07

The true believer grew so impatient at last that he bent down and picked up a large sharp stone, which he hurled with all his senile might at the hare-lipped girl. It did in fact hit her, and she staggered and raised her spindly arms in a rather helpless way. The mob gave a wild shriek of approval and the true believer stood looking down at his work, clearly well pleased with it. Barabbas, stepping right up to him, lifted his mantle slightly and stuck a knife into him with a deft movement that bespoke long practice. It happened so quickly that no one noticed anything. And, besides, they were all so busy casting their stones down on to the victim.
Barabbas pushed his way through to the edge, and there, down in the pit, he saw the girl with the hare-lip stagger forward a step or two with outstretched hands, crying out:
—He has come! He has come! I see him! I see him!…
Then she fell to her knees, and it was as though she seized hold of the hem of someone’s garment as she snuffled:
—Lord, how can I witness for thee? Forgive me, forgive …
Then sinking down on the blood-stained stones she gave up the ghost.
When it was all over, those immediately around discovered that a man lay dead amongst them, while another man was seen to run off between the vineyards and disappear into the olive-groves over towards the Vale of Kedron. Several of the guard gave chase, but were unable to find him. It was as if the earth had swallowed him up.

Chapter 12

Time：2021-03-21 01:29

Then he went and stood in front of Barabbas, and as he turned over his slave’s disk in the same way he asked:
—And you? Do you also believe in this loving god?
Barabbas made no reply.
—Tell me. Do you?
Barabbas shook his head.
—You don’t? Why do you bear his name on your disk then?
Barabbas was silent as before.
—Is he not your god? Isn’t that what the inscription means?
—I have no god, Barabbas answered at last, so softly that it could hardly be heard. But Sahak and the Roman both heard it. And Sahak gave him a look so full of despair, pain and amazement at his incredible words that Barabbas felt it pass right through him, right into his inmost being, even though he did not meet the other’s eyes.
The Roman too seemed surprised.
—But I don’t understand, he said. Why then do you bear this “Christos Iesus” carved on your disk?
—Because I want to believe, Barabbas said, without looking up at either of them.
The Roman looked at him, at his ravaged face and the gash under the eye; at the hard, coarse mouth, which still retained much of its strength. There was no expression in the face and he was not sure that he would find any there even if he lifted up the head as he had done with the other. Besides, it would never have occurred to him to do so with this man. Why? He didn’t know.

Chapter 14

Time：2021-03-21 19:19

Barabbas was conceived and born in hatred of all things created in heaven and earth and of the Creator of heaven and earth.

Annihilation of Caste by B.R. Ambedkar

2025-05-27T11:46:18.000Z

Annihilation of Caste

by B.R. Ambedkar, Arundhati Roy, S. Anand

The Doctor and the Saint: Arundhati Roy

Page 31 @ March 30, 2018

among Delhi’s twenty High Court judges, not one belonged to the Scheduled Castes, and in all other judicial posts, the figure was 1.2 per cent; similar figures were reported from Rajasthan; Gujarat had no Dalit or Adivasi judges; in Tamil Nadu, with its legacy of social justice movements, only four out of thirty-eight High Court judges were Dalit; Kerala, with its Marxist legacy, had one Dalit High Court judge among twenty-five. 37 A study of the prison population would probably reveal an inverse ratio.

No wonder.

Page 38 @ March 30, 2018

The trouble is that Gandhi actually said everything and its opposite. To cherry pickers, he offers such a bewildering variety of cherries that you have to wonder if there was something the matter with the tree.

Page 38 @ April 4, 2018

Caste is another name for control. Caste puts a limit on enjoyment. Caste does not allow a person to transgress caste limits in pursuit of his enjoyment. That is the meaning of such caste restrictions as inter-dining and inter-marriage … These being my views I am opposed to all those who are out to destroy the Caste System.

Claps for Gandhi!

Page 40 @ April 4, 2018

In 1931, when Ambedkar met Gandhi for the first time, Gandhi questioned him about his sharp criticism of the Congress (which, it was assumed, was tantamount to criticising the struggle for the Homeland). “Gandhiji, I have no Homeland,” was Ambedkar’s famous reply. “No Untouchable worth the name will be proud of this land.”

আহারে!

Page 43 @ March 30, 2018

“Constitutional morality is not a natural sentiment. It has to be cultivated. We must realise that our people have yet to learn it. Democracy in India is only a top-dressing on an Indian soil which is essentially undemocratic.”

True.

Page 43 @ March 30, 2018

“To leave inequality between class and class, between sex and sex, which is the soul of Hindu society, and to go on passing legislation relating to economic problems is to make a farce of our Constitution and to build a palace on a dung heap.”

Iron backbone.

Page 47 @ March 30, 2018

As the earth warms up, as glaciers melt and forests disappear, Gandhi’s words have turned out to be prophetic. But his horror of modern civilisation led him to eulogise a mythical Indian past that was, in his telling, just and beautiful. Ambedkar, on his part, was painfully aware of the iniquity of that past, but in his urgency to move away from it, he failed to recognise the catastrophic dangers of Western modernity.

Interesting.

Page 66 @ March 31, 2018

Gandhi was not deterred. A few years after the South African War, he once again volunteered for active service.

A dog Gandhi was.

Page 74 @ March 31, 2018

The irony is that while Gandhi was performing the rituals of poverty in Tolstoy Farm, he was not questioning the accumulation of capital or the unequal distribution of wealth. He was not holding out for improved working conditions for the indentured, or for the return of land to those it had been stolen from. He was fighting for Indian merchants’ right to expand their businesses to the Transvaal and to compete with British merchants.

ধুয়ে দিছে।

Page 79 @ March 31, 2018

A man is not necessarily happy because he is rich or unhappy because he is poor. The rich are often seen to be unhappy, the poor to be happy. Millions will always remain poor … Observing all this our ancestors dissuaded us from luxuries and pleasures. We have managed with the same kind of plough as it existed thousands of years ago. We have retained the same kind of cottages we had in former times and our indigenous education remains the same as before.

WTF!

Page 85 @ March 31, 2018

So the Mahatma who promoted homespun khadi and the wooden charkha was sponsored by a mill-owner. The man who raged against the machine was kept afloat by industrialists. This arrangement was the precursor to the phenomenon of the corporate-sponsored NGO.

Ha ha!

Page 91 @ March 31, 2018

If a Shudra listens intentionally to the Vedas, the Gautama Dharma Sutra says, his ears must be filled with molten tin or lac.

Okay!

Page 126 @ March 31, 2018

Ambedkar was only echoing what a fourteen-year-old Untouchable Mang girl, Muktabai Salve, had said long ago. She was a student in the school for Untouchable children that Jotiba and Savitri Phule ran in Poona. In 1855, she said, “Let that religion, where only one person is privileged and the rest are deprived, perish from the earth and let it never enter our minds to be proud of such a religion.”

Page 133 @ March 31, 2018

It was extraordinary that, through all the chaos and prejudice, the first law ministers of both India and Pakistan were Dalits. Mandal was eventually disillusioned with Pakistan and returned to India. Ambedkar was disillusioned too, but he really had nowhere to go.

Annihilation of Caste

Page 173 @ April 1, 2018

But the world owes much to rebels who would dare to argue in the face of the pontiff and insist that he is not infallible. I do not care for the credit which every progressive society must give to its rebels. I shall be satisfied if I make the Hindus realise that they are the sick men of India, and that their sickness is causing danger to the health and happiness of other Indians.

Loving it.

Page 216 @ April 2, 2018

A tree should be judged by the fruits it yields. If caste is eugenic, what sort of a race of men should it have produced? Physically speaking the Hindus are a C3 people. 49 They are a race of pygmies and dwarfs, stunted in stature and wanting in stamina. It is a nation nine-tenths of which is declared to be unfit for military service. This shows that the caste system does not embody the eugenics of modern scientists.

"অন্নপায়ী বঙ্গবাসি(পড়ুন ভারতবাসি) স্তন্যপায়ী জীব।"

Page 224 @ April 3, 2018

The question naturally arises: From where does the Sikh or the Mahomedan derive his strength, which makes him brave and fearless? I am sure it is not due to relative superiority of physical strength, diet or drill. It is due to the strength arising out of the feeling that all Sikhs will come to the rescue of a Sikh when he is in danger, and that all Mahomedans will rush to save a Muslim if he is attacked.

True.

Page 235 @ April 3, 2018

Interdependence of one class on another class is inevitable. Even dependence of one class upon another may sometimes become allowable. But why make one person depend upon another in the matter of his vital needs? Education, everyone must have. Means of defence, everyone must have. These are the paramount requirements of every man for his self-preservation. How can the fact that his neighbour is educated and armed help a man who is uneducated and disarmed?

True

Page 246 @ April 3, 2018

You must not only discard the shastras, you must deny their authority, as did Buddha and Nanak. You must have courage to tell the Hindus that what is wrong with them is their religion—the religion which has produced in them this notion of the sacredness of caste. Will you show that courage?

They didn't.

Page 263 @ April 3, 2018

these views are the views of a man who has been no tool of power, no flatterer of greatness. They come from one, almost the whole of whose public exertion has been one continuous struggle for liberty for the poor and for the oppressed, and whose only reward has been a continuous shower of calumny and abuse from national journals and national leaders,

ট্রু

Page 333 @ April 4, 2018

As a matter of fact, a Hindu does treat all those who are not of his caste as though they were aliens, who could be discriminated against with impunity, and against whom any fraud or trick may be practised without shame. This is to say that there can be a better or a worse Hindu. But a good Hindu there cannot be. This is so not because there is anything wrong with his personal character. In fact, what is wrong is the entire basis of his relationship to his fellows. The best of men cannot be moral if the basis of relationship between them and their fellows is fundamentally a wrong relationship. To a slave, his master may be better or worse. But there cannot be a good master. A good man cannot be a master, and a master cannot be a good man.

True.

Page 339 @ April 4, 2018

of the child, with the child’s capacity for self-deception. Like a child, he can believe in anything he wants to believe in. We must therefore wait till such time as it pleases the Mahatma to abandon his faith in varna, as it has pleased him to abandon his faith in caste.

Page 340 @ April 4, 2018

As a Mahatma, he may be trying to spiritualise politics. Whether he has succeeded in it or not, politics have certainly commercialised him.

:p again.

Page 342 @ April 4, 2018

The Mahatma is no exception. The Mahatma appears not to believe in thinking. He prefers to follow the saints. Like a conservative with his reverence for consecrated notions, he is afraid that if he once starts thinking, many ideals and institutions to which he clings will be doomed. One must sympathise with him. For every act of independent thinking puts some portion of an apparently stable world in peril.

A Note on the Poona Pact

Page 362 @ April 4, 2018

Significantly, the Congress, despite its financial muscle, lost out to non-Congress Untouchable candidates in Bombay and Bengal, where the Dalit movement was strong.

Bengal was doing great.

Animal Farm by George Orwell

2025-05-27T11:44:49.000Z

Animal Farm

by George Orwell

Chapter 10

Page 91 @ August 27, 2017

ALL ANIMALS ARE EQUAL BUT SOME ANIMALS ARE MORE EQUAL THAN OTHERS

The punchline.

Against Interpretation and Other Essays by Susan S

2023-02-14T14:33:25.000Z

Against Interpretation and Other Essays

Sontag, Susan

Against interpretation

Time: 2021-11-12 21:51

Interpretation, based on the highly dubious theory that a work of art is composed of items of content, violates art. It makes art into an article for use, for arrangement into a mental scheme of categories.

On style

Time: 2021-11-13 01:47

To treat works of art in this fashion is not wholly irrelevant. But it is, obviously, putting art to use—for such purposes as inquiring into the history of ideas, diagnosing contemporary culture, or creating social solidarity. Such a treatment has little to do with what actually happens when a person possessing some training and aesthetic sensibility looks at a work of art appropriately. A work of art encountered as a work of art is an experience, not a statement or an answer to a question. Art is not only about something; it is something. A work of art is a thing in the world, not just a text or commentary on the world.

Time: 2021-11-15 22:28

For morality, unlike art, is ultimately justified by its utility: that it makes, or is supposed to make, life more humane and livable for us all. But consciousness—what used to be called,rather tendentiously, the faculty of contemplation—can be, and is, wider and more various than action. It has its nourishment, art and speculative thought, activities which can be described either as self-justifying or in no need of justification. What a work of art does is to make us see or comprehend something singular, not judge or generalize. This act of comprehension accompanied by voluptuousness is the only valid end, and sole sufficient justification, of a work of art.

The artist as exemplary sufferer

Time: 2021-11-18 21:37

It is the author naked which the modern audience demands, as ages of religious faith demanded a human sacrifice.

And why is so? Maybe the growing emphasis on individualism makes a person more socially exotic for one's exclusivity.

Time: 2021-11-18 21:36

Why do we read a writer’s journal? Because it illuminates his books? Often it does not. More likely, simply because of the rawness of the journal form, even when it is written with an eye to future publication. Here we read the writer in the first person; we encounter the ego behind the masks of ego in an author’s works. No degree of intimacy in a novel can supply this, even when the author writes in the first person or uses a third person which transparently points to himself.

Time: 2021-11-19 13:56

The journal gives us the workshop of the writer’s soul. And why are we interested in the soul of the writer? Not because we are so interested in writers as such. But because of the insatiable modern preoccuption with psychology, the latest and most powerful legacy of the Christian tradition of introspection, opened up by Paul and Augustine, which equates the discovery of the self with the discovery of the suffering self. For the modern consciousness,the artist (replacing the saint) is the exemplary sufferer. And among artists, the writer, the man of words, is the person to whom we look to be able best to express his suffering.

Time: 2021-11-19 13:57

The writer is the exemplary sufferer because he has found both the deepest level of suffering and also a professional means to sublimate (in the literal, not the Freudian, sense of sublimate) his suffering. As a man, he suffers; as a writer, he transforms his suffering into art. The writer is the man who discovers the use of suffering in the economy of art—as the saints discovered the utility and necessity of suffering in the economy of salvation.

Time: 2021-11-19 13:57

The unity of Pavese’s diaries is to be found in his reflections on, how to use, how to act on,his suffering. Literature is one use. Isolation is another, both as a technique for the inciting and perfecting of his art, and as a value in itself. And suicide is the third, ultimate use of suffering—conceived of not as an end to suffering, but as the ultimate way of acting on suffering.

Time: 2021-11-19 13:59

Thus we have the following remarkable sequence of thought, in a diary entry of 1938. Pavese writes: “Literature is a defense against the attacks of life. It says to life: ‘You can’t deceive me. I know your habits, foresee and enjoy watching your reactions, and steal your secrets by involving you in cunning obstructions that halt your normal flow.’… The other defense against things in general is silence as we muster strength for a fresh leap forward.But we must impose that silence on ourselves, not have it imposed on us, not even by death.To choose a hardship for ourselves is our only defense against that hardship … Those who by their very nature can suffer completely, utterly, have an advantage. This is how we can disarm the power of suffering, make it our own creation, our own choice; submit to it. A justification for suicide.”

Time: 2021-11-19 14:50

Everyone knows that we have a different, much more emphatic view of love between the sexes than the ancient Greeks and the Orientals, and that the modern view of love is an extension of the spirit of Christianity, in however attenuated and secularized a form. But the cult of love is not, as Rougemont claims, a Christian heresy. Christianity is, from its inception (Paul), the romantic religion. The cult of love in the West is an aspect of the cult of suffering —suffering as the supreme token of seriousness (the paradigm of the Cross). We do not find among the ancient Hebrews, Greeks, and the Orientals the same value placed on love because we do not find there the same positive value placed on suffering. Suffering was not the hallmark of seriousness; rather, seriousness was measured by one’s ability to evade or transcend the penalty of suffering, by one’s ability to achieve tranquillity and equilibrium.In contrast, the sensibility we have inherited identifies spirituality and seriousness with turbulence, suffering, passion. For two thousand years, among Christians and Jews, it has been spiritually fashionable to be in pain. Thus it is not love which we overvalue, but suffering—more precisely, the spiritual merits and benefits of suffering.

I might disagree.

Simone Weil

Time: 2021-11-19 20:00

There are certain eras which are too complex, too deafened by contradictory historical and intellectual experiences, to hear the voice of sanity. Sanity becomes compromise, evasion, a lie. Ours is an age which consciously pursues health, and yet only believes in the reality of sickness. The truths we respect are those born of affliction. We measure truth in terms of the cost to the writer in suffering—rather than by the standard of an objective truth to which a writer’s words correspond. Each of our truths must have a martyr.

Time: 2021-11-19 20:46

Perhaps there are certain ages which do not need truth as much as they need a deepening of the sense of reality, a widening of the imagination. I, for one, do not doubt that the sane view of the world is the true one. But is that what is always wanted, truth? The need for truth is not constant; no more than is the need for repose. An idea which is a distortion may have a greater intellectual thrust than the truth; it may better serve the needs of the spirit, which vary. The truth is balance, but the opposite of truth, which is unbalance, may not be a lie.

The anthropologist as hero

Time: 2021-11-20 22:22

MOST serious thought in our time struggles with the feeling of homelessness. The felt unreliability of human experience brought about by the inhuman acceleration of historical change has led every sensitive modern mind to the recording of some kind of nausea, of intellectual vertigo. And the only way to cure this spiritual nausea seems to be, at least initially, to exacerbate it. Modern thought is pledged to a kind of applied Hegelianism:seeking its Self in its Other. Europe seeks itself in the exotic—in Asia, in the Middle East,among pre-literate peoples, in a mythic America; a fatigued rationality seeks itself in the impersonal energies of sexual ecstasy or drugs; consciousness seeks its meaning in unconscio-usness; humanistic problems seek their oblivion in scientific “value neutrality” and quantification. The “other” is experienced as a harsh purification of “self.” But at the same time the “self” is busily colonizing all strange domains of experience. Modern sensibility moves between two seemingly contradictory but actually related impulses: surrender to the exotic, the strange, the other; and the domestication of the exotic, chiefly through science.

Time: 2021-11-20 22:50

Certainly the earliest visitors to pre-literate peoples were far from being detached. The original field workers in what was then called ethnology were missionaries, bent on redeeming the savage from his follies and making him over into a civilized Christian. To cover the bosoms of the women, put pants on the men, and send them all to Sunday school to mumble the gospel was the aim of an army of stony-eyed spinsters from Yorkshire and rawboned farmers’ sons from the American Midwest.

Time: 2021-11-21 00:07

In his inaugural lecture at the Collège de France, Lévi-Strauss outlined a post-Marxist vision of freedom in which man would finally be freed from the obligation to progress, and from “the age-old curse which forced it to enslave men in order to make progress possible.” Then:history would henceforth be quite alone, and society, placed outside and above history, would once again be able to assume that regular and quasi-crystalline structure which, the best-preserved primitive societies teach us, is not contradictory to humanity. It is in this admittedly Utopian view that social anthropology would find its highest justification, since the forms of life and thought which it studies would no longer be of mere historic and comparative interest. They would correspond to a permanent possibility of man, over which social anthropology would have a mission to stand watch, especially in man’s darkest hours.

The death of tragedy

Time: 2021-11-29 17:21

What are the implacable values of Homer? Honor, status, personal courage—the values of an aristocratic military class? But this is not what the Iliad is about. It would be more correct to say, as Simone Weil does, that the Iliad—as pure an example of the tragic vision as one can find—is about the emptiness and arbitrariness of the world, the ultimate meaninglessness of all moral values, and the terrifying rule of death and inhuman force. If the fate of Oedipus was represented and experienced as tragic, it is not because he, or his audience, believed in “implacable values,” but precisely because a crisis had overtaken those values. It is not the implacability of “values” which is demonstrated by tragedy, but the implacability of the world. The story of Oedipus is tragic insofar as it exhibits the brute opaqueness of the world, the collision of subjective intention with objective fate. After all, in the deepest sense, Oedipus is innocent; he is wronged by the gods, as he himself says in Oedipus at Colonus. Tragedy is a vision of nihilism, a heroic or ennobling vision of nihilism.

Spiritual style in the films of Robert Bresson

Time: 2021-12-03 10:12

Bresson’s form fulfills beautifully the prescription of Alexandre Astruc, in his famous essay “Le Camera-Stylo,” written in the late forties. According to Astruc, the cinema will,ideally, become a language. By a language I mean the form in which and through which an artist can express his thoughts,however abstract they may be, or translate his obsessions, just as in an essay or a novel … The film will gradually free itself from the tyranny of the visual, of the image for its own sake, of the immediate and concrete anecdote, to become a means of writing as supple and subtle as the written word … What interests us in the cinema today is the creation of this language.

Time: 2021-12-03 10:24

The reason that Bresson rejects acting reflects his notion of the purity of the art itself. “Acting is for the theater, which is a bastard art,” he has said. “The film can be a true art because in it the author takes fragments of reality and arranges them in such a way that their juxtaposition transforms them.” Cinema, for Bresson,is a total art, in which acting corrodes. In a film, each shot is like a word, which means nothing by itself, or rather means so many things that in effect it is meaningless. But a word in a poem is transformed, its meaning made precise and unique, by its placing in relation to the words around it: in the same way a shot in a film is given its meaning by its context, and each shot modifies the meaning of the previous one until with the last shot a total, unparaphrasable meaning has been arrived at. Acting has nothing to do with that, it can only get in the way. Films can only be made by bypassing the will of those who appear in them; using not what they do, but what they are.

A note on novels and films

Time: 2021-12-04 22:14

Nevertheless, there are useful analogies which may be drawn between the cinema and the novel—far more, it seems to me, than between the cinema and the theater. Like the novel, the cinema presents us with a view of an action which is absolutely under the control of the director (writer) at every moment. Our eye cannot wander about the screen, as it does about the stage. The camera is an absolute dictator. It shows us a face when we are to see a face, and nothing else; a pair of clenched hands, a landscape, a speeding train, the façade of a building in the middle of a tête-à-tête,when and only when it wants us to see these things. When the camera moves we move, when it remains still we are still. In a similar way the novel presents a selection of the thoughts and descriptions which are relevant to the writer’s conception, and we must follow these serially,as the author leads us; they are not spread out, as a background, for us to contemplate in the order we choose, as in painting or the theater.

Piety without content

Time: 2021-12-04 22:55

The significance of Kaufmann’s book is that it is one more example of a prevailing modern attitude which seems to me, at best, soft-headed and, more often, intellectually presumptuous. The attempts of modern secular intellectuals to help the faltering authority of “religion” ought to be rejected by every sensitive believer, and by every honest atheist.God-in-his-heaven, moral certitude, and cultural unity cannot be restored by nostalgia; the suspenseful piety of religious fellow-travelling demands a resolution, by acts of either commitment or disavowal. The presence of a religious faith may indeed be of unquestionable psychological benefit to the individual and of unquestionable social benefit to a society. But we shall never have the fruit of the tree without nourishing its roots as well; we shall never restore the prestige of the old faiths by demonstrating their psychological and sociological benefits.

Notes on “Camp”

Time: 2021-12-09 19:48

Camp is the consistently aesthetic experience of the world. It incarnates a victory of “style” over “content,” “aesthetics” over “morality,” of irony over tragedy.

Admiring Silence by Gurnah Abdulrazak

2023-07-10T09:19:14.000Z

Admiring Silence

Gurnah, Abdulrazak

Part One: 1

Time: 2021-10-09 21:43

Three rums and three fags, one after the other, until all of life seems to last only the few minutes behind and ahead of me, and everything else turns into impotent gurglings in a far ditch.

Time: 2021-10-09 21:46

‘I’m not a failure,’ I shouted at the closed door. ‘I’m a tragedy. This dead-pan world is full of chaos and I am one of the lost.’

Time: 2021-10-09 21:50

Emma glaring at me! Demanding that I take the blame for my ineffectual love for a daughter willingly overwhelmed by the gloating self-assurance of the culture that had nurtured her. It was like blaming the hole in the ozone layer or the disappearing rain forests or leaking nuclear reactors for all the troubles which beset our stumbling world. Well, it wasn’t me who did all that, nor was it the North African migrants in France or Tadjik horsemen thundering across the plains of middle Asia or Winnie Mandela or a passing comet. How is the rottenness of Amelia and her generation to be passed on to me? Did I glut them with enriched vitamins and mushy love and fairy tales of the world and a self-importance beyond their means? Was it me who filled their heads with the beastly plebeian hubris which makes thought, art or principle equal to eating raw offal in public or indulging petty sensualities? What part did I play in persuading them that there is something witty in degradation and perversion?

Time: 2021-10-09 22:00

And our part of the deal was to be colonized, assimilated, educated, alienated, integrated, suffer clashes of culture, win a flag and a national anthem, become corrupt, starve and grumble about it all. It’s a good deal, and we perform our parts to the utmost of our humble talents, but not adequately enough to satisfy over-sensitive patriots who feel put upon by hysterical strangers squatting dangerously inside the gates.

Time: 2021-10-09 22:09

‘Hasn’t it been lovely these last few days?’ Mrs Willoughby said. ‘I hope it lasts, though I don’t expect it will. Have you been in England long?’ Long enough to know how to respond to intimate small talk of that kind. Murmur audibly, smile brightly, say nothing.

Time: 2021-10-09 22:29

Everything went into abeyance with Amelia’s arrival as we all abandoned whatever else we were doing to cluster round the baby while it shitted and screamed. She screamed a lot, so much that I sometimes felt that the revulsion she felt for what she had been landed into was tragic. Everyone said it was normal, or she had colic or whatever, but I could not help feeling that she was raging with self-pity. It didn’t do her any good, of course. She was here, she was wanted, she was loved, she didn’t have a chance. Whenever she was given the opportunity, she clung to her mother’s breast as if to freedom itself. Life’s like that, clinging futilely to the very objects that imprison us.

Part 1: 2

Time: 2021-10-09 23:05

Later, much later, when times became harder under our own home-grown bullies, Uncle Hashim diversified. He changed money into foreign, knew how to satisfy shipping regulations and customs restrictions, could be relied on to smuggle in whatever was needful: an electric oven, a toilet bowl, a consignment of cement. He was able to do this because he procured these things for the mighty but impoverished officials too, the very ones who might have stopped him in his affairs. They had to live as well, and cook and flush toilets and build houses for themselves and for their mothers and sisters, even though they were the ones who made and upheld the idiot laws that created scarcity. But that was what they were there for, what they had put themselves there for: to make laws and issue decrees which would be seen to be obeyed by everyone – on pain of some barbarism or another –while they, the lawmakers and the bullshitters, squatted over everyone’s faces and issued their wastes on them.

Part 1: 3

Time: 2021-10-10 08:31

But politics also brought shocking things to the surface. We liked to think of ourselves as a moderate and mild people. Arab African Indian Comorian: we lived alongside each other, quarrelled and sometimes intermarried. Civilized, that’s what we were. We liked to be described like that, and we described ourselves like that. In reality, we were nowhere near we, but us in our separate yards, locked in our historical ghettoes, self-forgiving and seething with intolerances, with racisms, and with resentments. And politics brought all that into the open. It was not that we did not know these things about ourselves, about slavery, about inequalities, about the contempt with which everyone spoke about the barbarity of the savage in the interior who had been captured and brought to work on our island. We read about these things in our colonized history books, but there these events seemed lurid and far away from the way we lived, and sometimes they seemed like self-magnifying lies. So when the time came to begin thinking of ourselves in the future, we persuaded ourselves that the objects of this abuse had not noticed what had happened to them, or had forgiven and would now like to embrace a new rhetoric of unity and nationalism. To enter into a mature compromise in everyone’s interest. But they didn’t. They wanted to glory in grievance, in promises of vengeance, in their past oppression, in their present poverty and in the nobility of their darker skins. To the nationalist rhetoric of their opponents they proclaimed a satirical reprise of their despised Africanness, mocked the nationalists for their newfound conscience, and promised them an accounting in the very near future. All of which came to pass with incredible promptness.

Part 1: 4

Time: 2021-10-10 09:03

He told us that I was young enough not to have to pay any tuition fees for a year or so, and that if my family could find a way to send me money, he’d help me out in England until I’d sorted something out. It was a madly generous offer, but in the general secrecy and misery of that time, people took risks to help each other out. I like to think it was some kind of assertion of human care, a sort of tribute to what had been lost, and perhaps the only way there was to protest against our impotence and cowed submission.

Time: 2021-10-10 09:09

Armed with my grant letter, my university applications, glowing references from my college, a letter from a JP whom one of the graduates in the house was related to, and a letter from my local GP (Ahmed’s idea), we went to London for an interview at the Home Office. Ahmed came along, and discreetly but firmly insisted on being allowed to sit in. He was, after all, my guardian, he said. The plan was that I was to be calm for the first few minutes of the interview, and then, as soon as was decent, I was to break down in a flood of tears and Ahmed would do the talking. The man who interviewed us was in his thirties and wore dark-rimmed spectacles which made him look like Clark Kent before he changed into his Superman gear. I found this reassuring, and so it turned out to be. I don’t think it was the tears that did it, or Ahmed’s wheedling account of my diligence and utter brilliance, but Clark Kent’s innate sense of justice. Here I feel free.

Time: 2021-10-10 09:10

He neglected his own work to sit and revise with me. He gave me endless advice and hectoring speeches, invoked God, my parents, a luminous future. I didn’t stand a chance, and passed brilliantly.

Time: 2021-10-10 09:14

It was towards the end of the second year of her PhD, around August, that Emma became pregnant with Amelia. It was a time when the first delighted reception of the Pill was beginning to be replaced by gloomy forecasts of cancer of this and that (breast and cervix, I think) and unspecified damage in old age. Emma was converted to the new austerity and came off the Pill, saying she understood her body better than anyone else and knew how to prevent herself from becoming pregnant. But after too many ciders, or whatever we could afford in those days, the result was Amelia, and the end of the first Arcadia, although we did not know it at the time.

A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies

2023-07-10T09:15:13.000Z

A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies

Bartolome Las Casas

Introduction

01 May 2022 04:35 PM

The story is now a famous one. That morning a recent arrival on the island, the Dominican Antonio Montesinos, delivered a sermon in the church of Santo Domingo. Taking his text from St John, he drew an analogy between the natural desert in which the Evangelist had chosen to spend his life and the human desert which the Spaniards had made of the once fruitful, ‘paradisiacal’ island of Hispaniola. He then turned upon the colonists. ‘With what right, ’ he demanded of them, ‘and with what justice do you keep these poor Indians in such cruel and horrible servitude? By what authority have you made such detestable wars against these people who lived peacefully and gently on their own lands? Are these not men? Do they not have rational souls? Are you not obliged to love them as yourselves? ’ The last three questions were to become the referents of every subsequent struggle to defend the rights of the indigenous peoples of the Americas. For Las Casas, in particular, the third – ‘Are you not obliged to love them as yourselves? ’ – was to guide his actions for the rest of his life.

01 May 2022 08:41 PM

In 1513, in an attempt to silence any further protest, the jurist Juan López de Palacios Rubios, one of King Ferdinand's ideologues, drew up a document known as the ‘Requirement’ (or Requerimiento). This began with a history of the world since Adam. It then moved swiftly on to the grant made by the Pope to the Castilian Crown and the obligation of every Indian to pay homage to the agents of the Crown and to obey their orders. It finished with a gruesome account of what would befall any Indian who refused to obey. Every conquistador was to carry a copy of this document with him and to read it, in the presence of a notary, before making an attack. The facts that the document was in Spanish, a language no Indian could then understand, that it made no attempt to explain the complex legal and theological terms in which it was expressed, and that it was frequently read at night to sleeping villages or out of earshot of the Indians (see pp. 33 and 56) were disregarded. What mattered was the act. Once the Europeans had discharged their duty to inform, the way was clear for pillage and enslavement. When asked what he thought of this, surely one of the crassest instances of legalism in European history, Las Casas replied that he did not know whether to laugh or to cry. But the Requerimiento was taken seriously enough. Pedrarias Dávila's expedition to Tierra Firme in 1513 (see p. 31) was held up for months while the document was drafted.

01 May 2022 09:20 PM

Not only did he agitate for the rights and better treatment of the Indians but he also defended their claim, which in the Spain of the mid-sixteenth century was constantly under surveillance, to be regarded as human beings. Ever since 1513, Las Casas had fought against the suggestion that the Indians might be some species of sub-human, the ‘natural slaves’ which Aristotle had suggested might exist somewhere in the world for the benefit of civilized men. His longest and most original work, the Apologetic History of the Indies, a vast comparative ethnology of the Americas, is precisely an extended attempt to demonstrate, beyond all shadow of empirical doubt, that the Indians were fully rational beings with a culture which, though certainly ‘primitive’ in its technology and in a large number of its cultural practices, was equal to anything which the Old World had produced.

HISPANIOLA

02 May 2022 04:25 PM

They spared no one, erecting especially wide gibbets on which they could string their victims up with their feet just off the ground and then burn them alive thirteen at a time, in honour of our Saviour and the twelve Aposdes, or tie dry straw to their bodies and set fire to it.

THE MAINLAND

02 May 2022 07:45 PM

It is as though the Son of God, who gave His life for every living soul, when He instructed His followers with the words: ‘Go ye therefore, and teach all nations’, 42 intended heathens, living in peace and tranquillity in their own lands, to be confronted with a demand that they convert on the spot, without their ever hearing the Word or having Christian doctrine explained to them; and that, should they show any reluctance to do so and to swear allegiance to a king they have never heard of nor clapped eyes on, and whose subjects and ambassadors prove to be cruel, pitiless and bloodthirsty tyrants, they should immediately surrender all their worldly goods and lose all rights to their land, their freedom, their womenfolk, their children and their lives. Such a notion is as absurd as it is stupid and should be treated with the disrespect, scorn and contempt it so amply deserves.

A People_s History of the United States by Howard Zinn

2024-10-03T08:11:38.000Z

A People's History of the United States

By Howard Zinn

Chapter 5 – A Kind of Revolution

▪ What did the Revolution mean to the Native Americans, the Indians? They had been ignored by the fine words of the Declaration, had not been considered equal, certainly not in choosing those who would govern the American territories in which they lived, nor in being able to pursue happiness as they had pursued it for centuries before the white Europeans arrived. Now, with the British out of the way, the Americans could begin the inexorable process of pushing the Indians off their lands, killing them if they resisted. In short, as Francis Jennings puts it, the white Americans were fighting against British imperial control in the East, and for their own imperialism in the West.

▪ Luke Day stood with a petition, asserting the people’s constitutional right to protest the unconstitutional acts of the General Court, asking the judges to adjourn until the General Court could act on behalf of the farmers. Standing with Luke Day were fifteen hundred armed farmers. The judges adjourned. (Unsung hero there were.)

▪ The Constitution was a compromise between slaveholding interests of the South and moneyed interests of the North. For the purpose of uniting the thirteen states into one great market for commerce, the northern delegates wanted laws regulating interstate commerce, and urged that such laws require only a majority of Congress to pass. The South agreed to this, in return for allowing the trade in slaves to continue for twenty years before being outlawed. (Ah! This is why Mr. Lincoln was necessary.)

▪ The Constitution, then, illustrates the complexity of the American system: that it serves the interests of a wealthy elite, but also does enough for small property owners, for middle-income mechanics and farmers, to build a broad base of support. The slightly prosperous people who make up this base of support are buffers against the blacks, the Indians, the very poor whites. They enable the elite to keep control with a minimum of coercion, a maximum of law—all made palatable by the fanfare of patriotism and unity.

Chapter 6 – The Intimately Oppressed

▪ The conditions under which white settlers came to America created various situations for women. Where the first settlements consisted almost entirely of men, women were imported as sex slaves, childbearers, companions. In 1619, the year that the first black slaves came to Virginia, ninety women arrived at Jamestown on one ship: “Agreeable persons, young and incorrupt … sold with their own consent to settlers as wives, the price to be the cost of their own transportation.” (Thus come the first white women in America.)

▪ Middle-class women, barred from higher education, began to monopolize the profession of primary-school teaching. As teachers, they read more, communicated more, and education itself became subversive of old ways of thinking. They began to write for magazines and newspapers, and started some ladies’ publications. Literacy among women doubled between 1780 and 1840. Women became health reformers. They formed movements against double standards in sexual behavior and the victimization of prostitutes. They joined in religious organizations. Some of the most powerful of them joined the antislavery movement. So, by the time a clear feminist movement emerged in the 1840s, women had become practiced organizers, agitators, speakers.

▪ Let us all first wake up the nation to lift millions of slaves of both sexes from the dust, and turn them into men and then … it will be an easy matter to take millions of females from their knees and set them on their feet, or in other words transform them from babies into women.

▪ Some have tried to become semi-men by putting on the Bloomer dress. Let me tell you in a word why it can never be done. It is this: woman, robed and folded in her long dress, is beautiful. She walks gracefully… . If she attempts to run, the charm is gone… . Take off the robes, and put on pants, and show the limbs, and grace and mystery are all gone. (Sure sure! Motherfucker!)

▪ All I ask of our brethren is that they will take their feet from off our necks, and permit us to stand upright on the ground which God has designed us to occupy… . To me it is perfectly clear that whatsoever it is morally right for a man to do, it is morally right for a woman to do.

Chapter 7 – As Long as Grass Grows or Water Runs

▪ Jackson was a land speculator, merchant, slave trader, and the most aggressive enemy of the Indians in early American history. He became a hero of the War of 1812, which was not (as usually depicted in American textbooks) just a war against England for survival, but a war for the expansion of the new nation, into Florida, into Canada, into Indian territory.

▪ Jackson’s 1814 treaty with the Creeks started something new and important. It granted Indians individual ownership of land, thus splitting Indian from Indian, breaking up communal landholding, bribing some with land, leaving others out—introducing the competition and conniving that marked the spirit of Western capitalism. It fitted well the old Jeffersonian idea of how to handle the Indians, by bringing them into “civilization.” (This is inevitable I guess.)

▪ Jackson began raids into Florida, arguing it was a sanctuary for escaped slaves and for marauding Indians. Florida, he said, was essential to the defense of the United States. It was that classic modern preface to a war of conquest. Thus began the Seminole War of 1818, leading to the American acquisition of Florida. It appears on classroom maps politely as “Florida Purchase, 1819”—but it came from Andrew Jackson’s military campaign across the Florida border, burning Seminole villages, seizing Spanish forts, until Spain was “persuaded” to sell. He acted, he said, by the “immutable laws of self-defense.”

▪ The white men do not scalp the head; but they do worse—they poison the heart… . Farewell, my nation! … Farewell to Black Hawk.

▪ His article in the North American Review in 1830 made the case for Indian Removal. We must not regret, he said, “the progress of civilization and improvement, the triumph of industry and art, by which these regions have been reclaimed, and over which freedom, religion, and science are extending their sway.” He wished that all this could have been done with “a smaller sacrifice; that the aboriginal population had accommodated themselves to the inevitable change of their condition… . But such a wish is vain. A barbarous people, depending for subsistence upon the scanty and precarious supplies furnished by the chase, cannot live in contact with a civilized community.”

▪ The forces that led to removal did not come, Van Every insists, from the poor white frontiersmen who were neighbors of the Indians. They came from industrialization and commerce, the growth of populations, of railroads and cities, the rise in value of land, and the greed of businessmen.

▪ The Cherokees’ language—heavily poetic, metaphorical, beautifully expressive, supplemented by dance, drama, and ritual—had always been a language of voice and gesture. Now their chief, Sequoyah, invented a written language, which thousands learned. The Cherokees’ newly established Legislative Council voted money for a printing press, which on February 21, 1828, began publishing a newspaper, the Cherokee Phoenix, printed in both English and Sequoyah’s Cherokee.

▪ Thus has been maintained for ages, without convulsions and without civil discords, this traditional government, of which the world, perhaps, does not offer another example; a government in which there are no positive laws, but only long established habits and customs, no code of jurisprudence, but the experience of former times, no magistrates, but advisers, to whom the people nevertheless, pay a willing and implicit obedience, in which age confers rank, wisdom gives power, and moral goodness secures title to universal respect.

▪ We have crowded the tribes upon a few miserable acres on our southern frontier; it is all that is left to them of their once boundless forest: and still, like the horse-leech, our insatiated cupidity cries, give! give! … Sir … Do the obligations of justice change with the color of the skin? (Apparently it does,throughout the history.)

Chapter 8 – We Take Nothing by Conquest, Thank God

▪ Biglow Papers (by James Russell Lowell )

▪ It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right… . Law never made men a whit more just; and, by means of their respect for it, even the well-disposed are daily made the agents of injustice. A common and natural result of an undue respect for law is, that you may see a file of soldiers … marching in admirable order over hill and dale to the wars, against their wills, ay, against their common sense and consciences, which makes it very steep marching indeed, and produces a palpitation of the heart.

Chapter 9 – Slavery Without Submission, Emancipation Without Freedom

▪ Harriet Tubman, born into slavery, her head injured by an overseer when she was fifteen, made her way to freedom alone as a young woman, then became the most famous conductor on the Underground Railroad. She made nineteen dangerous trips back and forth, often disguised, escorting more than three hundred slaves to freedom, always carrying a pistol, telling the fugitives, “You’ll be free or die.” She expressed her philosophy: “There was one of two things I had a right to, liberty or death; if I could not have one, I would have the other; for no man should take me alive… .”

▪ As a tropical product with a sensuous receptivity to the beauty of the world, he was not as easily reduced to be the mechanical draft-horse which the northern European laborer became. He … tended to work as the results pleased him and refused to work or sought to refuse when he did not find the spiritual returns adequate; thus he was easily accused of laziness and driven as a slave when in truth he brought to modern manual labor a renewed valuation of life.

▪ What to the American slave is your Fourth of July? I answer, a day that reveals to him more than all other days of the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciation of tyrants, brass-fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery;

▪ Go where you may, search where you will, roam through all the monarchies and despotisms of the Old World, travel through South America, search out every abuse and when you have found the last, lay your facts by the side of the everyday practices of this nation, and you will say with me that, for revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America reigns without a rival… .

▪ Let me give you a word of the philosophy of reforms. The whole history of the progress of human liberty shows that all concessions yet made to her august claims have been born of struggle… . If there is no struggle there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom and yet deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. The struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will… .

▪ “I, John Brown, am quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but with blood.”

▪ Whatever northern politicians were doing to help their cause, southern blacks were determined to make the most of their freedom, in spite of their lack of land and resources. A study of blacks in Alabama in the first years after the war by historian Peter Kolchin finds that they began immediately asserting their independence of whites, forming their own churches, becoming politically active, strengthening their family ties, trying to educate their children. Kolchin disagrees with the contention of some historians that slavery had created a “Sambo” mentality of submission among blacks. “As soon as they were free, these supposedly dependent, childlike Negroes began acting like independent men and women.” (For, freedom, my friend, is something that can be suppressed but not eradicate d)

▪ le things are stirring; because if we wait till it is still, it will take a great while to get it going again… . I am above eighty years old; it is about time for me to be going. I have been forty years a slave and forty years free, and would be here forty years more to have equal rights for all. I suppose I am kept here because something remains for me to do; I suppose I am yet to help break the chain. I have done a great deal of work; as much as a man, but did not get so much pay. I used to work in the field and bind grain, keeping with the cradler; but men doing no more, got twice as much pay… . I suppose I am about the only colored woman that goes about to speak for the rights of the colored women. I want to keep the thing stirring, now that the ice is cracked… .

Chapter 10 – The Other Civil War

▪ These poor could not be counted on as political allies of the government. But they were there—like slaves, or Indians—invisible ordinarily, a menace if they rose. There were more solid citizens, however, who might give steady support to the system—better-paid workers, landowning farmers. Also, there was the new urban white-collar worker, born in the rising commerce of the time, described by Thomas Cochran and William Miller (The Age of Enterprise): (Middle-class, dirty motherfuckers of all history.)

▪ In New Hampshire, five hundred men and women petitioned the Amoskeag Manufacturing Company not to cut down an elm tree to make space for another mill. They said it was “a beautiful and goodly tree,” representing a time “when the yell of the red man and the scream of the eagle were alone heard on the banks of the Merrimack, instead of two giant edifices filled with the buzz of busy and well-remunerated industry.”

Chapter 11 – Robber Barons and Rebels

▪ as man to man we could not justifiably go to work and take the bread out of our fellow-workmen’s mouths, no matter how much we needed it ourselves.

Chapter 13 – The Socialist Challenge

▪ Rise like lions after slumber In unvanquishable number! Shake your chains to earth, like dew Which in sleep had fallen on you— Ye are many, they are few

▪ A week after that, women returning from a meeting were surrounded by police and clubbed; one pregnant woman was carried unconscious to a hospital and gave birth to a dead child.

▪ They were defying the culture of mass magazines, which were spreading the message of woman as companion, wife, homemaker.

Chapter 14 – War is the Health of the State

▪ Wars throughout history have been waged for conquest and plunder… . And that is war in a nutshell. The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles… .

Chapter 15 – Self-Help in Hard Times

▪ There were twenty-two locals, each with a commissary where food and firewood were exchanged for other goods and services: barbers, seamstresses, and doctors gave of their skills in return for other things. By the end of 1932, there were 330 self-help organizations in thirty-seven states, with over 300,000 members. By early 1933, they seem to have collapsed; they were attempting too big a job in an economy that was more and more a shambles. (When money is the God, people tend to forget why money has born in the first place. A depression can cause great awakening.)

▪ The New Deal gave federal money to put thousands of writers, artists, actors, and musicians to work—in a Federal Theatre Project, a Federal Writers Project, a Federal Art Project: murals were painted on public buildings; plays were put on for working-class audiences who had never seen a play;

Chapter 16 – A People’s War?

▪ One of the judges in the Tokyo War Crimes Trial after World War II, Radhabinod Pal, dissented from the general verdicts against Japanese officials and argued that the United States had clearly provoked the war with Japan and expected Japan to act. Richard Minear (Victors’ Justice) sums up Pal’s view of the embargoes on scrap iron and oil, that “these measures were a clear and potent threat to Japan’s very existence.” The records show that a White House conference two weeks before Pearl Harbor anticipated a war and discussed how it should be justified.

▪ A. J. Muste, the revolutionary pacifist, had predicted in 1941: “The problem after a war is with the victor. He thinks he has just proved that war and violence pay. Who will now teach him a lesson?”

▪ A comic strip hero, Captain America, said: “Beware, commies, spies, traitors, and foreign agents! Captain America, with all loyal, free men behind him, is looking for you… .”

Chapter 18 – The Impossible Victory: Vietnam

▪ From 1964 to 1972, the wealthiest and most powerful nation in the history of the world made a maximum military effort, with everything short of atomic bombs, to defeat a nationalist revolutionary movement in a tiny, peasant country—and failed. When the United States fought in Vietnam, it was organized modern technology versus organized human beings, and the human beings won.

▪ In another delta province there is a woman who has both arms burned off by napalm and her eyelids so badly burned that she cannot close them. When it is time for her to sleep her family puts a blanket over her head. The woman had two of her children killed in the air strike that maimed her.

▪ “Although the Phoenix program did undoubtedly kill or incarcerate many innocent civilians, it did also eliminate many members of the Communist infrastructure.” (Of course. After all, what is a revolutionary communist infrastructure but a huge support from innocent mass people?)

Chapter 19 – Surprises

▪ The “mystique” that Friedan spoke of was the image of the woman as mother, as wife, living through her husband, through her children, giving up her own dreams for that. She concluded: “The only way for a woman, as for a man, to find herself, to know herself as a person, is by creative work of her own.”

▪ In the fall of 1968, a group called Radical Women attracted national attention when they protested the selection of Miss America, which they called “an image that oppresses women.” They all threw bras, girdles, curlers, false eyelashes, wigs, and other things they called “women’s garbage” into a Freedom Trash Can. A sheep was crowned Miss America. More important, people were beginning to speak of “Women’s Liberation.”

▪ Some of the New York Radical Women shortly afterward formed WITCH (Women’s International Terrorist Conspiracy from Hell), and its members, dressed as witches, appeared suddenly on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. A leaflet put out by WITCH in New York said: WITCH lives and laughs in every woman. She is the free part of each of us, beneath the shy smiles, the acquiescence to absurd male domination, the make-up or flesh-suffocating clothes our sick society demands. There is no “joining” WITCH. If you are a woman and dare to look within yourself, you are a WITCH. You make your own rules.

▪ True, the white man brought great change. But the varied fruits of his civilization, though highly colored and inviting, are sickening and deadening. And if it be the part of civilization to maim, rob, and thwart, then what is progress? I am going to venture that the man who sat on the ground in his tipi meditating on life and its meaning, accepting the kinship of all creatures, and acknowledging unity with the universe of things, was infusing into his being the true essence of civilization… .

▪ Interestingly, the oldest human skeletal remains ever found in the Western Hemisphere were recently uncovered on the banks of the Columbia River—the remains of Indian fishermen. What kind of government or society would spend millions of dollars to pick upon our bones, restore our ancestral life patterns, and protect our ancient remains from damage—while at the same time eating upon the flesh of our living People … ? We will fight for our rights

Chapter 21 – Carter-Reagan-Bush: The Bipartisan Consensus

▪ Democrats often joined Republicans in denouncing welfare programs. Presumably, this was done to gain political support from a middle-class public that believed they were paying taxes to support teenage mothers and people they thought too lazy to work. Much of the public did not know, and were not informed by either political leaders or the media, that welfare took a tiny part of the taxes, and military spending took a huge chunk of it. Yet, the public’s attitude on welfare was different from that of the two major parties. It seemed that the constant attacks on welfare by politicians, reported endlessly in the press and on television, did not succeed in eradicating a fundamental generosity felt by most Americans.

Chapter 22 – The Unreported Resistance

▪ To the Editor: Thirty-six years ago I stood in front of the crematorium. The ugliest force in the world had promised itself that I should be removed from the cycle of life—that I should never know the pleasure of giving life. With great guns and great hatred, this force thought itself the equal of the force of life. I survived the great guns, and with every smile of my son, they grow smaller. It is not for me, sir, to offer my son’s blood as lubricant for the next generation of guns. I remove myself and my own from the cycle of death. Isabella Leitner

Chapter 23 – The Coming Revolt of the Guards

▪ That makes it a biased account, one that leans in a certain direction. I am not troubled by that, because the mountain of history books under which we all stand leans so heavily in the other direction—so tremblingly respectful of states and statesmen and so disrespectful, by inattention, to people’s movements—that we need some counterforce to avoid being crushed into submission.

▪ All those histories of this country centered on the Founding Fathers and the Presidents weigh oppressively on the capacity of the ordinary citizen to act. They suggest that in times of crisis we must look to someone to save us: in the Revolutionary crisis, the Founding Fathers; in the slavery crisis, Lincoln; in the Depression, Roosevelt; in the Vietnam-Watergate crisis, Carter. And that between occasional crises everything is all right, and it is sufficient for us to be restored to that normal state. They teach us that the supreme act of citizenship is to choose among saviors, by going into a voting booth every four years to choose between two white and well-off Anglo-Saxon males of inoffensive personality and orthodox opinions.

▪ But most histories understate revolt, overemphasize statesmanship, and thus encourage impotency among citizens. When we look closely at resistance movements, or even at isolated forms of rebellion, we discover that class consciousness, or any other awareness of injustice, has multiple levels. It has many ways of expression, many ways of revealing itself—open, subtle, direct, distorted. In a system of intimidation and control, people do not show how much they know, how deeply they feel, until their practical sense informs them they can do so without being destroyed.

Chapter 24 – The Clinton Presidency

▪ President Dwight Eisenhower had said: “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies in a final sense a theft from those who are hungry and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed.”

A Musical Offering by Luis Sagasti

2024-09-19T17:48:06.000Z

A Musical Offering

Luis Sagasti

Lullaby

Page: 7 @ 19 May 2021

The pauses between each variation are no small matter – no pause is – and Glenn Gould knows this better than anyone. He has understood, and perhaps as the nights go by Goldberg perceives it too, that in reality there is no interruption between the movements: herein dwells the music that can only be found by the sense of touch. When Gould ends each of the variations, his body keeps moving, as videos clearly show; his left hand trembles blindly and his arm shifts: a dragonfly sensing the still-nascent music. He plays without a score.

[!question] Thought Provoking

Page 8: @ 19 May 2021

Should we see Goldberg as a reflection of Scheherazade? Each night, she staves off death with an unfinished story. This is no mean feat: to leave the Caliph with his mouth watering yet his stomach sated at the same time. Goldberg, on the other side of the looking glass, tells the same stories time and again, delivering the Count his little death every night.

[!quote] Quotable/Concept/General Idea

Page: 11 (11.96%) @ 31 May 2024 10:33:10 PM

There is a more or less widely held view that music and sleep share certain convolutions. In truth, they inhabit the present moment in very different ways. Music promises the pleasure of the future: anticipating a melody that flutters a few steps ahead is the dessert we savour even as we raise another steaming forkful to our lips. The present of sleep is pure mother’s milk; there is nothing beyond it.

[!question] Thought Provoking

Page: 13 @ 19 May 2021

When a child first learns to hum a melody, the child stops being music and instead becomes a receptacle for remembering it.

[!quote] Quotable/Concept/General Idea

Page: 18 (19.57%) @ 05 Jun 2024 12:40:44 PM

In music, melody is like light: it occupies all our attention – higher, higher still.
For the baby to fall asleep quickly, the mother’s singing should use as few notes as possible; the ideal is just two, otherwise the child continues to chase the light that languishes on its mother’s eyelids.

[!question] Thought Provoking

Page: 19 (20.65%) @ 05 Jun 2024 12:43:05 PM

Brahms wrote a peculiar letter to the father of the child: ‘You will realise that I wrote “Wiegenlied” for Bertha’s son. You will have the impression that while she sings it to young Hans, someone is singing her a love song in turn.’

[!quote] Quotable/Concept/General Idea

Page: 25 (27.17%) @ 05 Jun 2024 01:52:30 PM

For forty-five minutes in 2007, the renowned violinist Joshua Bell performed, incognito, a series of Bach partitas at a Washington subway station during rush hour. The idea was to observe more or less scientifically the relationship between beauty, perception and our surroundings. The acoustics were excellent, and Bell had brought his 1713 Stradivarius. There is a video that shows how no one – apart from a woman with her child and a man who stops for a second as if returning – pays him the least attention, although a few toss him coins. Despite the dictates of common sense, Bell was taken aback. The background noise comes through loud and clear, like a half-painted canvas by Jackson Pollock.

[!question] Thought Provoking

Page: 28 (30.43%) @ 05 Jun 2024 02:04:08 PM

The rhythm of a lullaby is one that a mother naturally discovers when she rocks her baby in her arms. It’s the rhythm of a ship on a calm, dark sea. Every mother carries a Noah’s Ark in her womb (after all, there are forty weeks of gestation and forty days of flood). We’ve all been the animals in the Ark before descending to the earth.

[!important] Striking/Intense

Silences

Page: 38 (41.30%) @ 05 Jun 2024 02:50:05 PM

Objects torn from their present; shouldn’t we gather the sand before its grains become merchandise?
Treating something as merchandise means to inscribe it in time: to see it as future profit, as an investment, as a cost to be recovered. Seeing it as itself means removing it from the flow of time, returning it to the mute fire from which it came. Navajo sand.

[!important] Striking/Intense

Page: 45 (48.91%) @ 06 Jun 2024 12:28:09 PM

But it was for this very reason – because his music carried people to the heavens – that Estrella soon went to hell in a Uruguayan prison. It was 1977. He’d escaped from Argentina by a whisker. The colonel in charge of the interrogation said to him: ‘You’re no guerrilla fighter, you’re worse than that: with your piano and your smile you have the whole rabble in your pocket, giving the riff-raff the idea they can listen to Beethoven.’
And so the torture is focused on his hands. Simulations of amputations with an electric saw.
Torture with no practical objective. No possible confession.

[!important] Striking/Intense

Page: 51 (55.43%) @ 06 Jun 2024 01:47:53 PM

What’s for sure is that there’s no music in paradise.

[!important] Striking/Intense

Wars

Page: 66 @ 21 May 2021

More hunger will come, and more cold and more death. But there are red flowers. This is food for the eyes. Knowing this, every morning will be a child from now on. And every night a womb. With such knowledge, no one can lose a war.

[!important] Striking/Intense

Sky Ants

Page: 67 (72.83%) @ 07 Jun 2024 12:37:12 PM

The distance between the planets is proportional to the distance between musical notes, Pythagoras reasoned. And since the sounds they emit as they move never stop, we can never truly hear the music of the spheres. Their constancy leaves us deaf to them, like the sound of the sea to a fisherman. The cosmic order is a musical order. Kepler also understood it this way, as asserted in his 1619 treatise Harmonices Mundi: ‘The heavenly motions are nothing but a continuous song for several voices, to be perceived by the intellect, not by the ear; a music which, through discordant tensions, through syncopations and cadenzas as it were, progresses toward certain predesigned six-voiced cadences, and thereby sets landmarks in the immeasurable flow of time.’ The faster the movement, he added, and the closer to the sun a heavenly body travelled, the higher the note. And so he wrote six melodies, one for each planet.

[!important] Striking/Intense

Page: 68 @ 21 May 2021

Music is continuous, it is only attention that falters, wrote Thoreau.

[!important] Striking/Intense

Page: 70 (76.09%) @ 07 Jun 2024 12:48:47 PM

The stars are the neurons of the galaxies.
And the galaxies, brains roaming the cosmos, singing songs we cannot hear.

[!question] Thought Provoking

Exotic Birds

Page: 74 (80.43%) @ 07 Jun 2024 01:59:36 PM

Two days before New Year, Landowska and her husband are travelling by horse-drawn sleigh to the writer’s residence. The harpsichord is strapped to the back. It’s bitterly cold. Compelled by one of those reasons only the body understands, the driver comes to a halt; something’s not right with the sleigh, or at least not the same as it was a moment ago. He checks and, yes, the harpsichord has disappeared. It’s getting late, and the snow has been falling steadily for a while now. Landowska tries to keep calm, but her husband has the bright idea of telling her what he should have mentioned much earlier: he thought he’d heard the sound of something falling, but it never occurred to him it could be the instrument. It really never crossed my mind, he’ll tell Tolstoy later that night. Meanwhile, anger and tears from his wife. The sleigh driver makes an about-turn and they head back in search of the harpsichord. They have to hurry; their tracks are quickly being filled in. After longer than seems wise, the sled halts again. The best thing would be for the two men to search the area. It can’t be far. Landowska doesn’t comply with the suggestion to remain with the sleigh and follows in her husband’s steps, or at least in the direction she thinks he’s gone. She advances through the snow, her tears propelling her onwards. The cold turns the air to mist and the sky draws nearer, the colours merge, the sounds separate out. She is lost. She shouts, but fear breaks her voice. She walks on a little further and suddenly there it is, the harpsichord, in a little hollow. She runs towards it as if it were a lost child. She rights it and checks it over for damage. She tries to shout again but all that comes out is a low moan. Instead, she opens the lid of the harpsichord and bangs on the keys to call the men’s attention. But such a sound could be confused with a flock of birds taking flight. She calms herself, takes off her gloves and begins to play. The same tune over and over. The first to hear the melody is the sleigh driver; he struggles through the snow to the harpsichord. He comes to a halt before he reaches it, on the brink of the abyss. He can’t interrupt her because he’s six years old again and doesn’t know if he even feels the cold any longer. Perhaps he does, but it doesn’t matter: it’s always good to feel a bit cold when your parents are nearby. And so he remains until the husband’s cry wraps itself around Landowska; more than fifty years pass in an instant. Let’s go, come on, he says when he reaches them, it’s dangerous for us to stay here. Tolstoy wants to know what she was playing, but his guest can’t really remember. Bach, she thinks, or perhaps Scarlatti, repeating it over and over to form a great circle.

[!quote] Quotable/Concept/General Idea

Page: 78 (84.78%) @ 07 Jun 2024 11:13:59 PM

Messiaen: Birds are the opposite to Time; they are our desire for light, for stars, for rainbows, and for jubilant songs. Each bird, each instrument has its own tempo, and by overlaying them we achieve a confused and joyous harmony.

[!question] Thought Provoking

Page: 79 (85.87%) @ 07 Jun 2024 11:16:22 PM

Then, when he was commissioned by the New York Chamber Music Society to compose a piece for the bicentenary of US independence, it didn’t cross Messiaen’s mind to go to the Big Apple to see the lights that had inspired the most musical of Mondrian’s paintings. Instead he asked to travel to the Bryce Canyon in Utah, in order to contemplate a veritable aurora borealis in stone, which is also a kind of spirited Rothko, deep red and yellow in disordered, vivid strips. From this experience he composed From the Canyons to the Stars, another work made of pure present.
The sixth movement consists of a trumpet solo and a lot of silence.
It is titled ‘Interstellar Call’.
Messiaen: The calls gradually become hoarser and more poignant: there is no answer! The calls are met by silence. In this silence there may be a response, which is worship.

[!quote] Quotable/Concept/General Idea

Page: 85 (92.39%) @ 08 Jun 2024 04:46:44 PM

Like fairy tales, symphonies always have a happy ending.
Perhaps all the songs in the world have a happy ending.
A story with no baddies, that’s what music sometimes seems like. Like the thought process of a galaxy.
And they lived happily ever after.
There’s no sequel, the monster never returns.
Does a symphony, does any composition end because there’s nothing more to tell? Because the tale is exhausted and anything else would be redundant?

[!question] Thought Provoking

Page: 86 (93.48%) @ 08 Jun 2024 04:50:00 PM

The Who consummated their concert by destroying their instruments with genuine fury.
To end like this.
To end like this.
And to distinguish in this deafening noise not an end but the restless pulsing of a world that is being born.
And to remember forever that everything is possible when you stand on the shore, looking out to sea.

[!important] Striking/Intense

A Little Larger Than the Entire Universe

2023-07-12T11:14:59.000Z

A Little Larger Than the Entire Universe

Fernando Pessoa

Copyright Page

Page 10 @ 28 June 2023 12:17:02 AM

Back in Durban, Pessoa, at the age of fifteen or sixteen, invented Charles Robert Anon, his first alter ego to sign a substantial body of creative writing, including poems, short stories, and essays. This English proto-heteronym was soon joined by the even more prolific Alexander Search, either while Pessoa was still in Durban or else shortly after his definitive return to Lisbon, in the fall of 1905. Search, who likewise wrote in English but was supposedly born in Lisbon on the same day as Pessoa, expressed, like Anon, the intellectual concerns and existential anxieties of a young man on the threshold of becoming an adult. Pessoa, in a certain way, remained forever on that threshold. Instead of getting down to the practical business of living, he continued to wrestle with theoretical problems and the big questions: the existence of God, the meaning of life and the meaning of death, good vs. evil, reality vs. appearance, the idea (is it just an idea?) of love, the limits of consciousness, and so on. All of which was rich fodder for his poetry, thriving as it did on ideas more than on actual experience.

ALBERTO CAEIRO

Page 29 @ 28 June 2023 01:30:04 AM

I’m not a materialist or a deist or anything else. I’m a man who one day opened the window and discovered this crucial thing: Nature exists. I saw that the trees, the rivers and the stones are things that truly exist. No one had ever thought about this.

I don’t pretend to be anything more than the greatest poet in the world. I made the greatest discovery worth making, next to which all other discoveries are games of stupid children. I noticed the Universe. The Greeks, with all their visual acuity, didn’t do as much.

From THE KEEPER OF SHEEP

Page 31 @ 28 June 2023 01:29:25 PM

(What a sham! What do the flowers,

The trees and the sheep know

About St. Barbara? … The branch of a tree,

If it could think, would never

Invent saints or angels …

It might think that the sun

Illuminates and that thunder

Is a sudden noise

That begins with light …

Ah, how even the simplest men

Are sick and confused and stupid

Next to the sheer simplicity

And healthy existence

Of plants and trees!)

Page 32 @ 28 June 2023 01:33:28 PM

To think about God is to disobey God,
Since God wanted us not to know him,
Which is why he didn’t reveal himself to us …

Let’s be simple and calm,
Like the trees and streams,
And God will love us, making us Us even as the trees are trees
And the streams are streams,
And will give us greenness in the spring, which is its season,
And a river to go to when we end …
And he’ll give us nothing more, since to give us more would make us less us.

Page 33 @ 28 June 2023 01:35:31 PM

His father was two different people—

An old man named Joseph who was a carpenter

And who wasn’t his father,

And an idiotic dove:

The only ugly dove in the world,

Because it wasn’t of the world and wasn’t a dove.

And his mother gave birth to him without ever having loved.

She wasn’t a woman: she was a suitcase

In which he was sent from heaven.

And they wanted him, born only of a mother

And with no father he could love and honor,

To preach goodness and justice!

Page 34 @ 28 June 2023 01:37:35 PM

He says God understands nothing

About the things he created.

“If he created them, which I doubt,” he says.

“God claims, for instance, that all beings sing his glory,

But beings don’t sing anything.

If they sang, they’d be singers.

Beings exist, that’s all,

Which is why they’re called beings.”

Page 35 @ 28 June 2023 01:38:39 PM

The New Child who lives where I live

Gives one hand to me

And the other to everything that exists,

And so the three of us go along whatever road we find,

Leaping and singing and laughing

And enjoying our shared secret

Of knowing that in all the world

There is no mystery

And that everything is worthwhile.

Page 37 @ 28 June 2023 01:41:48 PM

To think a flower is to see and smell it,
And to eat a fruit is to know its meaning.

Page 37 @ 28 June 2023 01:42:58 PM

Lightly, lightly, very lightly
A very light wind passes,
And it goes away just as lightly,
And I don’t know what I’m thinking,
Nor do I wish to know.

Page 39 @ 28 June 2023 01:45:30 PM

Sometimes, on days of perfect and exact light,

When things are as real as they can possibly be,

I slowly ask myself

Why I even bother to attribute

Beauty to things.

Page 41 @ 28 June 2023 01:50:38 PM

If you want me to have a mysticism, then fine, I have one.
I’m a mystic, but only with my body.
My soul is simple and doesn’t think.

My mysticism is not wanting to know.
It’s living and not thinking about it.

I don’t know what Nature is: I sing it.
I live on top of a hill In a solitary, whitewashed house,
And that is my definition.

Page 42 @ 28 June 2023 01:53:20 PM

The moonlight seen through the tall branches

Is more, say all the poets,

Than the moonlight seen through the tall branches.

But for me, oblivious to what I think,

The moonlight seen through the tall branches,

Besides its being

The moonlight seen through the tall branches,

Is its not being more

Than the moonlight seen through the tall branches.

Page 43 @ 28 June 2023 01:56:27 PM

I think about this not as one who thinks but as one who doesn’t,
And I look at the flowers and smile …
I don’t know if they understand me
Or if I understand them,
But I know the truth is in them and in me
And in our common divinity
Of letting go and living right here on the Earth
And contentedly cuddling up in the Seasons
And letting the wind gently sing us to sleep
And having no dreams in our slumber.

Page 44 @ 28 June 2023 01:58:46 PM

Better the flight of the bird that passes and leaves no trace
Than the passage of the animal, recorded in the ground.
The bird passes and is forgotten, which is how it should be.
The animal, no longer there and so of no further use,
Uselessly shows it was there.

Remembrance is a betrayal of Nature,
Because yesterday’s Nature isn’t Nature.
What was is nothing, and to remember is not to see.

Pass by, bird, pass, and teach me to pass!

7 MAY 1914

From UNCOLLECTED POEMS

Page 55 @ 29 June 2023 04:22:50 PM

If the soul is more real

Than the outer world, as you, philosopher, say it is,

Then why was the outer world given to me as reality’s prototype?

If my feeling is more certain

Than the existence of the thing I feel,

Then why do I feel that thing and why does it appear

Independently of me,

Without needing me to exist—

Me, who am forever bound to myself, forever personal and nontransferable?

Page 56 @ 29 June 2023 04:22:30 PM

We live before we philosophize, we exist before we know we do,

And the earlier fact merits at least homage and precedence.

Yes, we are outer before we are inner.

Therefore we are essentially outer.

Page 57 @ 29 June 2023 04:26:06 PM

Humanity is an uprising of slaves.

Humanity is a government usurped by the people,

Existing because usurped, but erring, since to usurp is to have no right.

Let the outer world and natural humanity be!

Peace to all prehuman things, including those in man!

Peace to the wholly outer essence of the Universe!

Page 58 @ 29 June 2023 04:28:13 PM

Hillside shepherd, so far away from me with your sheep,
Is the happiness you seem to have your happiness or mine?
Does the peace I feel when I see you belong to you or to me?
No, shepherd, neither to you nor to me.
It belongs only to peace and happiness.
You don’t have it, because you don’t know you have it,
And I don’t have it, because I know I do.
It exists on its own, and falls on us like the sun,
Which hits you on the back and warms you up, while you
indifferently think about something else,
And it hits me in the face and dazzles my eyes, and I think only about the sun.

12 APRIL 1919

RICARDO REIS

Page 68 @ 29 June 2023 04:42:24 PM

Like the calm, implacable Destiny
That reigns above the gods,
Let’s construct a voluntary fate
Above ourselves,
So that when it oppresses us, it is we
Who’ll be our oppressors.
And when we enter the night, we’ll enter
By our own two feet.

THE CHESS PLAYERS

Page 75 @ 29 June 2023 04:51:02 PM

Securely I sit on the steadfast column

Of the verses in which I’ll remain,

Not fearing the endless future influx

Of times and of oblivion,

For when the mind intently studies

In itself the world’s reflections,

It becomes their plasma, and the world is what

Creates art, not the mind. Thus

On the plaque the outer moment engraves

Its being, and there endures.

Page 76 @ 29 June 2023 04:53:10 PM

I want the flower you are, not the one you give.
Why refuse me what I don’t ask of you?
You’ll have time to refuse
After you’ve given.
Flower, be a flower to me! If, ungenerous, you’re plucked
By the hand of the ill-omened sphinx, you’ll wander forever
As an absurd shadow,
Seeking what you never gave.

21 OCTOBER 1923

Page 79 @ 29 June 2023 05:05:32 PM

The leaf won’t return to the branch it left
Nor form a new leaf with the same stem.
The moment, which ends as this one begins,
Has died forever.
The vain and uncertain future promises
No more than this repeated experience
Of the mortal lot and the lost condition
Of things and of myself.
And so, in this universal river
Where I’m not a wave, but waves,
I languidly flow, with no requests
And no gods to hear them.

28 SEPTEMBER 1926

EXCERPTS FROM TWO ODES

Page 101 @ 30 June 2023 02:25:59 AM

Come faintly,
Come softly,
Come alone, solemn, with hands hanging
At your sides, come
And bring the far-off hills as near as the nearby trees,
Merge every field I see into your one field,
Make the mountain one more block of your body,
Erase all its differences I see from afar,
All the roads that climb it,
All the varied trees that make it dark green in the distance,
All the white houses whose smoke rises through the trees,
And leave just one light, and another light, and one more light
In the hazy and vaguely troubling distance,
In the distance that’s suddenly impossible to cross.

Page 102 @ 30 June 2023 02:26:51 AM

Come ever so solemnly,
Solemn and full
Of a secret desire to weep,
Perhaps because the soul is vast and life small,
And none of our gestures ever leaves our body,
And we can reach only as far as our arm reaches,
And can see only as far as our sight extends.

LISBON REVISITED (1926)

Page 177 @ 30 June 2023 03:49:24 PM

Ah, vanity of flesh and blood called man,
Can’t you see that you’re utterly unimportant?

LÀ-BAS, JE NE SAIS OÙ…

Page 211 @ 30 June 2023 05:54:05 PM

To be a beggar and a bum doesn’t mean you’re a beggar and a bum:

It means you’re unconnected to the social ladder,

It means you’re unadaptable to life’s norms,

To life’s real or sentimental norms—

It means you’re not a High Court judge, a nine to five

employee, or a whore,

Not genuinely poor or an exploited worker,

Not sick with an incurable disease,

Not thirsty for justice, or a cavalry officer,

Not, in short, within any of those social categories depicted by novelists

Who pour themselves out on paper because they have good reasons for shedding tears

And who rebel against society because their good reasons

make them think they’re rebels.

SENHOR SILVA

Page 251 @ 01 July 2023 12:42:24 AM

In this calm and stupid life,
I never know how I should act.
But, my God, I feel human pain!
Don’t ever deny me that!

From FAUST

Page 294 @ 01 July 2023 01:29:26 AM

Everything we see is something else.

The sweeping tide, the raging tide,

Is the echo of another tide that flows

Where the world is really real.

All we have is forgetfulness.

Depndant origintion.

Generated at: 2023-07-02-11-16-15

A History of Reading by Alberto Manguel

2026-04-04T17:52:16.000Z

A History of Reading-Penguin Books (2014)

Alberto Manguel

The Last Page

Time: 2021-09-01 13:50

I too soon discovered that one doesn’t simply read Crime and Punishment or A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. One reads a certain edition, a specific copy,recognizable by the roughness or smoothness of its paper, by its scent, by a slight tear on page 72 and a coffee ring on the right-hand corner of the back cover. The epistemological rule for reading, established in the second century, that the most recent text replaces the previous one, since it is supposed to contain it, has rarely been true in my case.

Time: 2021-09-02 01:57

Ivory, according to Virgil, is the material out of which the Gate of False Dreams is made; according to Sainte-Beuve, it is also the material out of which is made the reader’s tower.

Time: 2021-09-02 01:58

Borges once told me that, during one of the populist demonstrations organized by Perón’s government in 1950 against the opposing intellectuals, the demonstrators chanted, “Shoes yes, books no.” The retort, “Shoes yes, books yes,” convinced no one. Reality — harsh,necessary reality — was seen to conflict irredeemably with the evasive dreamworld of books.

The Silent Readers

Time: 2021-09-03 11:01

Some dogmatists became wary of the new trend; in their minds, silent reading allowed for day-dreaming, for the danger of accidie — the sin of idleness, “the destruction that wasteth at noonday”.38 But silent reading brought with it another danger the Christian fathers had not foreseen. A book that can be read privately, reflected upon as the eye unravels the sense of the words, is no longer subject to immediate clarification or guidance, condemnation or censorship by a listener. Silent reading allows unwitnessed communication between the book and the reader, and the singular “refreshing of the mind”, in Augustine’s happy phrase.39

The Book of Memory

Time: 2021-09-03 14:15

In 1658, the eighteen-year-old Jean Racine, studying at Port-Royal des Champs under the watchful eye of religious teachers, discovered by chance an early Greek novel, The Loves of Theogonis and Charicles, whose notions of tragic love he may have recalled years later, when writing Andromaque and Bérénice. He took the book into the forest surrounding the abbey,and had begun to read it voraciously when he was surprised by the sexton, who pulled the book from the boy’s hands and threw it into a bonfire. Shortly afterwards, Racine managed to find a second copy, which was also discovered and condemned to the flames. This encouraged him to buy a third copy and learn the whole novel by heart. Then he handed it over to the fiery sexton, saying, “Now you can burn this one too, just as you did the others.”

Time: 2021-09-03 14:42

When I was ten or eleven, one of my teachers in Buenos Aires tutored me in the evenings in German and European history. To improve my German pronunciation, he encouraged me to memorize poems by Heine, Goethe and Schiller, and Gustav Schwab’s ballad “Der Ritter und der Bodensee”, in which a rider gallops across the frozen Lake of Constance and,on realizing what he has accomplished, dies of fright on the far shore. I enjoyed learning the poems but I didn’t understand of what use they might possibly be. “They’ll keep you company on the day you have no books to read,” my teacher said. Then he told me that his father, murdered in Sachsenhausen, had been a famous scholar who knew many of the classics by heart and who, during his time in the concentration camp, had offered himself as a library to be read to his fellow inmates. I imagined the old man in that murky,relentless, hopeless place, approached with a request for Virgil or Euripides, opening himself up to a given page and reciting the ancient words for his bookless readers. Years later, I realized that he had been immortalized as one of the crowd of roaming book-savers in Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451.

Learning to Read

Time: 2021-09-03 15:11

the boy about to be initiated was wrapped in a prayer shawl and taken by his father to the teacher. The teacher sat the boy on his lap and showed him a slate on which were written the Hebrew alphabet, a passage from the Scriptures and the words “May the Torah be your occupation.” The teacher read out every word and the child repeated it. Then the slate was covered with honey and the child licked it, thereby bodily assimilating the holy words. Also, biblical verses were written on peeled hard-boiled eggs and on honey cakes, which the child would eat after reading the verses out loud to the teacher.

Time: 2021-09-03 20:54

Few students were rich enough to buy books,19 and often only the teacher possessed these expensive volumes. He would copy the complicated rules of grammar onto the blackboard — usually without explaining them, since, according to scholastic pedagogy, understanding was not a requisite of knowledge. The students were then forced to learn the rules by heart. As might be expected, the results were often disappointing.

Well… Books are cheap now but understanding is still not a requisite for learning.

The Missing First Page

Time: 2021-09-03 21:51

Kafka’s intuition that if the world has coherence, it is one that we can never fully comprehend — that if it offers hope, it is (as he once replied to Max Brod) “not for us” — led him to see, in this very irresolvability, the essence of the world’s richness.13 Walter Benjamin noted in a celebrated essay that in order to understand Kafka’s view of the world “one must keep in mind Kafka’s way of reading”,14 which Benjamin compared to that of Dostoevsky’s Grand Inquisitor in the allegorical tale in The Brothers Karamazov: “We have before us,” says the Inquisitor, speaking to Christ returned to earth, “a mystery which we cannot grasp. And precisely because it is a mystery we have had the right to preach it, to teach the people that what matters is neither freedom nor love, but the riddle, the secret,the mystery to which they have to bow — without reflection and even without conscience.”15 A friend who saw Kafka reading at his desk said that he reminded him of the anguished figure depicted in the painting A Reader of Dostoevsky by the Czech expressionist Emil Filla,who seems to have fallen into a trance while reading the book he still holds in his grey hand.

Picture Reading

Time: 2021-09-03 22:05

Pope Gregory the Great would echo Saint Nilus’s views: “It is one thing to worship a picture, it is another to learn in depth, by means of pictures, a venerable story. For that which writing makes present to the reader, pictures make present to the illiterate, to those who only perceive visually, because in pictures the ignorant see the story they ought to follow, and those who don’t know their letters find that they can, after a fashion, read. Therefore, especially for the common folk, pictures are the equivalent of reading.”8 In 1025the Synod of Arras stated that “what simple people could not grasp through reading the scriptures could be learned by means of contemplating pictures.”

Nice pedagogical aspect.

Being Read To

Time: 2021-09-03 22:29

In 1865, Saturnino Martínez, cigar-maker and poet, conceived the idea of publishing a newspaper for the workers in the cigar industry, which would contain not only political features but also articles on science and literature, poems and short stories. With the support of several Cuban intellectuals, Martínez brought out the first issue of La Aurora on October 22 of that year. “Its purpose,” he announced in the first editorial, “will be to illuminate in every possible way that class of society to which it is dedicated. We will do everything to make ourselves generally accepted. If we are not successful, the blame will lie in our insufficiency, not in our lack of will.” Over the years, La Aurora published work by the major Cuban writers of the day, as well as translations of European authors such as Schiller and Chateaubriand, reviews of books and plays, and exposés of the tyranny of factory owners and of the workers’ sufferings. “Do you know,” it asked its readers on June 27, 1866, “that at the edge of La Zanja, according to what people say, there is a factory owner who puts shackles on the children he uses as apprentices?”

Time: 2021-09-04 02:01

According to Mario Sánchez, a Key West painter who in 1991 could still recall lectores reading to the cigar-rollers in the late twenties, the readings took place in concentrated silence, and comments or questions were not allowed until the session was over. “My father,” Sánchez reminisced, “was the reader in the Eduardo Hidalgo Gato cigar factory in the early 1900s until the 1920s. In the mornings, he read the news which he translated from the local newspapers. He read international news directly from Cuban newspapers brought daily by boat from Havana. From noon until three in the afternoons, he read from a novel.He was expected to interpret the characters by imitating their voices, like an actor.”Workers who had spent several years at the shops were able to quote from memory long passages of poetry and even prose. Sánchez mentioned one man who was able to remember the entire Meditations of Marcus Aurelius.

The Shape of the Book

Time: 2021-09-04 11:54

It may be useful to bear in mind that printing did not, in spite of the obvious “end-of-the-world” predictions, eradicate the taste for handwritten text. On the contrary, Gutenberg and his followers attempted to emulate the scribe’s craft, and most incunabula have a manuscript appearance. At the end of the fifteenth century, even though printing was by then well established, care for the elegant hand had not died out, and some of the most memorable examples of calligraphy still lay in the future. While books were becoming more easily available and more people were learning to read, more were also learning to write,often stylishly and with great distinction, and the sixteenth century became not only the age of the printed word but also the century of the great manuals of handwriting.20 It is interesting to note how often a technological development — such as Gutenberg’s —promotes rather than eliminates that which it is supposed to supersede, making us aware of old-fashioned virtues we might otherwise have either overlooked or dismissed as of negligible importance.

Time: 2021-09-04 12:04

So successful was Aldus’s enterprise that his editions were soon being imitated throughout Europe: in France by Gryphius in Lyons, as well as Colines and Robert Estienne in Paris, and in The Netherlands by Plantin in Antwerp and Elzevir in Leiden, The Hague, Utrecht and Amsterdam. When Aldus died in 1515, the humanists who attended his funeral erected all around his coffin, like erudite sentinels, the books he had so lovingly chosen to print.

Time: 2021-09-04 12:15

Until 1935. One year earlier, after a weekend spent with Agatha Christie and her second husband in their house in Devon, the English publisher Allen Lane, waiting for his train back to London, looked through the bookstalls at the station for something to read. He found nothing that appealed to him among the popular magazines, the expensive hardbacks and the pulp fiction, and it occurred to him that what was needed was a line of cheap but good pocket-sized books.

Ain't you my brother in arms!

Private Reading

Time: 2021-09-04 13:35

For Edith Wharton, the aristocratic American novelist, the bedroom became the only refuge from nineteenth-century ceremony where she could read and write at ease.“Visualize her bed,” suggested Cynthia Ozick in a discussion of Wharton’s craft. “She used a writing board. Her breakfast was brought to her by Gross, the housekeeper, who almost alone was privy to this inmost secret of the bedchamber. (A secretary picked up the pages from the floor for typing.) Out of bed, she would have had to be, according to her code,properly dressed, and this meant stays. In bed, her body was free, and freed her pen.”39 Free also was her reading; in this private space she did not have to explain to visitors why she had chosen a book or what she thought of it. So important was this horizontal workplace that once, at the Hotel Esplanade in Berlin, Wharton had “a minor fit of hysterics because the bed in her hotel room was not properly situated; not until it had been moved to face the window did she settle down and begin to find Berlin ‘incomparable’.”

Beginnings

Time: 2021-09-04 15:27

The primordial relationship between writer and reader presents a wonderful paradox: in creating the role of the reader, the writer also decrees the writer’s death, since in order for a text to be finished the writer must withdraw, cease to exist. While the writer remains present, the text remains incomplete. Only when the writer relinquishes the text, does the text come into existence. At that point, the existence of the text is a silent existence, silent until the moment in which a reader reads it. Only when the able eye makes contact with the markings on the tablet, does the text come to active life. All writing depends on the generosity of the reader.

Ordainers of the Universe

Time: 2021-09-04 22:16

The alphabet sometimes served as a key for retrieving volumes. In the tenth century, for instance, the Grand Vizier of Persia, Abdul Kassem Ismael, in order not to part with his collection of 117,000 volumes when travelling, had them carried by a caravan of four hundred camels trained to walk in alphabetical order.

Time: 2021-09-04 22:27

Baghdad was not alone in collecting Aristotle and the other Greek classics. In Cairo, the Fatimid library contained, before the Sunni purges of 1175, more than 1.1 million volumes,catalogued by subject.25 (The Crusaders, with the exaggeration induced by astonished envy,reported that there were more than 3 million books in the infidels’ hold.) Following the Alexandrian model, the Fatimid library also included a museum, an archive and a laboratory. Christian scholars such as John of Gorce travelled south to make use of these invaluable resources. In Islamic Spain too there were numerous important libraries; in Andalusia alone there were more than seventy, of which the caliphal library of Córdoba listed 400,000 volumes in the reign of al-Hakam II (961–76).

The Symbolic Reader

Time: 2021-09-05 00:25

The mere possession of books implies social standing and a certain intellectual richness; in eighteenth-century Russia, during the reign of Catherine the Great, a certain Mr. Klostermann made a fortune by selling long rows of binding stuffed with waste paper, which allowed courtiers to create the illusion of a library and thereby garner the favour of their bookish empress.

Time: 2021-09-05 00:43

Lady Wisdom is the protagonist of one of the most popular books of the fifteenth century,L’Orloge de Sapience (The Hourglass of Wisdom), written in (or translated into) French in 1389by a Franciscan friar from Lorraine, Henri Suso.28 Sometime between 1455 and 1460, an artist known to us as the Master of Jean Rolin created for it a series of exquisite illuminations. One of these miniatures depicts Wisdom sitting on her throne, surrounded by a garland of crimson angels, holding in her left arm the globe of the world and in her right hand an open book. Above her, on both sides, larger angels kneel in a starry sky;below her, to her right, five monks discuss two scholarly tomes open in front of them; to her left a crowned donor, with a book set open on a draped lectern, is praying to her. Her position is identical to that of God the Father, who sits on just such a golden throne in countless other illuminations, usually as a companion piece to the Crucifixion, holding an orb in His left hand and a book in His right, and circled by similar fiery angels.

Stealing Books

Time: 2021-09-08 09:31

For him that steals, or borrows and returns not, a book from its owner, let it change into a serpent in his hand and rend him. Let him be struck with palsy, and all his members blasted. Let him languish in pain crying aloud for mercy, and let there be no surcease to his agony till he sing in dissolution. Let bookworms gnaw at his entrails in token of the Worm that dieth not. And when at last he goes to his final punishment, let the flames of Hell consume him for ever.

The Translator as Reader

Time: 2021-09-08 16:38

Even the text judged most infallible of all — God’s Word itself, the Bible — underwent a long series of transformations in the hands of its successive readers. From the Old Testament canon established in the second century AD by Rabbi Akiba ben Joseph to John Wycliffe’s English translation in the fourteenth century, the book called the Bible was at times the Greek Septuagint of the third century BC (and the basis for subsequent Latin translations), the so-called Vulgate (Saint Jerome’s Latin version of the late fourth century)and all the later Bibles of the Middle Ages: Gothic, Slavic, Armenian, Old English, West Saxon, Anglo-Norman, French, Frisian, German, Irish, Netherlandish, Central Italian,Provençal, Spanish, Catalan, Polish, Welsh, Czech, Hungarian. Each one of these was, for its readers, the Bible, yet each allowed for a different reading.

Time: 2021-09-08 16:47

In their “Preface to the Reader”, the King James translators wrote, “Translation it is that openeth the window, to let in the light; that breaketh the shell, that we may eat the kernell;that putteth aside the curtain, that we may look into the most holy place; that removeth the cover of the well, that we may come by the water.” This meant not being afraid “of the light of Scripture” and entrusting the reader with the possibility of illumination; not proceeding archeologically to restore the text to an illusory pristine state, but to free it from the constraints of time and place; not simplifying for the sake of a shallow explanation, but allowing the depths of meaning to become apparent; not glossing the text in the scholastic manner, but constructing a new and equivalent text. “For is the kingdome of God become words or syllables?” asked the translators. “Why should we be in bondage to them if we may be free …?” The question was still being asked several centuries later.

Forbidden Reading

Time: 2021-09-08 16:58

Doc Daniel Dowdy recalled that “the first time you was caught trying to read or write you was whipped with a cow-hide, the next time with a cat-o-nine-tails and the third time they cut the first joint off your forefinger.”8Throughout the South, it was common for plantation owners to hang any slave who tried to teach the others how to spell.

The Book Fool

Time: 2021-09-08 22:28

This reading has an image. A photograph taken in 1940, during the bombing of London in the Second World War, shows the remains of a caved-in library. Through the torn roof can be seen ghostly buildings outside, and in the centre of the store is a heap of beams and crippled furniture. But the shelves on the walls have held fast, and the books lined up along them seem unharmed. Three men are standing amidst the rubble: one, as if hesitant about which book to choose, is apparently reading the titles on the spines; another, wearing glasses, is reaching for a volume; the third is reading, holding an open book in his hands. They are not turning their backs on the war, or ignoring the destruction. They are not choosing the books over life outside. They are trying to persist against the obvious odds; they are asserting a common right to ask; they are attempting to find once again — among the ruins, in the astonished recognition that reading sometimes grants — an understanding.

Power_ Mon Amour

2026-03-09T09:40:27.000Z

[!quote-with-source] Warren Ellis (Castlevania S04E10)
— Strength and power are different. You wanted strength. Carmilla wanted power.

— In the end, yes. That's what it turned into. Which is what ruined my life. Power. Big, international, non-diplomatic, projected power is something else. It lends you more might, but it doesn't have the utilities of strength. It lays eggs in you. It becomes a parasite you have to feed. Power does nothing but eat.

— Like a vampire.

— Like a vampire.

Succinctly, well put. This is a potent overview, really. And then, there are sociological, psychological, and, of course, political discourses in volumes of pages dissecting this subject. Here, however, I will compile a list that doesn't teach you theories, but helps you to internalise them. Our goal is not only to understand,^[1] but to feel.

01. Animal Farm by George Orwell

Orwell's primary inspiration for this classic was the Soviet Union under Stalin's regime. Firstly, a communist, and then an anarchist, Orwell wasn't bashing the opponents. He was telling a sobering tale. Pointing out to our naive belief that people in power can behave altruistically, and we can stop questioning them in good faith. Although we, the people, possess or show strength, we happily lend it to autocrats to make them powerful at the expense of our rights and freedom. This is a truth of historic proportions that we tend to overlook. Maybe that is because our slavery has become much more comfortable nowadays.

02. 1984 By George Orwell

What Orwell started in Animal Farm, through decades of journey, culminated in 1984.^[2] The prospect of this book is bleaker than the Animal Farm. Authoritarianism found its way to the heart of England in the form of IngSoc. When I say "to the heart", I mean it. Everyone is suspicious and eager to report the dissidents, even if they are parents. Distrust, control, manufactured narratives and a new language dubbed newspeak to spare people from cognitive dissonance rising from such a society. This is much more sophisticated, similar to our society, where we manufacture truth regularly to keep the illusion of normality going on.

03. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

Fahrenheit 451 deals with a dystopia with some interesting differences from 1984. Resources are not really scarce, and people live a plentiful life. However, they live a hollow life, an absolute society of the spectacle.
In their too comfortable life, where the government is in an extreme effort to eliminate thinking and questioning, people are living a life that can only be described as impulsive.
This points to another core truth about Power. Power doesn't want you to be miserable by default. It simply doesn't care about you. It will do whatever suits it best, regardless of the implications it may have on you.

04. The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood

In many ways, this is very similar to 1984. But it is unique in two aspects. (a) This is a dystopian USA, and (b) because it is American, it is a Christian dystopia. The power structure is also much more complex than most of the dystopian works, with each level having certain advantages and disadvantages. The constant terror of being whistled out is also quite acute.

This is a feminist book and particularly explores the position of women, who are already in a position of disadvantage in our current society. As long as power is the concern, they are a marginal population. And, in any autocratic society, especially if it is built upon some fascist ideas, marginalised demographies become more marginalised. This book explores this aspect of dystopia in depth.

05. V for Vendetta by Alan Moore

Here, we are again in an English dystopia. But here, we journey with a hopeful note, for our protagonist, V, is strong, and in a war with power, restoring hope in the possibility of redemption.
A graphic novel, a cult classic, V for Vendetta, is not by any means a typical superhero comic. It explores the premises of anarchism thoroughly, so much so that if you want to be familiar with the political theory of anarchism, this is a much better primer than many well-known alternatives.
This has so many intertwining stories with deep psychological insights and complex power structure, so many cultural references, you may want to read it several times.

I believe political scientists themselves understand this matter very little. Being a soft science, it is less formal. Also, governments keep many secrets that become available after a long time. It is hard to catch up with all the machinations at play. ↩︎
Dorian Lynskey wrote The Ministry of Truth, covering the history of this book. ↩︎

Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs by Harold Abelson

2023-01-26T10:20:46.000Z

[!info] About Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs by Harold Abelson
Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs has had a dramatic impact on computer science curricula over the past decade. This long-awaited revision contains changes throughout the text. There are new implementations of most of the major programming systems in the book, including the interpreters and compilers, and the authors have incorporated many small changes that reflect their experience teaching the course at MIT since the first edition was published. A new theme has been introduced that emphasizes the central role played by different approaches to dealing with time in computational models: objects with state, concurrent programming, functional programming and lazy evaluation, and nondeterministic programming. There are new example sections on higher-order procedures in graphics and on applications of stream processing in numerical programming, and many new exercises. In addition, all the programs have been reworked to run in any Scheme implementation that adheres to the IEEE standard.

বিষয় চলচ্চিত্র‌ by Satyajit Ray

2023-09-25T03:41:13.000Z

Ray is fluent in his style. Be it his writings or films. I believe his fluency in expressions emerges from two main factors:

His grasp on the subject matter.
His pedagogical intent. It's very different than showing off how much you know, which often leads to intentional obscurity.

This book collects some of his writings related to his life as a film director. Some of these are memories, some are articles written about the history and techniques of film-making, and others are his replies to the criticism of his works. There is an interview of an artist he took also.

Here, we can take a peek into his beautiful mind. His uncompromising artistry, sensitivity, wisdom, and timeless and progressive understanding of art and its various mediums amazed me. This book is a good starting point to know what kind of man he was.

[!info] About বিষয় চলচ্চিত্র‌ by Satyajit Ray
চিত্রশিল্পী সংগীতগুণী প্রচারবিদ বাগ্মী এবং বাংলা ও ইংরেজি দুই ভাষায়ই সমান দক্ষ লেখক সত্যজিৎ রায়ের প্রধান পরিচয়, ভারতীয় চলচ্চিত্রের মুক্তিদাতা তিনি। আর তাঁর চিত্রের মুক্তি ভারতীয় সংস্কৃতি-সরণীর এক-একটি মাইলস্টোন, বিশ্বের মানচিত্রেও সগর্ব অধ্যায়। সাধনা তাঁর নিষ্ঠাবান, যাত্রা তাঁর নিঃসঙ্গ, শিল্পরুচি সৃষ্টিতে যিনি নিজেকেই অতিক্রম করেছেন। সেই চলচ্চিত্রনির্মাণে চিত্রনাট্য-সংলাপ-রূপসজ্জা থেকে শুরু করে সম্পাদনা-বিজ্ঞাপন-প্রচারে সত্যজিৎ রায় স্বয়ং সম্পূর্ণ। তাঁর সেই দৃষ্টি এবং অভিজ্ঞতার সমাহার ঘটেছে এই গ্রন্থের রচনাবলীতে: চলচ্চিত্রের সমালোচনা রয়েছে, রয়েছে সংগীতের ব্যবহার বা সম্পাদনার পদ্ধতি এমনকি চিত্রকেন্দ্রিক বিষণ্ণ মধুর স্মৃতিচর্যা। স্বচ্ছ ভাবনার দীপ্তিমান প্রকাশে এই গ্রন্থ চলচ্চিত্র-জিজ্ঞাসু তথা যে-কোনো শিল্পপ্রেমী।

Why Men Fight by Bertrand Russell

2025-05-28T07:33:51.000Z

Not many intellectuals paid the price for their pacifism as dearly as Russell did. Once, he was a social pariah for this reason only. Yet he composed these lectures in the hope of talking some sense into the young minds of Europe.

A core axiom of these lectures is the idea that humans are intuitive and impulsive. If the impulses cannot run their courses creatively, then tend to be destructive. This, to me, feels like a partial truth, or a truth that is too simple for the complex world we live in.

Even if the axiom is partially correct, the reasoning following this axiom can at least reduce destruction if not eradicate it. This is why these lectures are still relevant.

Russell explored the various forms of social institutions, their merits-demerits, and relevance to modern society in most of the lectures to understand what was wrong with WWI Europe. With a syndicalist, freedom-loving outlook his reasoning culminated in a call to create a better political theory as such:

Page: 117 (76.47%) @ 28 Dec 2023 11:26:41 AM

The growth and vitality of individuals and communities is to be promoted as far as possible.
The growth of one individual or one community is to be as little as possible at the expense of another.

[!question] Thought Provoking

[!note] Notes and Highlights
Why Men Fight by Bertrand Russell

[!info] About Why Men Fight by Bertrand Russell
Also published under the title of Principals of Social Reconstruction, and written in response to the devastation of World War I, Why Men Fight lays out Bertrand Russell's ideas on war, pacifism, reason, impulse, and personal liberty. He argues that the individualistic approach of traditional liberalism has reached its limits and that when individuals live passionately, they will have no desire for war or killing. Conversely, excessive restraint or reason causes us to live unnaturally and with hostility toward those who are unlike ourselves. This formidable work greatly contributed to Russell’s fame as a formidable social critic and anti-war activist.

What is the Fourth Dimension by Charles Howard Hinton

2025-05-28T07:33:59.000Z

What is the Fourth Dimension by Charles Howard Hinton

If not anything else, this spirit (and the execution of it) is an excellent reason to write such a wonderful 32-page pamphlet with striking yet easily understandable ideas.

If you fail to find anything new in this book in regard to the fourth dimension, that is probably because this is one of those works that popularised those ideas.

As the name reveals, this book is a musing/speculation about the fourth dimension.

Hinton's four-dimensional space is an Euclidean one. This shouldn't be confused with the non-Euclidean four-dimensional space like the Minkowski's which was the basis of the Theory of Relativity. Hinton never mentioned time as the fourth dimension and it would've required a paradigm shift on Hinton's part. While it is not the spacetime we know now, it is quite an interesting system.

I liked how— example by example— Hinton built a system of fourth-dimensional space in a few pages which is consistent— complete with physical properties and consciousness, sound in its structure and extremely thought-provoking.

[!note] Notes and Highlights
What is the Fourth Dimension by Charles Howard Hinton

[!info] About What is the Fourth Dimension? by Charles Howard Hinton
A brief speculation on the nature of Euclidean four-dimensional space.

What Is Real_ The Unfinished Quest for the Meaning of Quantum Physics by Adam Becker

2025-05-28T07:08:32.000Z

Review

This book gets its justification from the negative review it got from the journals. The self-inflicted blindness quantum physics community nurture every day, cannot be dispelled by one such tiny effort.

Even if these journals are right in some of their criticism, the central argument stands. Much of the defence for Copenhagen Interpretation is, in a nutshell, unscientific.

Key Points

Quantum physics predicts extremely well. Therefore, has a huge amount of usage in technology. Hence, the tendency of "Shut up and calculate!" is the strongest.
However, the Copenhagen Interpretation has some flaws:
1. It is positivist.
2. Can easily lead to solipsism.
3. Dogmatic.
4. Have enough contenders with similar prediction but better interpretative scheme.

[!note] Notes and Highlights
What is Real by Adam Becker

[!info] About What Is Real? by Adam Becker
Every physicist agrees quantum mechanics is among humanity's finest scientific achievements. But ask what it means, and the result will be a brawl. For a century, most physicists have followed Niels Bohr's Copenhagen interpretation and dismissed questions about the reality underlying quantum physics as meaningless. A mishmash of solipsism and poor reasoning, Copenhagen endured, as Bohr's students vigorously protected his legacy, and the physics community favoured practical experiments over philosophical arguments. As a result, questioning the status quo long meant professional ruin. And yet, from the 1920s to today, physicists like John Bell, David Bohm, and Hugh Everett persisted in seeking the true meaning of quantum mechanics. What is Real? is the gripping story of this battle of ideas and the courageous scientists who dared to stand up for truth.

What I Believe by Bertrand Russell

2026-02-12T12:03:25.000Z

[!note] Notes and Highlights
What I Believe

[!info] About What I Believe by Bertrand Russell
Along with Why I Am Not a Christian, this essay must rank as the most articulate example of Russell's famed atheism. It is also one of the most notorious. Used as evidence in a 1940 court case in which Russell was declared unfit to teach college-level philosophy, What I Believe was to become one of his most defining works. The ideas contained within were and are controversial, contentious and - to the religious - downright blasphemous. A remarkable work, it remains the best concise introduction to Russell's thought.

Weapons of Math Destruction by Cathy O_Neil

2025-05-28T07:07:20.000Z

This, I think, is one of the most important books I've read this year. For, one cannot expect to grasp even the most sketchy outline of our socio-economic reality if one is not familiar with the now-prevailing currency, namely data.

The computer is good at doing things fast, really fast. So, when it errs, it errs in a flash, resulting in a gigantic accumulation of errors. It shouldn't be surprising that big data (a match made between statistics and computer science) with its inbuilt measures of inaccuracies paired with shortcomings in creating mathematical models that sufficiently mirror reality will create tools of horrible injustice. It is not always easy to notice. Technical difficulties and self-fulfilling feedback loops can deceive us quickly.

However, the writer herself has been deep in this system and saw these things closely. With her deep knowledge and very conscientious mind, she is well-equipped to discuss the matter in great depth and honesty.

[!note] Notes and Highlights
Weapons of Math Destruction

[!info] About Weapons of Math Destruction by Cathy O'Neil
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A former Wall Street quant sounds the alarm on Big Data and the mathematical models that threaten to rip apart our social fabric—with a new afterword “A manual for the twenty-first-century citizen … relevant and urgent.”—Financial Times NATIONAL BOOK AWARD LONGLIST • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New York Times Book Review • The Boston Globe • Wired • Fortune • Kirkus Reviews • The Guardian • Nature • On Point We live in the age of the algorithm. Increasingly, the decisions that affect our lives—where we go to school, whether we can get a job or a loan, how much we pay for health insurance—are being made not by humans, but by machines. In theory, this should lead to greater fairness: Everyone is judged according to the same rules. But as mathematician and data scientist Cathy O’Neil reveals, the mathematical models being used today are unregulated and uncontestable, even when they’re wrong. Most troubling, they reinforce discrimination—propping up the lucky, punishing the downtrodden, and undermining our democracy in the process. Welcome to the dark side of Big Data.

Walking by Thomas Bernhard

2025-05-28T07:06:22.000Z

Modern literature is less about the content, and more about the representation. It is only expected that such works won't share fluency with pop works. However, these works almost always have other motives than telling a good story. In the case of this book, I couldn't understand what the motive was.

[!note] Notes and Highlights
Walking by Thomas Bernhard

[!info] About Walking by Thomas Bernhard
"Walking records the conversations of the unnamed narrator and his friend Oehler while they walk, discussing anything that comes to mind but always circling back to their mutual friend Karrer, who has gone irrevocably mad."--Amazon.com.

V for Vendetta by Alan Moore

2025-11-05T16:00:06.000Z

To me, this is Alan Moore's greatest work. He is so clear and so in command of the ideas he wanted to expose, I couldn't find a place where they got watered down, which is so common in comics.

Most of the characters in V for Vendetta are complex. Seldom is there a major character like Bishop Lilliman who is typical. So well-crafted are the characters, their inner struggles, and conflicts with the world out that they felt real, yet full of surprise. Moore has shown a mastery of psychology, which is a hallmark of great fiction writers.

However, the characters are only backdrops here. Alan Moore used these characters to effectively convey some very elaborate ideas— freedom, anarchy, justice, integrity, etc.

So, when V started his vendetta, it was not only against some people. It is against the system, even against the lack of aesthetics that the system enforces (hence the theatrical nature of V).

The Movie

I'm aware of the difficulties of comparing works of two different media.

The recurring thing I noticed in the movie is that it lacks depth. This is very unfortunate. Doubly so because it seems like the lack is there, not by mistake, but by design. Everything is toned down in the movie. It's a caricature.

Mentioned Works

V for Vendetta: Mentioned Works

V for Vendetta is littered with literary and cultural references. These are the ones I have identified by far.

Issue 01

01 (Page 14-15)

The multiplying villanies of nature
Do swarm upon him.
…
And Fortune, on his damned quarry smiling,
Showed like a rebel's whore. But all's too weak,
For brave Macbeth — well he deserves that name
Disdaining fortune with his brandished steel
Which smoked with bloody execution,
Like Valor's minion carved out his passage
Till he faced the slave,
Which ne'er shook hands, nor bade farewell to him,

Source: William Shakespeare (Macbeth Act 1 Scene 2)

02 (Page 17)

Remember, remember, the 5th of November,
Gunpowder, treason and plot.
I see no reason
Why gunpowder treason
Should ever be forgot.

Source: Traditional Poem

03 (Page 22)

Dancing in the Street by Martha Reeves & The Vandellas

Issue 02

04 (Page 53)

O beauty, Till now I never knew thee!

Source: William Shakespeare (Henry VIII, Act 1 Scene 4)

05 (Page 56)

Vi veri veniversum vivus vici

Alternate version: Vi veri universum vivus vici
Translation: By the power of truth, I, while living, have conquered the universe.

Source: Robert Nye (Foust)

06 (Page 61)

Bring me my Bow of burning gold:
Bring me my arrows of desire:
Bring me my Spear: O clouds unfold!
Bring me my Chariot of fire!

I will not cease from Mental Fight,
Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand:
Till we have built Jerusalem,
In Englands green & pleasant Land.

Source: William Blake (Jerusalem)

07 (Page 68)

Please allow me to introduce myself
I'm a man of wealth and taste

Source: Rolling Stone (Sympathy for the Devil)

08 (Page 71)

1 The Lord is my shepherd : therefore can I lack nothing.
2 He shall feed me in a green pasture : and lead me forth beside the waters of comfort.
3 He shall convert my soul : and bring me forth in the paths of righteousness, for his Name's sake.
4 Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil : for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff comfort me.

Source: Psalm 23

09 (Page 74)

10 (Page 75)

I am the devil and I am here to do the devil’s work.

Source: Rob Zombie (The Devil’s Rejects, spoken by Otis Driftwood)

Issue 03

11 (Page 87)

There is more behind and inside V. than any of us had suspected. Not who, but what is she.

Source: Thomas Pynchon (V: Chapter 2)

12 (Page 91)

"Let's dig an enormous castle!" cried Moon-Face. "Then we can all sit on the top of it when the sea comes in."

"We can't," said Silky, suddenly looking sad.

"Why not?" cried Jo in surprise. "Isn't this the land of do-as-you-please?"

"Yes," said Silky. "But it's time we went back to the faraway tree. The land will soon be moving on- And nice as it is, we don't want to live here forever."

"Gracious No." Said Jo. "Our mother and father couldn't possibly do without us…"

Source: Enid Blyton (The Magic Faraway Tree)

13 (Page 97)

Delia Surridge explains Milgram experiment

Issue 04

14 (Page 122)

The first line of This Vicious Cabaret nods to the song "There's a Broken Heart for Every Light on Broadway" by Marin Mazzie and Zach Braff.

You can also listen to This Vicious Cabaret:

Issue 08

15 (Page 264)

It will all be over by the Christmas

People used to believe that the World War I will be finished by the Christmas of 1914.

16 (Page 279)

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

Source: W.B. Yeats (The Second Coming)

Issue IX

17 (Page 307)

Everytime we say goodbye
I die a little

Source: Song by Ella Fitzgerald

18 (Page 311)

Evey refers to Ray Bradbury's The Scythe, a short story.

19 (Page 313)

I'm waiting for the man.

Source: Song by Velvet Underground

20 (Page 325)

So, how can you tell me you're lonely
And say for you that the sun don't shine?
Let me take you by the hand
And lead you through the streets of London
Show you something to make you change your mind

Source: Streets of London, Song by Ralph McTell

[!info] About V for Vendetta (New Edition) by Alan Moore
A powerful story about the loss of freedom and individuality, V FOR VENDETTA takes place in a totalitarian England following a devastating war that changed the face of the planet. In a world without political freedom, personal freedom, and precious little faith in anything, comes a mysterious man in a white porcelain mask who fights political oppressors through terrorism and seemingly absurd acts in this gripping tale of the blurred lines between ideological good and evil.

Tristes Tropiques by Claude Lévi-Strauss

2025-05-28T07:02:46.000Z

একাডেমিয়ায় পাত্তা পাচ্ছিলেন না যতটা আশা করেছিলেন। এদিকে পকেটের বেহাল দশা। লিখলেন সেই বইটি-ই যেটি লেখার কোনো ইচ্ছাই তাঁর ছিল না। বিশেষজ্ঞদের জন্য লেখা সিরিয়াস বই না, বরং খানিকটা পপ ঘরানার বই। ভয় ছিল এই বইটি লেখার পর তাকে আর স্কলাররা তাদের সমকক্ষ বলে মনে করবে না।

তারপর হয়ে গেলো ম্যাজিক। এই পপ বইটি-ই এনে দিল খ্যাতি, বড় পদ, এমনকি একটি সাহিত্য পুরষ্কারের কমিটি দুঃখ প্রকাশ করলো তারা এই বইটিকে পুরষ্কৃত করতে পারছে না বলে।

বইটা কিছুটা আত্মজৈবনিক। রেট্রোস্পেক্টে দেখা, ক্রনোলজিক্যালিও সাজানো না। মূলত নেটিভ অ্যামিরিকান কয়েকটি ট্রাইবের সাথে তাঁর মিথষ্ক্রিয়াই বইটির উপজীব্য।

শুরুতেই বলেছি, বইটা পপ-ঘরানার। পপ-ঘরানার বই সাধারণত তাত্ত্বিকভাবে সহজপাচ্য হয়। এই বইটাও তাই। এই বইটার গুরুত্ব হচ্ছে অ্যান্থ্রপলজিকাল অ্যাটিচিউডের সাথে পাঠক-কে পরিচিত করা। সেই কাজটা স্ট্রাউস বইটায় খুব ভালোভাবে করতে পেরেছেন।

[!note] Notes and Highlights
Tristes Tropiques by Claude Lévi-Strauss

[!info] About Tristes Tropiques by Claude Lévi-Strauss
Tristes Tropiques begins with the line ‘I hate travelling and explorers’, yet during his life Claude Lévi-Strauss travelled from wartime France to the Amazon basin and the dense upland jungles of Brazil, where he found ‘human society reduced to its most basic expression’. His account of the people he encountered changed the field of anthropology, transforming Western notions of ‘primitive’ man. Tristes Tropiques is a major work of art as well as of scholarship. It is a memoir of exquisite beauty and a masterpiece of travel writing: funny, discursive, movingly detailing personal and cultural loss, and brilliantly connecting disparate fields of thought. Few books have had as powerful and broad an impact.

Treat It Gentle by Sidney Bechet

2026-02-11T18:09:21.000Z

প্রথমেই যে বিষয়ে সাবধানতা প্রয়োজন সেটা হচ্ছে এই বইতে হয়ত কিছু ঘটনা একটু রঙচঙে করে বলা। কিন্তু তা কিছু ঘটনাই। তা বাদে, ঠিক-ভুল জানি না, তবে মিউজিক সম্পর্কে, র‍্যাগটাইম ও জ্যাজ সম্পর্কে সিডনি বেশেটের বেশ স্বচ্ছ একটা দর্শন আছে। বস্তুত, সেইজন্যেই বইটা বেশি গুরুত্বপূর্ণ।

সিডনি বেশেট জ্যাজের পাইওনিয়ারদের একজন বলা চলে। কিন্তু মিউজিকের প্রতি তার ডেডিকেশন এত উঁচুতে যে বেশিদিন কোথাও একটানা কাজ আর তার হয়ে ওঠেনি। বরাবরই ইনসিনসিয়ারিটি তাকে আহত করে এসেছে।

বইটায় বেশ কিছু মেডিটেশন আমায় মুগ্ধ করেছে। শিল্প ও শিল্পীর সাইকোলজি, রেসিয়াল অ্যাওয়ারনেস, কমার্শিয়ালাইজেশনের বিষয়ে স্কেপটিজম… সব মিলিয়ে একটা পড়ার মত বই!

[!note] Notes and Highlights
Treat it Gentle by Sidney Bechet

[!info] About Treat It Gentle by Sidney Bechet
The most valuable and moving of all jazz biographies. -Nat Hentoff

Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus by Ludwig Wittgenstein

2025-05-28T07:01:47.000Z

[!Warning] Re-reading Required
The review below was written 3 years back and requires a re-reading of the book.

If I say, I understood everything Wittgenstein said in this book then that will be lying. I might re-read this book again. Then I'll be able to review this review again and see where my thoughts differ.

This book is about philosophy, and logic in particular (anyone can deduce that from the name, meh!). However, I think philosophers haven't agreed upon what is a part of philosophy and what is not. Therefore, we'll be sticking to what Wittgenstein thinks philosophy is:

Page 35

Philosophy is not one of the natural sciences.

(The word “philosophy” must mean something which stands above or below, but not beside the natural sciences.)

4.112

The object of philosophy is the logical clarification of thoughts.

Philosophy is not a theory but an activity.

A philosophical work consists essentially of elucidations.

The result of philosophy is not a number of “philosophical propositions”, but to make propositions clear.

Philosophy should make clear and delimit sharply the thoughts which otherwise are, as it were, opaque and blurred.

Now, that is both narrowing and liberating relative to the way we normally see philosophy. It is liberating because now it's an action, therefore, opens up new possibilities. Narrowing in the sense that now it works only with the clarification of thoughts and has no apparent common ground with natural science.

The main section of the book starts with a German quote which can roughly be translated to "Everything you have to say, can be said in three words". This covers a lot of the book. Wittgenstein expounded on some core elements of logic but he expounded on proposition most. A proposition is, as I understood reading him, a statement that expresses a fact. It comes with its mental picture. And, if that picture is unclear, or unthinkable, then the proposition itself is not valid. Now, this validity has nothing to do with if the statement is correct in real life or not. This is an inherent quality of a proposition. Once, a proposition is logically correct, we can proceed to observe the real world and check if the proposition is right or wrong.

Simple independent propositions can be joined with operators to create a complex one. In this way, a consistent logical picture can be generated.

Now, this thing is not simple, and of course, has a lot of consequences. For example, here's Wittgenstein's view on probability:

Page 45

Probability is a generalization.

It involves a general description of a propositional form. Only in default of certainty do we need probability.

If we are not completely acquainted with a fact, but know something about its form.

Or, consider his view on time:

Page 63

We cannot compare any process with the “passage of time”—there is no such thing—but only with another process (say, with the movement of the chronometer).

Hence the description of the temporal sequence of events is only possible if we support ourselves on another process.

Now, this is a small book, so I don't want to exhaust anyone with a long review. He can be right, he can be wrong. My trust in natural science says sometimes that he is wrong in many things. However, I can't deny his genius. His way of thinking is simply mind-blowing.

[!note] Notes and Highlights
Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus by Ludwig Wittgenstein

[!info] About Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus by Ludwig Wittgenstein
Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus was first published in German in 1921, then translated and published into English in 1922 by C. K. Ogden, with help from F. P. Ramsey, and supervised by Wittgenstein. Tractatus revolves around seven basic propositions and begins to branch off from these propositions to illustrate the relations between words and objects. From this, Wittgenstein applies his connections into the philosophy of language and symbolism to show how the problems of philosophy arise from misuses of language. To Wittgenstein, "Philosophy is not a theory, but an activity." As it is an activity, philosophy must undergo the process of dissolving misuses of logic. Proclaiming philosophy is a matter of logic instead of metaphysics, too, ethics and aesthetics become inexpressible in the form of the spoken propositional logic. From this grounding of philosophy needing to undergo a subversive process of logic, Wittgenstein traverses many subjects from physics and death, the mystical and metaphysical, to the pictorial to imaginary. Even as the only book he published in his lifetime, it stands as one of the most important texts of the 20th century.

Thought Is Your Enemy Conversations With U.G. Krishnamurti by U.G. Krishnamurti

2026-03-04T16:23:19.000Z

This is the sort of book that disturbs you. I sought after this kind of book.

To appreciate Krishnamurti, one has to understand the environment surrounding him. In his time, the Occident felt that the Orient had much to offer in terms of spirituality, esoteric philosophy, etc. Gurus of various calibre, some are surprisingly insightful, and most are captivating preached various theories of spirituality across the Occident. The lure of a 'higher level of existence' is too hard to resist.

Krishnamurti, in his youth, believed this to be possible. Disillusionment came in his middle age and he told some bitter truth Occident needed to hear.

One of the core ideas he asserted is essentially Anatman. However, he probably reinvented the concept (though he recognized the similarities) and disagreed with the religious methods of the Buddhists.

The lack of self/consciousness, in turn, negates the possibility of achieving a higher form of consciousness. He asserted that all the religious ways of achieving such a state are futile.

Anatman, along with a theory about how we feel and think, composed a very sceptical strain of philosophy in his mind. In his view, thought is something quasi-memetic. It spreads by cultural induction and is destructive in nature.

Notes from Thought is Your Enemy

Therefore, he believes, thought cannot be used to solve any human problem.

My Take on This Book

I believe Krishnamurti undertook a very honest take on the worth of spirituality. He was not wrong in any assertion he made regarding this subject.

However, his fixation on what is real and what is not seems a little confused. Our reality is what we perceive through our senses and intellect. This much is true. And this is fine for me.

Some of his scientific understandings are also unsound. It may have tainted his idea about reality too.

[!note] Notes and Highlights
Notes from Thought is Your Enemy

[!info] About Thought is Your Enemy by Uppaluri Gopala Krishnamurti, Antony Paul Frank Noronha
Offers a compilation of discussions between UG Krishnamurti and various questioners in India, Switzerland, Austria, Netherlands and UK. This book aims to show that the religious states of bliss and ecstasy can never be experienced, can never be grasped, contained, much less given expression to, by any man.

The Water Dancer by Ta-Nehisi Coates

2024-10-03T08:10:13.000Z

My direct exposure to the slavery that has been suffered by Africans naturally is none. Even cultural exposure is a remote thing, only through books and movies. The first book I read about slavery is the classic Uncle Tom's Cabin. Now, Uncle Tom's Cabin follows mostly the journey of Uncle Tom and gives us quite a picture of how cruel slavery is. It is focused and intense. To understand the landscape of centuries of slavery, it is not quite enough. Then came some movies and other books. Only after reading Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States I got a grasp of the big picture of slavery in the United States. I read some of Du Bois, and last summer, I read my first Ta-Nehisi Coates, Between the World and Me.

Now, Between the World and Me is a book of a whole other level. The time is of our own, slavery has vanished, but the trauma, distrust and violence didn't. Coates, in a monologue to his son, in the form of a letter expressed the African-American life which I believe no one had done with this much psychological insight.

Naturally, I started reading this book with high expectations. Of course, this book is not as good as the aforementioned one by Coates, but it is a good book. Coates blended a pre-civil war America, the race-wide trauma and melancholy, suffering, faith and redemption and magic realism coherently. Characters are dynamic, details are adequate, and many smaller stories intertwined to tell a bigger story, a story of love, parting, longing, pain and most of all 'remembrance'. Enjoyed the book.

A considerable amount of time is spent in this book on some sort of magic, a means of salvation, prophetic in characteristic. However, I always felt that this magic is just a small detail. The more important part is what triggers this magic, i.e. memory. To be specific, the memory of suffering. Now, what I find amazing is this emphasis on memory, remembering is a common thing in the whole African-American community. Cudjo Lewis (in Barracoon: The Story of the Last Slave) never forgot Africa, he carried Africa within him, neither did Du Bois, nor the faithful coloured Christians, who sang church songs, for generations, in the melody of their long lost motherland. The same communal memory, also allowed the water dancers to do the magic, making them powerful and prophetic.

Next comes, I think, The Underground, an organization where people of all colours and races are trying to free as many slaves as they can. This gave the context to tell more stories and expound on ideas like freedom, revolution, radicalism and all.

I finished the book on a sleepless night. The melancholy seeped into me, and when I finished it, it was no 'happily ever after', but a mix of many things, especially with a dualism of pragmatism and emotion.

The Three-Body Problem by Liu Cixin

2025-05-28T07:34:20.000Z

[!HINT] Impressions
Precision, philosophical, expansive, intricate, not-so-pop science.

The first thing I noticed about this book is the scientific precision, to be specific. The images are only the vehicle of bigger ideas and are minimal in composition. The prose is seldom descriptive of the environment. Tantalising technologies almost play no role in this work. Instead, their implications have been discussed heavily.

Like any sophisticated science-fiction, this one makes philosophy story-able. And that storyscape unfurled over a large expanse of space and time.

[!note] Notes and Highlights
The Three-Body Problem

[!info] About The Three-Body Problem by Liu Cixin
After a spate of apparent suicides among elite scientists, nanotech engineer Wang Miao is asked to infiltrate a secretive cabal. During his investigation, Wang is inducted into a mysterious online game that is the key to humanity's place in the cosmos and the key to the extinction-level threat it now faces.

The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas S. Kuhn

2025-05-28T06:51:57.000Z

An interesting read, a must-read for people in this field, perhaps. The concepts presented here are not much harder to understand, though Kuhn's style is a little confusing.

The central idea of this book is the paradigm shift. Kuhn disputed the much-propagated version of the history of science which narrates the whole story as a gradual progression through refinement. He argued that, in reality, they are not mere refinements. Instead, they are transitions marked by the break of an established view, and adopting a new perspective which is in stark contrast with the previous.

[!note] Notes and Highlights
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas S Kuhn

[!info] About The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas S. Kuhn
A good book may have the power to change the way we see the world, but a great book actually becomes part of our daily consciousness, pervading our thinking to the point that we take it for granted, and we forget how provocative and challenging its ideas once were—and still are. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions is that kind of book. When it was first published in 1962, it was a landmark event in the history and philosophy of science. Fifty years later, it still has many lessons to teach. With The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Kuhn challenged long-standing linear notions of scientific progress, arguing that transformative ideas don’t arise from the day-to-day, gradual process of experimentation and data accumulation but that the revolutions in science, those breakthrough moments that disrupt accepted thinking and offer unanticipated ideas, occur outside of “normal science,” as he called it. Though Kuhn was writing when physics ruled the sciences, his ideas on how scientific revolutions bring order to the anomalies that amass over time in research experiments are still instructive in our biotech age. This new edition of Kuhn’s essential work in the history of science includes an insightful introduction by Ian Hacking, which clarifies terms popularized by Kuhn, including paradigm and incommensurability, and applies Kuhn’s ideas to the science of today. Usefully keyed to the separate sections of the book, Hacking’s introduction provides important background information as well as a contemporary context. Newly designed, with an expanded index, this edition will be eagerly welcomed by the next generation of readers seeking to understand the history of our perspectives on science.

The Souls of Black Folk by W.E.B. Du Bois

2025-05-28T06:42:50.000Z

অ্যাফ্রো-আমেরিকান মানসের, সম্ভবত, সবচেয়ে গুরুত্বপূর্ণ বিশ্লেষণ পাওয়া যাবে এই বইতে। ডু বইজ (ঢং করে ফ্রেঞ্চ কায়দায় দ্যু বোয়া বলতে যাচ্ছিলাম, পরে দেখলাম ডু বইজ সঠিক) অন্য একটা সময়ে বেঁচে ছিলেন, এমন একটা সময় যখন নিজের সন্তানকে ডিপথেরিয়ায় মরতে দেখতে হয় কোনো শ্বেতাঙ্গ চিকিৎসক তার চিকিৎসায় রাজি হয়নি বলে। সেই আমেরিকা আর নেই। তবে নতুন আমেরিকার শেতাঙ্গ মানসে এবং কৃষ্ণাঙ্গ-শ্বেতাঙ্গ সম্পর্কের খুব বেশি উন্নতিও অবশ্য হয়নি। বলা যায়, বইজের অনেক উপসংহার এখনো প্রাসঙ্গিক।^[1]

প্রবন্ধগুলোয়(এবং একটি গল্পে) বিভিন্ন বিষয় এসেছে, সরো সং থেকে শুরু করে নিগ্রো শিক্ষা, নিগ্রো অর্থনীতি, নিগ্রো রাজনীতি(আমি অবমাননাকর অর্থে 'নিগ্রো' ব্যবহার করছি না, বইজের মত করে বলছি), তাঁদের সমস্যা, তাদের বিশ্বাস, শক্তি ও দুর্বলতার বেশ নৈর্ব্যক্তিকভাবে তুলে ধরেছেন।

তবে আমার মর্ম স্পর্শ করেছে সিভিলাইজেশন এবং হিস্ট্রিকে করা বইজের চ্যালেঞ্জটা। প্রথাগত অ্যাংলোফিলিক(বা ইউরোফিলিক) যে সংজ্ঞা সভ্যতার, ইতিহাসের যে ন্যারেটিভ যাকে চ্যালেঞ্জ আজকাল চমস্কি বা হাওয়ার্ড জিন করেন ডু বইজ তা করেছেন, একইরকম কনভিকশন নিয়ে, কিন্তু আরো আগে।

…

এবং, এই বইটা জাস্ট আরেকটা র‍্যান্টিং না। ওভারহেলমিং ইমোশলাল স্টেটমেন্ট না, বরং, খুবই স্কলারলি, প্রায় মেদহীন একটা বই।

[!note] Notes and Highlights
The Souls of Black Folk by W. E. B. Du Bois

[!info] About The Souls of Black Folk by W. E. B. Du Bois
The Souls of Black Folk is a classic work of American literature by W. E. B. Du Bois. It is a seminal work in the history of sociology, and a cornerstone of African-American literary history. To develop this groundbreaking work, Du Bois drew from his own experiences as an African-American in the American society. Outside of its notable relevance in African-American history, The Souls of Black Folk also holds an important place in social science as one of the early works in the field of sociology.

সমসাময়িক আফ্রিকান-আমেরিকানদের ক্রাইসিসের বেশ ভালো একটা ধারণা পাওয়া যায় Between the World and Me বইতে। ↩︎

The Society of the Spectacle by Guy Debord

2025-05-28T06:40:57.000Z

[!caution] Be careful…
I'm not well-versed in Marxist school of thought. Therefore, I can be drastically wrong in my understanding.

Guy Debord was not prophesizing. Quite the contrary. He observed these phenomena in his own time. Our feeling of eerie accuracy of describing our society is due to the fact that the disease is now more acute than ever.

There's no way to deny that symbolism leads the way to abstraction, and abstraction allows us to build broader logical systems. Most of our achievements as a species owes much to that. Money, or state, even most of the philosophies, and ethics are mostly make-believe. But, these are not imaginary either. These are inter-subjectively real.

What Debord labelled as the Spectacles are not merely symbols. They are symbols, which doesn't represent the entity they symbolize. According to Debord these spectacles create a false sense of reality devoid of an underlying layer of synapses to any real interest of life:

It should be noted that this phenomenon is not merely psychological. It is a socio-psycho-economic condition with several feedback loops at work. It creates a tendency to acquire things for status or conformity instead of their intended usability or with complete misunderstanding of what the product really is.

A false sense of ownership follows, where in reality we got sold completely. In the digital world, NFTs are just that.

This commodification and subsequent commodification of culture where we try to conform to the dominant way of life brings in to the existence a new type of salespeople with a much shrewd strategy working behind this clueless class:

Debord didn't have a name for it. We call them the influencers.

What is the way out of it? That I don't really know. This machination is at work for a long time.

The abundance of commodities— that is, the abundance of commodity relations— amounts to nothing more than an augmented survival.

And when even the rebellion is yet another way to conform, we can consider the future pretty bleak.

[!note] Notes and Highlights
The Society of the Spectacle by Guy Debord

[!info] About Society of the Spectacle by Guy Debord, Ken Knabb
The Das Kapital of the 20th century. An essential text, and the main theoretical work of the situationists. Few works of political and cultural theory have been as enduringly provocative. From its publication amid the social upheavals of the 1960's up to the present, the volatile theses of this book have decisively transformed debates on the shape of modernity, capitalism, and everyday life in the late 20th century. This new edition is the Ken Knabb translation. Certainly it has the most "modern" design of all three editions, as well as a short new introduction from the translator.

The Setting Sun by Osamu Dazai

2025-05-28T06:38:45.000Z

Until you finish it, you'll never notice how well-crafted this novel is. That is how good art or literature should be. It will hide the craftsmanship. The narrative was concise, flowing, and captivating.

Another thing not strictly about this book is, that I envy authors who (though being a man) can portray women in such a way that it compels you to think that they know women from the depth of their psychology. I know they don't know everything about women. However, they can create a character that may not be like 'This is how women are' but will be like 'This is also how a woman can be'. Dazai can do this very well.

[!note] Notes and Highlights
The Setting Sun

The Sea by John Banville

2025-05-28T06:25:53.000Z

Review

Every book doesn't impress on the same place although we take it for granted that they impress upon our feelings. The impression of a book on me is often physical. Some books make my brain fuzzy, some are like deep wounds in my groin, and some are like empty little pockets in my chest. The Sea took my body and broke every bone of it, pulled every muscle.

Since it is a novel, the first question you may ask is, "What is the story?" Well, it doesn't matter. Stories happen all the time and every story is as old as time. Who, and most importantly, how the story is being told is what modern literature is concerned about. When Max, the story-teller here, a self-made man, often vain, mostly sensitive, an intellectual born and brought up in the lower segments of the society tells his story candidly, yet always trying to justify his actions, losses and laughs re-interpreted with the hindsight of a well-aged man, but not entirely coherent— that is not a story anymore. That is life. And life in its most raw form cannot be judged but only be accepted. This acceptance comes with a deep complex sensation, not love, not pity, not hope definitely, but like you're drowning, in the sea.

[!note] Notes and Highlights
The Sea by John Banville

[!info] About The Sea by John Banville
First published in 2005, The Sea was critically acclaimed as an extraordinary achievement. It went on to win that year's Man Booker Prize, one of the most hotly contested in the history of the award. When Max Morden returns to the seaside village where he once spent a childhood holiday, he is both escaping from a recent loss and confronting a distant trauma. Mr and Mrs Grace and their twin children Myles and Chloe appeared that long-ago summer as if from another world. He grew to know them intricately, even intimately, and what ensued would haunt him for the rest of his years and shape everything that was to follow.

The Riddler by Paul Dano

2025-05-28T07:33:03.000Z

It takes a village to raise a child
—‌‌‍ African Proverb

This is the only one of the Year One series that features a villain, and I wondered why. The Riddler, as told in this story, is indeed a hero. Not a villain turned good, anti-hero or anything of that sort—a straightforward hero.

A nerd, a sensitive one, a would-be engineer or mathematician— Edward could've been any of these. But, Gotham failed him. Beaten by fate, robbed away of any possible hope Edward lived in sheer agony until Batman appeared and his hope rekindled.

I enjoyed it thoroughly with its well-written story, outstanding artwork and how kind the portrayal of the Riddler is.

[!info] About The Riddler: Year One by Paul Dano
"As depicted in Matt Reeves's hit movie The Batman, the Riddler wasn't simply an amusing eccentric with an affinity for wordplay and baffling clues, but as terrifying a villain as any in the annals of the Dark Knight. How did an unknown forensic accountant uncover the dark secrets of Gotham's underworld and come so close to bringing down the entire city? This collection is an immediate prequel to The Batman-the detailed, disturbing, and at times shocking story of a man with nothing to lose."--

The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro

2023-06-08T08:41:41.000Z

The novel is a serene one in temperament. I liked Ishiguro's prose and enjoyed the book very much.

Stevens, as a character, is a curious one. He is a hollow man, but neither because he lacks intelligence nor sensitivity. His hollowness is a cultivated one. One that he took as a professional quality. Everything happen around him but nothing to him.

[!info] About The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
The Remains of the Day is Kazuo Ishiguro's beautiful and haunting evocation of life between the wars in a Great English House. In the summer of 1956, Stevens, the ageing butler of Darlington Hall, embarks on a leisurely holiday that will take him deep into the countryside and into his past. 'A triumph … This wholly convincing portrait of a human life unweaving before your eyes is inventive and absorbing, by turns funny, absurd and ultimately very moving.' Sunday Times'A dream of a book: a beguiling comedy of manners that evolves almost magically into a profound and heart-rending study of personality, class and culture.' New York TImes Book Review

The Power of Myth by Joseph Campbell

2025-05-28T06:21:11.000Z

Review

The Power of Myth বইটি বস্তুত বিল ময়ার্স নামক একজন জনপ্রিয় সাংবাদিকের কাছে জোসেফ ক্যাম্পবেলের সাক্ষাৎকারের লিখিত রূপ বলা চলে। বিল ময়ার্স আমাদের দেশের সমকালীন সাংবাদিকদের মত নন তা আমি বইটি পড়ে বুঝতে পেরেছি। যথেষ্ট জ্ঞানী একজন মানুষ। অপরপক্ষে জোসেফ ক্যাম্পবেল অ্যাকাডেমিশিয়ান। জুটিটা ভালো ছিল।

ক্যাম্পবেল কাহন

বইটা পড়তে শুরুতে কিছু খটকা লাগছিল আমার। ব্যক্তিগত জীবনে ঈশ্বর আমার কাছে অস্তিত্বহীন, ধর্ম অবান্তর। বইটা পড়ে ক্যাম্পবেলকে আমার কেমন মনে হয়েছে সেটা প্রাসঙ্গিক বলে মনে করি। কেন করি তা ক্রমশ প্রকাশ্য।

ক্যাম্পবেল যুক্তিবাদী। তবে ঈশ্বরে তাঁর বিশ্বাস আছে। তিনি বড় হয়েছেন ক্যাথলিক হিসেবে। তার পড়াশোনার বিষয়বস্তু তুলনামূলক পুরাণতত্ব (Comparative Mythology)। যেসব পুরাণ আজ পর্যন্ত টিকে আছে তার সামান্যই মৌলিক। তাই বিভিন্ন পুরাণের তুলনামূলক বিচারের সাথে সাথে পুরাণকে আক্ষরিক অর্থে নেওয়ার বদলে প্রতিকী অর্থে নেওয়া ক্যাম্পবেলের একটা অভ্যাসে দাঁড়িয়ে যায়। ফলত, তাঁর ঈশ্বর ঠিক ধর্মগ্রন্থের ঈশ্বর নয় এবং বিজ্ঞানের সাথেও সাংঘর্ষিক নয়। একথা মনে রাখা প্রয়োজন, বিজ্ঞানের জগতটা অনেকটা এগিয়েছে, তাঁর সময়ে তিনি অনেককিছু জানতেন না বা অন্যভাবে জানতেন। বস্তুত, তিনি অবিশ্বাস ও বিশ্বাসের সীমানায় বিশ্বাসের পাশে দাঁড়ানো খানিকটা বিশ্বাসী, খানিকটা প্রকৃতিবাদী একজন মানুষ।

বই প্রসঙ্গে

প্রথমত, এই বইটি থেকে বৈজ্ঞানিক সত্যতা আশা করা ঠিক হবে না। এটি ভাববাদ ঘেঁষা অনেকভাবেই। তাছাড়া, আমাদের কাছে ধর্ম আর পুরাণ পরিপূরক। ধর্ম বস্তুত একটি কাঠামো, জীবনাচরণ। কিছু ব্রত, কিছু পালনীয় মিলে তৈরী হয়। মিথ বা পুরাণে আমরা পাই সেই ব্রত বা নিয়মের পিছনের গল্প। ধর্মে প্রায়শই পৌরাণিক গল্পের কারণের চেয়ে কাজটা প্রাধান্য পায়। ওইখানেই অন্ধতা ও কূপমণ্ডুকতার শুরু। এই বইতে ধর্মকে বিশেষ পাত্তা দেওয়া হয়নি। বইটিতে পুরাণের তাৎপর্য, এর চিরায়ত গুণাবলি, দার্শনিক ও মনস্তাত্ত্বিক ভিত্তি নিয়ে কথা বলা হয়েছে। আছে প্রচুর পৌরাণিক গল্প। ক্যাম্পবেলের ভাষা চমৎকার, আগ্রহ ধরে রাখে অবলীলায়। ইউরোপীয়, আফ্রিকান ও এশীয়, একেশ্বরবাদী, বহুত্ববাদী ও প্রকৃতিবাদী, হরেকরকম পুরাণের সাদৃশ্য ও বৈসাদৃশ্য, অন্তর্নিহিত দর্শন উঠে এসেছে বইটিতে।

তার দীর্ঘজীবনের পুরাণ সম্পর্কিত পড়াশোনা তার নিজস্ব জীবনদর্শনে বড়সড় প্রভাব ফেলেছে। সেই দর্শনকে তিনি নিজের ভাষায় বলেন, “Follow your bliss.” ধর্মীয় সংস্কারের বিশ্বাসের তুলনায় তার দর্শন মৌলিকভাবে আলাদা। তার বিশ্বাস সহনশীল কিন্তু ব্যক্তিস্বাতন্ত্র্যের প্রশ্নে অনমনীয়। প্রকৃতির সাথে একাত্মতা এবং পৃথিবীর দুঃখ-বেদনা মেনে নিয়ে বেঁচে থাকা, ভালোবাসা তার দর্শনের অংশ। ক্যাম্পবেলের চরিত্রের বয়ানের প্রাসঙ্গিকতা এখানেই। বস্তুত তার দর্শন ও তার জীবনাচরণের সম্পর্ক ঘনিষ্ঠ। ধর্ম এবং এর হাজারো নিয়ম থেকে মুক্ত হয়ে তিনি পুরাণকে প্রতিকী অর্থে নিয়ে তা থেকে জীবনদর্শন ও নৈতিকতার কাঠামো তৈরী করেছেন। এজন্যই বৈজ্ঞানিক সত্যগুলোকে মেনে নিতেও তার দ্বিধা হয়নি।

শেষ কথা

সব মিলিয়ে, অন্তত আমার ক্ষেত্রে বইটি চিন্তার খোরাক ছিল। ছিল দীর্ঘজীবন কাটিয়ে আসা একজন মানুষের অভিজ্ঞ চোখে অন্য মানুষের ভেতরটা দেখার একটা সুযোগ। মানুষের জীবন ও সভ্যতার চিরায়ত কিছু প্রশ্নের উত্তরে আমি ক্যাম্পবেলের সাথে একমত। পার্থক্য এই যে আমাদের পথ আলাদা।

[!note] Notes and Highlights
The Power of Myth

[!info] About The Power of Myth by Joseph Campbell, Bill Moyers
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • An extraordinary book that reveals how the themes and symbols of ancient narratives continue to bring meaning to birth, death, love, and war. The Power of Myth launched an extraordinary resurgence of interest in Joseph Campbell and his work. A preeminent scholar, writer, and teacher, he has had a profound influence on millions of people—including Star Wars creator George Lucas. To Campbell, mythology was the “song of the universe, the music of the spheres.” With Bill Moyers, one of America’s most prominent journalists, as his thoughtful and engaging interviewer, The Power of Myth touches on subjects from modern marriage to virgin births, from Jesus to John Lennon, offering a brilliant combination of intelligence and wit. From stories of the gods and goddesses of ancient Greece and Rome to traditions of Buddhism, Hinduism and Christianity, a broad array of themes are considered that together identify the universality of human experience across time and culture. An impeccable match of interviewer and subject, a timeless distillation of Campbell’s work, The Power of Myth continues to exert a profound influence on our culture.

The Poetry of Zen by Sam Hamill

2025-05-28T06:20:32.000Z

Sam Hamill is a great translator. He has the necessary insight to translate from asian languages. I noticed that in his anthology of Bashō's works. In this book, I found Seaton excellent. Really enjoyed the translations.

[!note] Notes and Highlights
The Poetry of Zen by Sam Hamill, J.P. Seaton

[!info] About The Poetry of Zen by Sam Hamill & J.P. Seaton
A Zen poem is nothing other than an expression of the enlightened mind, a handful of simple words that disappear beneath the moment of insight to which it bears witness. Poetry has been an essential aid to Zen Buddhist practice from the dawn of Zen—and Zen has also had a profound influence on the secular poetry of the countries in which it has flourished. Here, two of America’s most renowned poets and translators provide an overview of Zen poetry from China and Japan in all its rich variety, from the earliest days to the twentieth century. Included are works by Lao Tzu, Han Shan, Li Po, Dogen Kigen, Saigyo, Basho, Chiao Jan, Yuan Mei, Ryokan, and many others. Hamill and Seaton provide illuminating introductions to the Chinese and Japanese sections that set the poets and their work in historical and philosophical context. Short biographies of the poets are also included.

The Noble Eightfold Path by Bhikkhu Bodhi

2025-05-28T06:19:42.000Z

[!note] Notes and Highlights
The Noble Eightfold Path by Bhikkhu Bodhi

[!info] About The Noble Eightfold Path by Bhikkhu Bodhi
The Buddha's teachings center around two basic principles. One is the Four Noble Truths, in which the Buddha diagnoses the problem of suffering and indicates the treatment necessary to remedy this problem. The other is the Noble Eightfold Path, the practical discipline he prescribes to uproot and eliminate the deep underlying causes of suffering. The present book offers, in simple and clear language, a concise yet thorough explanation of the Eightfold Path. Basing himself solidly upon the Buddha's own words, the author examines each factor of the path to determine exactly what it implies in the way of practical training. Finally, in the concluding chapter, he shows how all eight factors of the path function in unison to bring about the realization of the Buddhist goal: enlightenment and liberation.

The Ministry of Truth by Dorian Lynskey

2025-05-28T06:17:26.000Z

This is a book about a book. Not any random book, but the 1984, and the writer George Orwell himself. Both of them are phenomenally famous, ambiguous, and misinterpreted.

If one loses sight of Orwell's politics (he was a Democratic Socialist), his background, struggles, and disillusionment (Homage to Catalonia is what one needs), it is natural to think that it was a pro-capitalist book to undermine socialism.

This book deals with this misconception and many others. A chronicle that starts from conceiving the book to finishing it, and then, the ever-transforming socio-cultural effect it had on his time, and times after that. To make his point, Minsky did his homework well.

[!note] Notes and Highlights
The Ministry of Truth, The Biography of George Orwell's 1984

[!info] About The Ministry of Truth by Dorian Lynskey
In The Ministry of Truth, Dorian Lynskey charts the life of George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four: one of the most influential books of the 20th Century, a perennial bestseller, and a work that remains more relevant than ever in today's tumultuous world.

The Message by Ta-Nehisi Coates

2026-03-04T16:22:39.000Z

The Message by Ta-Nehisi Coates

Literature is anguish.

It is also the fourth wall of a comic panel. It is also the sky beyond the roof, a ship deck in a storm. It is a hammer that must put a blow right into our self-assurance. And, the Ta-Nehisi Coates I have read do just that.

About a year back, I met a middle-aged person. The now ongoing Palestine conflict has just started back then. That person believed that whatever was happening to civilian Palestinians was happening for good. He was an Islamophobe of particular brutality.

I know he was bullied for being an atheist in a Muslim-majority country; I know drug abuse also contributed to this bitterness. But, mostly, it was propaganda. It was a lack of critical thinking. It was the lack of knowledge— of human cruelty that found its outlet in power. Power makes everyone an oppressor without failure.

Ta-Nehisi Coates made a point of that. I can try, too. But, I know very well, being a minority in many axes myself, no one will understand, except the oppressed.

In the end, this book saddened me. Because I know humanity is beyond saving.

[!note] Notes and Highlights
The Message by Ta-Nehisi Coates

[!info] About The Message by Ta-Nehisi Coates
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • The #1 New York Times bestselling author of Between the World and Me journeys to three resonant sites of conflict to explore how the stories we tell—and the ones we don’t—shape our realities. “[Coates] is intellectually fearless … unshackled by political or racial ideology, humane in his judgments, respectful of facts, acutely aware of the difference between what is knowable and what is not.”—The New Yorker Ta-Nehisi Coates originally set out to write a book about writing, in the tradition of Orwell’s classic “Politics and the English Language,” but found himself grappling with deeper questions about how our stories—our reporting and imaginative narratives and mythmaking—expose and distort our realities. In the first of the book’s three intertwining essays, Coates, on his first trip to Africa, finds himself in two places at once: in Dakar, a modern city in Senegal, and in a mythic kingdom in his mind. Then he takes readers along with him to Columbia, South Carolina, where he reports on his own book’s banning, but also explores the larger backlash to the nation’s recent reckoning with history and the deeply rooted American mythology so visible in that city—a capital of the Confederacy with statues of segregationists looming over its public squares. Finally, in the book’s longest section, Coates travels to Palestine, where he sees with devastating clarity how easily we are misled by nationalist narratives, and the tragedy that lies in the clash between the stories we tell and the reality of life on the ground. Written at a dramatic moment in American and global life, this work from one of the country’s most important writers is about the urgent need to untangle ourselves from the destructive myths that shape our world—and our own souls—and embrace the liberating power of even the most difficult truths.

The Lord of the Rings by John Ronald Reuel Tolkien

2025-05-29T10:34:06.000Z

I was confused about whether I should start this mammoth of a work. For, I am a grown up now and the innocence of childhood withered away from me. I was not sure if I will enjoy this.

I plunged in, and what a great decision that was! It is in the highest tier of high-fantasies and complete with lores, myths mingled forgotten histories, songs, and wisdom— which in present may seem like folly but will stand the test of time spanning millennia. One of those wisdom Gandalf confided to Frodo:

The Lord of the Rings

This conversation sets the mood of this book's protagonists. The sanctity of life has been established. And, when they started their journey to save people of middle-earth it cannot be done through violence uncalled-for.

Another thing I have noticed that Denethor and Faramir have been quite downplayed in the movie. But movie is rather short and to pack a proper punch Denethor may have to be more typical of a villain. But, Faramir… it is nothing like the book's Faramir. That's a shame.

I really liked the Ents, and in particularly, the idea of the language Old Entish. Treebeard explained it like this:

This is marvellous! That is the reason they don't make songs, for example, in the occasions when they remember their long-lost Entwives. Instead, they just chant their names.

The Rings of Power

The rings of power are power made corporeal, tangible. They are not abstract symbol any more. Here are some aspects I noticed. All the rings doesn't contain much power in themselves. Instead, they allow magnifying a person's hunger for power at great cost. In that effect, for Frodo and Bilbo it was merely a way to become invisible. For more powerful one's it can do much for. That is the reason Gandalf refuses to even touch the ring and Galadriel avoided corruption with much willpower.

So, the rings corrupt and the One Ring corrupts more. For it contains much of Sauron's power and intensity. This corruption is analogous in many ways to the corrupting ability of power in the real world around us. Indeed, it requires no magic to corrupt. The power itself, magical or not, is able to corrupt anyone.

This corruption in question is often subtle. For example, take Boromir. Boromir wanted the ring for greater good. But it was quite obvious that eventually it may have meant worse for the middle-earth.

But, Frodo was not ambitious. He was not seeking for fame or glory. Indeed, throughout the journey he wanted to destroy that ring, that power. But if we follow him carefully, we can see that under the guises of good-natured sense of duty, he was slipping into covetousness akin to Gollum and guarded the ring jealously. And, in the very end, he was unable to throw away the ring. This also, we often see in the real world. There are people who want power for power's sake. They often live austere, even exemplary life, and doesn't use the power to gain other things.

Power, over the time wear us, tire us, and eventually make us its slave:

[!note] Notes and Highlights
The Lord of the Rings

[!info] About The Lord of the Rings by John Ronald Reuel Tolkien
This work has been labelled both a heroic romance and a classic of fantasy fiction. By turns comic and homely, epic and diabolic, the narrative moves through countless changes of scene and character in an imaginary world of great detail. This one-volume reset edition contains new maps.

The Hero With a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell

2025-05-27T15:42:54.000Z

As the name suggests, this book is a synopsis of the basic personality of a hero (and the myth revolving around him) who can be identified across various cultures and mythologies with astonishing similarities. This is also a book of the idea of mythology how Joseph Campbell has seen.

Now, though Joseph Campbell himself is a believer, he can’t help but notice that the old world of gods and demons, magic and might is falling and a new era of science and technology has emerged. But as he justifiably lamented in The Power of Myth, this new age had no powerful myth to support human through the generic darkness and existential crisis that almost everyone goes through. Nevertheless, this is not an apologist book to justify religion or faith, but a scholarly and pleasing journey through the world of myth.

In this book, Campbell used ideas from psychoanalysis heavily to predict the possible origin of myths. The uncanny similarities between many neurotics’ dreams have compelled him to conclude that:

Dream is the personalized myth, myth the depersonalized dream;

Or, in another place:

Mythology, in other words, is psychology misread as biography; history, and cosmology.

Now, in this scope, in this domain of subjective reality and experience, the historical truth behind a myth is irrelevant, religion is somewhat less necessary.

Mythology, the way he has seen, is not something that expresses the truth or the ultimate. It simply gives a vibe of that. Taking these symbols literally only diminish their meaning:

Mistaking a vehicle for its tenor may lead to the spilling not only of valueless ink, but of valuable blood.

And by referencing myths from both very smaller tribal population to mega-religions he has indeed well-established the point.

At the end, he predicted the decline of the world of myth and new possibilities. The idea he held of about the modern way of a meaningful life is more or less a rephrasing of individualism:

And so every one of us shares the supreme ordeal—carries the cross of the redeemer—not in the bright moments of his tribe’s great victories, but in the silences of his personal despair.

Now, many of the things he said may not have the same degree of truth it had once. Psychology and Neurology had walked a long way after his time and many ideas he may have believed are not true. But wise men are wise because they broke through the barrier of thoughts of their time, but not for some absolute truths they’ve spoken. Nevertheless, the book is an amazing read. His storytelling and knowledge of myth are awe-striking. Enjoyed the book, totally.

[!note] Notes and Highlights
The Hero With a Thousand Faces

[!info] About The Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell
Discusses the universal legend of the hero in world mythology, focusing on the motif of the hero's journey through adventure and transformation.

The Handmaid_s Tale by Margaret Atwood

2026-03-09T08:47:43.000Z

While I was reading this book, I was immersed in the story. Great writers, I think, craft so well that they completely hide their craftsmanship, allowing us to see the creation only. They don't show off how intelligent they are.

Now, after finishing it, after letting all of it sink in my mind, I can see what a great writer she is. She has a profound knowledge of dystopian society. What sort of situation gives birth to a dystopia, how they control, manipulate, kill, invoke obedience and above all manufacturer mass consent for all of their actions.

This book is also important because of its authentic feminine voice and feminist nature.

[!info] About The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
The Handmaid's Tale is a futuristic dystopian novel by Canadian author Margaret Atwood published in 1985. It is set in a near-future New England in a patriarchal, totalitarian theonomic state known as the Republic of Gilead, which has overthrown the United States government.

The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins

2025-05-27T15:41:33.000Z

Review

লোকটা অনেক গালাগালি খায় কেননা মানুষ বিশ্বাসের সাথে বাস্তবতা মেলাতে না পারলে বাস্তবতাকে গালাগালি করে। তা বাদে, আমার চোখে খুব ধৈর্যশীল এবং সিমপ্যাথেটিক মানুষ বলে মনে হয়েছে ডকিন্সকে। বইটা চমৎকার, অনেককিছু জানতাম, অনেককিছুই জানতাম না। হয়ত লেখার গাঁথুনিতে একটু দুর্বল ডকিন্স, অন্ততঃ সেগানের মত শক্তিশালী নন। কিন্তু বৈজ্ঞানিক সত্য তো সত্যই। এর কাব্যিক না হলেও চলে। কাব্যিকতা উপরি পাওনা।

[!note] Notes and Highlights
The God Delusion

[!info] About The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins
The God Delusion caused a sensation when it was published in 2006. Within weeks it became the most hotly debated topic, with Dawkins himself branded as either saint or sinner for presenting his hard-hitting, impassioned rebuttal of religion of all types. His argument could hardly be more topical. While Europe is becoming increasingly secularized, the rise of religious fundamentalism, whether in the Middle East or Middle America, is dramatically and dangerously dividing opinion around the world. In America, and elsewhere, a vigorous dispute between 'intelligent design' and Darwinism is seriously undermining and restricting the teaching of science. In many countries religious dogma from medieval times still serves to abuse basic human rights such as women's and gay rights. And all from a belief in a God whose existence lacks evidence of any kind. Dawkins attacks God in all his forms. He eviscerates the major arguments for religion and demonstrates the supreme improbability of a supreme being. He shows how religion fuels war, foments bigotry and abuses children. The God Delusion is a brilliantly argued, fascinating polemic that will be required reading for anyone interested in this most emotional and important subject.

The Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way

2025-05-27T15:40:36.000Z

The charm and the fault^[1] of Buddhism lie in its philosophical bend. This aspect makes it almost inaccessible to an untrained person.

This is probably the most important Buddhist-philosophical work ever produced. The logical rigor it shows makes it a formidable standard that is very hard to meet.

The structure is quite different from western philosophical texts. It was written in verse. Understanding this is not easy. However, Garfield's extensive commentary made it much more digestible.

Most of the religions we know, and were prevalent in Nāgārjuna's time, are essentialist. The concept of the soul, an all-transcending God, is directed to some essence, some reality more real than the one we perceive. The lure was strong. So strong that many Buddhist ideas got interpreted in the essentialist light.

This is a treaty against such an essentialist interpretation. Case by case, he tried to destroy the essentialist arguments by using Reductio ad absurdum. He elevated it to state-of-the-art.

One strategy was to start the argument from dependant origination, which can be considered an axiom in this context since everyone agrees on it. Then he sought to show the emptiness of the phenomena like self, dhamma, nirvana, and virtually everything. Some schools of Buddhist philosophy considered these (except for self) to be essential.

Another strategy worked by showing how essentialism is directly in discord with the natural world, dependant origination, and doctrine of impermanence:

If there is essence, the whole world
Will be unarising, unceasing,
And static. The entire phenomenal world
Would be immutable.

In the process of refuting essentialism, slowly, he churned a much clearer form of metaphysics deduced from the core Buddhist metaphysics known then.

[!note] Notes and Highlights
The Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way

[!info] About The Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way: Nagarjuna's Mulamadhyamakakarika by Nagarjuna
For nearly two thousand years Buddhism has mystified and captivated both lay people and scholars alike. Seen alternately as a path to spiritual enlightenment, a system of ethical and moral rubrics, a cultural tradition, or simply a graceful philosophy of life, Buddhism has produced impassioned followers the world over. The Buddhist saint Nagarjuna, who lived in South India in approximately the first century CE, is undoubtedly the most important, influential, and widely studied Mahayana Buddhist philosopher. His many works include texts addressed to lay audiences, letters of advice to kings, and a set of penetrating metaphysical and epistemological treatises. His greatest philosophical work, the Mulamadhyamikakarika--read and studied by philosophers in all major Buddhist schools of Tibet, China, Japan, and Korea--is one of the most influential works in the history of Indian philosophy. Now, in The Foundations of the Philosophy of the Middle Way, Jay L. Garfield provides a clear and eminently readable translation of Nagarjuna's seminal work, offering those with little of no prior knowledge of Buddhist philosophy a view into the profound logic of the Mulamadhyamikakarika. Translated from the Tibetan, the tradition through which Nagarjuna's philosophical influence has largely been transmitted, Garfield presents a superb translation of Mulamadhyamikakarika in its entirety. Illuminating the systematic character of Nagarjuna's reasoning, as well as the works profundity, Garfield shows how Nagarjuna develops his doctrine that all phenomena are empty of inherent existence and essenceless. But, he argues, phenomena nonetheless exist conventionaly, and that indeed conventional existence and ultimate emptiness are in fact the same thing. This represents the radical understanding of the Buddhist doctrine of the two truths, or two levels of reality. Nagarjuna reinterprets all of Buddhist metaphysics and epistemology through this analytical framework--"a systematic and beautifully elegant philosophical dissection of reality." In turn, Garfield goes on to offer the only verse-by-verse commentary based upon the Indo-Tibetan Prasangika-Madhyamika reading of Nagarjuna, the school most influential in the development of Mahayana philosophy in Tibet, China, Korea, and Japan. Written specifically for the Western reader, the commentary explains Nagarjuna's positions and arguments in the language of Western metaphysics and epistemology, and connects Nagarjuna's concerns tho those of Western philosophers such as Sextus, Hume, and Wittgenstein. A fascinating and accessible translation of the foundational text for all Mahayana Buddhism text, The Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way will enlighten all those in search of the essence of reality.

As a missionary religion. ↩︎

The Denial of Death by Ernest Becker

2025-05-27T15:39:05.000Z

Review

Thought Provoking.

কিন্তু আমি Becker এবং তিনি যাদের উদ্ধৃতি দিয়েছেন প্রায়শই, সেই Yung, Rank, Kierkegaard প্রমুখের অবজার্ভেশনের তারিফ করছি বটে কিন্তু কনক্লুশনগুলো মেনে নিতে পারছি না।

তবে মনে রাখা উচিত, বইটা বেশ পুরনো। এরমধ্যে আমরা নিউরোসায়েন্স, সাইকোলজি, জেনেটিক্সে অনেকটা এগিয়েছি। যে স্টোয়িক ও পজিটিভ নিহিলিস্ট ভাবধারা আজকাল জনপ্রিয় হচ্ছে তা হয়ত তখনও অতটা জনপ্রিয় হয়নি। বাঁচার জন্য, স্যানিটি রক্ষার জন্য জীবনের যে একটা 'অর্থ' থাকতেই হবে এমন একটা ধারণা এই বইটার ভিত্তি। আরেকটা জিনিস অ্যাজিউম করে নিয়েছেন বেকার যে ইভোল্যুশন আমাদের কিছু ক্ষমতা 'দিয়েছে', এমনটা যেন ইভোল্যুশের স্বাধীন ইচ্ছা আছে। ইভোল্যুশন, আমরা যতদূর জানি, অন্ধ।

বেকার সাহেব (এবং অটো র‍্যাঙ্কও) মনে করেন, শেষমেশ একজন ঈশ্বর এবং ধর্ম প্রয়োজন পড়ে মানুষের এক্সিস্টেনশিয়াল ক্রাইসিস থেকে মুক্তি পেতে। মূল যুক্তিটা হচ্ছে কোনো একটি হায়ার অথোরিটির এনডোর্সমেন্ট ছাড়া মানুষ চলতে পারে না। শেষ পয়েন্টটিতে আমি খানিকটা একমত, তবে এরজন্য ধর্ম প্রয়োজন (আমরা সাধারণত ধর্ম বলতে যা বুঝি সেই ধর্মের কথা বলছি না, বরং হারিরি ধর্মের যে সংজ্ঞা দিয়েছেন তার বইতে, অর্থাৎ মোটাদাগে, "যা আমাদের এথিকসকে অথরিটি দেয় তাই ধর্ম")। তা হতে পারে লিবারালিজম, লিবারালিজমের সংকট কী হতে পারে তা এখানে গুরুত্বপূর্ণ না। আমি শুধু বলতে চাচ্ছি ঈশ্বরবিহীন নতুন 'ধর্ম'গুলো সে জায়গায় আসতে পারে, এবং তা হচ্ছেও।

সাইকোঅ্যানালাইসিস আজ অব্দি বোধহয় শুদ্ধ বিজ্ঞান না। এর অনেকটাই মানুষের সাবজেক্টিভ রিয়্যালিটির ওপর নির্ভরশীল এবং সাবজেক্টিভ রিয়্যালিটির এই অংশগুলো যথার্থভাবে ট্রান্সফার বা প্রকাশের বিশেষ সুবিধা মানুষের নেই। কনভার্সেশনই শেষ ভরসা। অনেকটাই অন্ধের হাতি দেখার মত অবস্থা। সেসব মেনে নিলে সাইকোঅ্যালাইসিসের রথী-মহারথীরা যথার্থই জিনিয়াস। কিন্তু শুদ্ধ বিজ্ঞান হতে হয়ত অনেকটা দূর যেতে হবে।

[!note] Notes and Highlights
The Denial of Death

[!info] About The Denial of Death by Ernest Becker
Drawing from religion and the human sciences, particularly psychology after Freud, the author attempts to demonstrate that the fear of death is man's central concern

The Craft of Dying by Lyn H. Lofland

2026-02-11T16:40:53.000Z

What Is the Book Is About?

That is basically the justification of Thanatology, the subject of this book. The writer covered a lot of her contemporary ground— briefly, but with some interesting insights.

The first of these insights, expounded well in Part I, is about the change of modes and methods of death and dying in modern, technologically advanced Western societies, and how it led us to a prolonged dying phase.

This change leads to changes regarding how a dying person (and people related) can choose (and the limitations on such choices by socio-economic conditions) to die, or live for the remaining of the days.

In Part III, she gave an overview of the then-contemporary movement to help people to die happily.

My Takeaway

The writing is very much descriptive in nature. She tried her best to cast an impartial gaze on the situation. The subject, however, is a cross-school one. This adds some complexity.

Her exploration of modern craft of dying in Part I & Part II were sharp and to the point. It's a must-read, along with The Denial of Death by Earnest Becker, to understand the modern ideas about the death.

However, her portrayal of the happy death movement in the Part III shows the dismal state of affairs on that front. No modern person in there right mind can take Kübler-Ross's “Research” seriously:

This is a deal-breaker for me. Of course, Lofland is mostly a chronicler here, and she had her doubts too.

If I follow the advice of one such movement, I'll have a very unhappy death for sure. Instead, I would like to assume a dying role for me which is based on knowledge and emotional understanding of what it means to be dead:

I propose you die, you die with a complete psychological image of what death really is, what it means to be dead. Die in every exhalation, like you live while you breathe in. Die slowly while nature cushions your footprints with grasses and daisies. Die a thousand times when you perform eulogies with sincerity. Die while the present passes away to the past, and live in the future that just came to be present. Stretch the inevitable 'full stop at the end' to a tapestry of fireflies. Die till you die completely, and there is no more death, there is no 'no', and no 'more' for you.

[!note] Notes and Highlights
The Craft of Dying

[!info] About The Craft of Dying, 40th Anniversary Edition by Lyn H. Lofland
The fortieth-anniversary edition of a classic and prescient work on death and dying. Much of today's literature on end-of-life issues overlooks the importance of 1970s social movements in shaping our understanding of death, dying, and the dead body. This anniversary edition of Lyn Lofland's The Craft of Dying begins to repair this omission. Lofland identifies, critiques, and theorizes 1970s death movements, including the Death Acceptance Movement, the Death with Dignity Movement, and the Natural Death movement. All these groups attempted to transform death into a “positive experience,” anticipating much of today's death and dying activism. Lofland turns a sociologist's eye on the era's increased interest in death, considering, among other things, the components of the modern “face of death” and the “craft of dying,” the construction of a dying role or identity by those who are dying, and the constraints on their freedom to do this. Lofland wrote just before the AIDS epidemic transformed the landscape of death and dying in the West; many of the trends she identified became the building blocks of AIDS activism in the 1980s and 1990s. The Craft of Dying will help readers understand contemporary death social movements' historical relationships to questions of race, class, gender, and sexuality and is a book that everyone interested in end-of-life politics should read.

The Conference of the Birds by Attar

2025-05-28T07:35:19.000Z

A seminal text of the Sufi literature. It influenced both thinkers and the writing styles of subsequent generations. As far as Sufi spiritualism is concerned, the content is timeless.

So, what is this book about? In Attar's words:

The Conference of the Birds by Attar

This book is all madness.
Reason is alien to these pages.
Not until the soul breathes in
the fragrance of its own lunacy
can it stop being a stranger to itself.

It is difficult to appreciate the accuracy of this statement without reading the book first.

Sufism is all about love. Unconditional, unfailing, love and submission. This brought the practitioners into broad daylight from a narrow tunnel of organised religion. Since they reject anything that is against love, they reject hatred and welcome even critical thinking to a certain extent.

The genius of Attar is manyfold. This is not a philosophical treaty. Philosophy was unimportant (mocked even) to Attar. What he wanted to convey was the journey of a Sufi (consisting of Fanā and Baqā) and its emotional import. He did it with very accessible parables. Some of them are even borderline heresy, but all of them are beautiful.

It is amazing how well this book conveys the deeper meanings of Sufism that many weighty discourses cannot do.

[!note] Notes and Highlights
The Conference of the Birds by Attar

[!info] About The Conference of the Birds by Attar
“These lofty words are an antidote for anyone sickened by extremism's poison.” Considered by Rumi to be “the master” of Sufi mystic poetry, Attar is best known for this epic poem, a magnificent allegorical tale about the soul’s search for meaning. He recounts the perilous journey of the world’s birds to the faraway peaks of Mount Qaf in search of the mysterious Simorgh, their king. Attar’s beguiling anecdotes and humor intermingle the sublime with the mundane, the spiritual with the worldly, while his poem models the soul’s escape from the mind’s rational embrace. Sholeh Wolpé re-creates for modern readers the beauty and timeless wisdom of the original Persian, in contemporary English verse and poetic prose.

The Book of Disquiet_ The Complete Edition by Fernando Pessoa

2025-05-27T15:33:02.000Z

I held the belief that one perfect work is enough to give an artist the taste of immortality, after death, if not while alive. The Book of Disquiet made me rethink my stance. Even an unfinished book, a jumble of notes rather, can do full justice to its name and can place the author among the best of the best.

So, what kind of book is it? It is NOT an autobiography. At least not in the sense we use this term. It is an autobiography of a Heteronym^[1] of Pessoa. Then also, it is not an autobiography as we know. It is, as aptly put in the preface, a biography without events.

Without events, but not without thoughts or feelings. Pessoa is a man of both the 19th and 20th centuries. Myths are just stories, gods are long dead. A modern man, thinking man, could not believe in God any more. Yet, nothing is there to replace God with. Morality, ethics, everything was in dire need of redefinition. This void, along with long-standing unanswered questions in philosophy, blended into a disquieting lament. Anguish, profound anguish, but not for happiness but freedom from even the need for happiness.

Most of the entries are introspective. Only a handful of them deals with the exterior and even in those entries exterior is only a backdrop. All of them are monologues, are streams of consciousness flowing naturally, beautifully. And it is disquieting. Disquieting to the point where you might question the life you lived by far, the reality as we know it, and all the values handed down to us.

[!note] Notes and Highlights
The Book of Disquiet by Fernando Pessoa

[!info] About The Book of Disquiet by Fernando Pessoa
The Book of Disquiet is one of the great literary works of the twentieth century. Written over the course of Fernando Pessoa's life, it was first published in 1982, pieced together from the thousands of individual manuscript pages left behind by Pessoa after his death in 1935. Now this fragmentary modernist masterpiece appears in a major new edition that unites Margaret Jull Costa's celebrated translation with the most complete version of the text ever produced. It is presented here, for the first time in English, by order of original composition, and accompanied by facsimiles of the original manuscript.Narrated principally by an assistant bookkeeper named Bernardo Soares - an alias of sorts for Pessoa himself - The Book of Disquiet is 'the autobiobraphy of someone who never existed', a mosaic of dreams, of hope and despair; a hymn to the streets and cafés of 1930s Lisbon, and an extraordinary record of the inner life of one of the century's most important writers. This new edition represents the most complete vision of Pessoa's genius.

A heteronym is not only a character, but it is also a more intimate thing, an extension of Pessoa. ↩︎

The Anarchy_ The East India Company, Corporate Violence, and the Pillage of an Empire by William Dal

2025-05-27T15:31:27.000Z

গুরুজনেরা বলেন ইতিহাস থেকে শিক্ষা নিতে। তারপর ইতিহাস বইটি কেটে-ছেঁটে এমন এক পর্যায়ে আনা হয় যেখান থেকে গুরুজনেরা যা শিক্ষা দিতে চান সেইটুকুই শুধু পাওয়া যায়। খুব বেশি ইতিহাস বই নেই যাকে আমরা ডালরিম্পল সাহেবের মত 'হিস্ট্রি অব অ্যাডমোনিশান' বলতে পারি।

তো, ইতিহাস আমাদের কী শিক্ষা দেয়? প্রথম শিক্ষা মনে হয় নেড়া অসীম সংখ্যকবার বেলতলায় যায়। তবে ইতিহাস যা আসলে কিছু পাদটীকাসহ একটি খুনের ফর্দ, তার সবচেয়ে গভীর শিক্ষাটি বোধহয় টিপু সুলতানের পরাজয়ের যুদ্ধের এই অফিসার থেকে পাওয়া যায়:

আজকের দিনে দাঁড়িয়ে তাই স্বচ্ছল, প্রাচুর্যের বাংলা তাই অদ্ভুত আষাঢ়ে গল্পের মত সময়। অথচ, মুঘলদের আমলে সবচেয়ে বেশি কর দিত এই বাংলা-ই।

এ গেলো আমার আজীবন যত ইতিহাস পাঠ করা, তার সাধারণ শিক্ষার কথা। এবার বইয়ের কথায় আসি। বইটির বিষয়বস্তু ইস্ট ইন্ডিয়া কাম্পানি। কাম্পানি এইদেশে এসেছিল ব্যবসা করতে, তারপর জড়িয়ে গেলো কলোনিয়ালিজমে। মাঝখানে বার কয়েক দেউলিয়া হওয়া, সরকারি সাহায্য এবং পরে অধিগ্রহণ, অর্থাৎ কর্পোরেট বাণিজ্যের সকলকিছু কাম্পানির ভাগ্যে জুটেছে। মাঝখানে অনেকে ধনী হয়েছেন, হাউজ অব লর্ডসে সীট কিনেছেন। বেচারা হেস্টিংস্ তুলনামূলক ভালো মানুষ হয়েও ইমপীচড্ হয়েছেন। আরে শেষে কোম্পানি বন্ধ হলো এই ভাবে:

Its brand name is now owned by two brothers from Kerala who use it to sell ‘condiments and fine foods’ from a showroom in London’s West End.

আরেকটা জিনিস লক্ষণীয়, ন্যাশনালিজম কখনোই আমাদের, অন্তত, বাংলার জনগণের কাছে গুরুত্বপূর্ণ ছিল না। এসব ছিল রাজা-নবাবদের বিষয়। মডার্ন ভারতবর্ষের স্বাধীনতার আন্দোলনের আগে যত ন্যাশনালিস্ট হিরো দাঁড় করানো হয় আপামর বাঙালির ন্যাশনালিস্ট চেতনার প্রতিভূ হিসেবে (যেমন, সিরাজ-উদ-দৌলা) তা নিয়ে আমার বরাবরই স্কেপটিজম ছিল।

শেষমেশ, বৃটেনে বারংবার কাম্পানির রাশ টেনে ধরার চেষ্টা, বিচার, ও তদন্তের যে ইতিহাস পাওয়া যায় তা আমার মত প্রশংসার দাবি রাখে। বর্তমানের সাম্রাজ্যবাদের এই চক্ষুলজ্জাও অবশিষ্ট নেই বোধহয়।

সব মিলিয়ে ভালো লেগেছে।

[!note] Notes and Highlights
The Anarchy

[!info] About The Anarchy by William Dalrymple
The story of how the East India Company took over large swaths of Asia, and the devastating results of the corporation running a country. In August 1765, the East India Company defeated the young Mughal emperor and set up, in his place, a government run by English traders who collected taxes through means of a private army. The creation of this new government marked the moment that the East India Company ceased to be a conventional company and became something much more unusual: an international corporation transformed into an aggressive colonial power. Over the course of the next 47 years, the company’s reach grew until almost all of India south of Delhi was effectively ruled from a boardroom in the city of London. The Anarchy tells one of history’s most remarkable stories: how the Mughal Empire—which dominated world trade and manufacturing and possessed almost unlimited resources—fell apart and was replaced by a multinational corporation based thousands of miles overseas, and answerable to shareholders, most of whom had never even seen India and no idea about the country whose wealth was providing their dividends. Using previously untapped sources, Dalrymple tells the story of the East India Company as it has never been told before and provides a portrait of the devastating results from the abuse of corporate power. Bronze Medal in the 2020 Arthur Ross Book Award

Swann's Way by Marcel Proust

2025-05-28T07:35:28.000Z

[!warning] Reconsideration needed
I have just read this first book of the Remembrance of Things Past. Therefore, this review can be riddled with misunderstanding.

No point in mentioning the obvious. Is he a good writer? He is great. Does he have a deep understanding of the clockwork of the human heart? He does. There can't be a great writer without this understanding and wit.

What I liked about this book is (which may be a fault as translators of this series have noted) the stylistic switch Proust did between lyrical, poetic moving text and prosaic, matter-of-fact but strong plot styles.

The successful usage of Involuntary Memory. There is, of course, the classic 'Madeleine Incident' which invoked a nostalgia for things happend decades ago. But I think the most powerful usage of involuntary memories can be found in the PART II - Swann in Love. The Vinteuil Sonata^[1] invoked love in Swann, helped it to flourish, and at the end induced the epiphany that lead to a clearer understanding of his place in his relationship with Odette.

[!note] Notes and Highlights
Swann's Way by Marcel Proust

[!info] About Swann's Way by Marcel Proust
The first volume of one of the greatest novels of the twentieth century, in Lydia Davis's award-winning translation Marcel Proust’s In Search of Lost Time is one of the most entertaining reading experiences in any language and arguably the finest novel of the twentieth century. But since its original prewar translation there has been no completely new version in English. Now, Penguin Classics brings Proust’s masterpiece to new audiences throughout the world, beginning with Lydia Davis’s internationally acclaimed translation of the first volume, Swann’s Way. Swann's Way is one of the preeminent novels of childhood: a sensitive boy's impressions of his family and neighbors, all brought dazzlingly back to life years later by the taste of a madeleine. It also enfolds the short novel "Swann in Love," an incomparable study of sexual jealousy that becomes a crucial part of the vast, unfolding structure of In Search of Lost Time. The first volume of the work that established Proust as one of the finest voices of the modern age—satirical, skeptical, confiding, and endlessly varied in his response to the human condition—Swann's Way also stands on its own as a perfect rendering of a life in art, of the past recreated through memory.

Fictitious. Probably based on Sonata in A major for Violin and Piano by César Franck ↩︎

Spinoza_s Ethics by Baruch Spinoza

2025-05-27T15:26:36.000Z

অথোরিটিটিভ অনুবাদ বলতে যা বোঝায়, জর্জ এলিয়টের অনুবাদটি তা না। আবার এও না যে এলিয়ট নিজের মত করে অনুবাদ করে স্পিনোজাকে হারিয়ে ফেলেছেন। সে যাই হোক, এটা ঐতিহাসিকভাবে গুরুত্বপূর্ণ একটি অনুবাদ। আর যারা এটি প্রকাশ করেছেন সদ্য তারা যথেষ্ট টীকার মাধ্যমে অথোরিটিটিভ অনুবাদের সাথে পার্থক্য অনেকটাই কমিয়ে এনেছেন। বইয়ের ভূমিকাটা বড় এবং অপ্রয়োজনীয় মনে হলেও আসলে কাজটাকে সঠিক দৃষ্টিভঙ্গিতে দেখতে সাহায্য করবে।

স্পিনোজা’র এথিক্সের মূলে তার মেটাফিজিক্স। সেই মেটাফিজিক্সে গড এবং নেচারের মধ্যে পার্থক্য করা বেশ দুরূহ, যদিও পার্থক্য বিদ্যমান। মোটের ওপর স্পিনোজার গড হচ্ছে সেই সয়ম্ভূ সত্ত্বা যার ক্ষমতা, ব্যাপ্তি সমস্তকিছু অপরিসীম। সে সমস্ত গুণের অধিকারই শুধু না, তার গুণাতীত কিছু নাই। তাকে ব্যাতীত কোনো বাস্তবতাও নাই। বস্তুত, আমাদের সকল বাস্তবতা তার বাস্তবতার বিভিন্নরূপ। সেই অর্থে ধরলে আমাদের সবকিছুই মায়া।^[1]

স্পিনোজার মতে গড পারফেক্ট বলা চলে তখনই যখন সে সর্বশক্তিমান। অর্থাৎ সে যা চায় তা করার মাধ্যমেই তার পারফেক্টনেস প্রমাণিত হয়। এতএব সে যা যা করতে পারে তার চুলপরিমাণ কম করার সুযোগ তার নেই। তাতে তার ইশ্বরত্বের হানি ঘটে। সেদিক থেকে স্পিনোজার কসমোলজি পুরোপুরি ডিটারমিনিস্টিক। এবং এই ডিটারমিনিস্টিক নেচার একই সাথে গডের ক্ষমতা ও লিমিটেশন তৈরী করে। প্রথাগত আব্রাহামিক ধর্মের থেকে স্পিনোজার থিওলজির পার্থক্য মোটামুটি এইখানে সবচেয়ে প্রবল।^[2]

তাছাড়া স্পিনোজার গড অ্যান্থ্রোমরফিক না। সে কাউকে ভালোও বাসে না, ঘৃণাও করে না। প্রার্থনাও শোনে না, অস্বীকার করলে রাগও করে না। সে শুধু তার দ্বারা যা কিছু করা সম্ভব সবই করে।

মোটের ওপর আমার যা মনে হয়েছে, স্পিনোজা যেভাবে গডকে দেখে তাতে গড ছাড়াই দিব্যি একটা এথিকস্ দাঁড় করানো যেত। এই অতিরিক্ত কম্প্লিকেশন তার ব্যক্তিগত বিশ্বাসের জন্য হতে পারে।

[!note] Notes and Highlights
Spinoza's Ethics by George Elliot

[!info] About Spinoza's Ethics by Benedictus de Spinoza
"This is a scholarly edition of Eliot's translation of Spinoza's Ethics, which today reads as a fresh, elegant and faithful rendering of the original Latin text. The editor's notes on the text will indicate Eliot's amendments to her manuscript, and discuss those translation decisions which differ from the standard modern English editions, and have a bearing on interpretive and philosophical issues. Eliot's translation of the Ethics is prefaced by an editorial essay which briefly introduces Spinoza's text in its 17th-century context and outlines its key philosophical claims, before discussing Eliot's interest in Spinoza, the circumstances of her translation of the Ethics, and the influence of Spinoza's ideas on her literary work. It presents Eliot's reading of Spinoza in the broader context of the 19th-century reception of his philosophy by Romantic writers, while tracing the distinctive ways in which Eliot drew on Spinoza's radical views on religion, ethics, and human psychology"

Silence by Shūsaku Endō

2025-05-27T15:23:31.000Z

Except for Barabbas this is the only ~~Christian novel~~ theologico-historical novel^[1] I read. And it's from another side of the globe from Barabbas.

While this novel has been labeled as a novel about the atrocious persecution of Christians in Japan, to my understanding that is a backdrop, a very important backdrop, but backdrop still. It's also very complex. Official view about Christianity and elaborate tortures, the metamorphosis of the faith in the Japanese soil, the people, places, and nature… It's not a black-and-white story of oppression.

This is predominantly a novel about Christian sympathy. A person's journey through suffering to understand what it meant to Christ, and what sort of shepherd he was. The central character (a priest) has gone through what we can say 'a dark night of the soul'. The crisis was acute. Suffering raised questions that at other times can be considered blasphemous. This crisis is the origin of the name of this book. The unbearable silence of God in the face of the unbearable agony of layman Christians was a recurring theme. A particularly beautiful example of this crisis is:

It, in time, led the priest into doubt if God exists at all. Of course, his training in the seminary won.

What I liked about this book is how the priest was officially apostatized. He hasn't been broken down in extreme situations. Neither torture nor persuasion could convince him to apostatize. What convinced him is a deeper, more beautiful interpretation of the Christian faith. He found that even Christ himself would've been apostatized if it saved some souls from suffering.

This was the end of his dark night of the soul. The new dawn was not a dawn devoid of faith. Quite the contrary. It was a dawn bringing a faith deeper than anything he had ever learned.

Since I have not read it in Japanese, I can't talk about Endō's writing quality with much confidence. However, I think readers will agree with me on his ability to create symbolic archetypal characters whose importance lies in their manifestation of one quality, or vice, or a crisis. Over and over again throughout the book, they play the same role of a coward, kind, or heroic person. The book contains some such very powerful archetypes.

His intellectual honesty is particularly praiseworthy. He understood the problem of a foreign religion such as Christianity must face in a culture that is in many cases diametrically opposite to its European counterpart. Japanese empire was as oppressive as any of that time. Buddhism in their hand is just another justification to oppress and no solace to the poot. On the other hand, European seafarers are not very bright example of Christianity. However, the love of Christ have some appeal to the unloved ones. Brutality and suppression are just side effects. The problem is deeper, and Endō faced it with much sincerity.

[!note] Notes and Highlights
Silence by Shūsaku Endō

[!info] About Silence by Shūsaku Endō
Silence is a 1966 novel of theological and historical fiction by Japanese author Shūsaku Endō. It tells the story of a Jesuit missionary sent to 17th century Japan, who endures persecution in the time of Kakure Kirishitan that followed the defeat of the Shimabara Rebellion.

Initially, I used the term 'Christian Novel' to both this and Barabbas like most other people. However, I believe, this term is narrow in scope, emphasize on the propaganda part more than the aesthetics, and doesn't do full justice to these works. ↩︎

Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors by Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan

2026-03-05T12:06:08.000Z

Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors

Who are we? The answer to this question is not only one of the tasks, but the task of science.

As stated by Erwin Schrödinger in Science and Humanism. This sets the tone of this book. This is an evolutionary journey of self-searching guided by Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan.

What I like about this pair of authors, and why I keep coming back to them, is their sense of balance. Between rational and real, poetic and scientific, between not being egoistic and also not being humiliated due to what we are. This balance makes their book accessible without compromising on seriousness. Even if you are a seasoned reader of their work and of pop-science in general, you will still find thought-provoking moments.

I really like how gently and kindly, almost like a doctor, they try to remove deep-seated notions of superiority based on self-deception (a disease in my opinion).

[!note] Notes and Highlights
Notes from Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors

[!info] About Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors by Carl Sagan, Ann Druyan
"Dazzling…A feast. Absorbing and elegantly written, it tells of the origins of life on earth, describes its variety and character, and culminates in a discussion of human nature and the complex traces of humankind's evolutionary past…It is an amazing story masterfully told." FINANCIAL TIMES (LONDON) World-renowned scientist Carl Sagan and acclaimed author Ann Druyan have written a ROOTS for the human species, a lucid and riveting account of how humans got to be the way we are. It shows with humor and drama that many of our key traits--self-awareness, technology, family ties, submission to authority, hatred for those a little different from ourselves, reason, and ethics--are rooted in the deep past, and illuminated by our kinship with other animals. Astonishing in its scope, brilliant in its insights, and an absolutely compelling read, SHADOWS OF FORGOTTEN ANCESTORS is a triumph of popular science. "From the Trade Paperback edition.

SPQR_ A History of Ancient Rome by Mary Beard

2025-05-27T15:27:25.000Z

বইয়ের নামের SPQR অংশটার ল্যাটিন ফুল ফর্ম থেকে ইংরেজি করলে দাঁড়ায় ‘The Senate and People of Rome’. যদিও পপ-হিস্ট্রির বই, আমার মত এলেবেলে পাঠকদের জন্য লেখা, তবুও নাম থেকে বুঝতে পারছেন নিশ্চয়ই যে এটি একটি বিশেষায়িত বই। তো, রোমান সৈন্যদলের প্রশিক্ষণ, রণকৌশল ও কাঠামো, কিংবা রোমানদের পৌর প্রযুক্তির ইতিবৃত্ত, তাদের ধর্ম ও পুরাণ, দাসবিদ্রোহে দাসেদের বীরত্ব ইত্যাদির সামগ্রিক সাধারণ জ্ঞান এখানে পাবেন না পপ-হিস্ট্রি বইয়ে যেমন হয়। এই বইয়ের বিষয়বস্তু প্রাচীন রোমের রাজনীতি, বাকি সবকিছু প্রয়োজনমাফিক স্বল্প পরিসরে বলা হয়েছে।

বইয়ের বিষয়বস্তু, তথ্যের সমৃদ্ধি ইত্যাদি নিয়ে আমি পুরোপুরি খুশি। শেষে যে আরো পড়ার বইয়ের লিস্টটা এটা বিষয়বস্তু অনুযায়ী ফুটনোট হিসেবে পেলে ভালো হত। কয়েক জায়গায় প্যাসাজ জুড়ে কয়েকবার স্কেপটিজমের কথা বলতে গিয়ে ন্যারেটিভ মার খেয়ে গেছে। অবশ্যই স্কেপটিজম সম্পূর্ণরূপে জাস্টিফাইড। শুধু প্যারার স্ট্রাকচারের জন্য এমন হয়েছে বলেই আমার মনে হয়।

আজকালকার ছোট ছোট রাষ্ট্রযন্ত্রও রোমান সাম্রাজ্যের তুলনায় অনেক কম্প্লিকেটেড। রোমান রাজনীতি এখনো রিলেভেন্ট এই কারণে যে ওলিগার্কি, অ্যারিস্টোক্রেসি, অটোক্রেসির সবযুগেই বেসিক ফর্মটা একই। সেটাকে বেশ নিরাভরণ দেখা যায় রোমান রাজনীতিতে।

[!note] Notes and Highlights
SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome

[!info] About SPQR by Mary Beard
Sunday Times Top 10 BestsellerShortlisted for a British Book Industry Book of the Year Award 2016The new series Ultimate Rome: Empire Without Limit is on BBC2 nowAncient Rome matters.Its history of empire, conquest, cruelty and excess is something against which we still judge ourselves. Its myths and stories - from Romulus and Remus to the Rape of Lucretia - still strike a chord with us. And its debates about citizenship, security and the rights of the individual still influence our own debates on civil liberty today.SPQR is a new look at Roman history from one of the world's foremost classicists. It explores not only how Rome grew from an insignificant village in central Italy to a power that controlled territory from Spain to Syria, but also how the Romans thought about themselves and their achievements, and why they are still important to us. Covering 1,000 years of history, and casting fresh light on the basics of Roman culture from slavery to running water, as well as exploring democracy, migration, religious controversy, social mobility and exploitation in the larger context of the empire, this is a definitive history of ancient Rome.SPQR is the Romans' own abbreviation for their state: Senatus Populusque Romanus, 'the Senate and People of Rome'.

Permanent Record by Edward Snowden

2025-05-27T15:20:24.000Z

Consider, for a moment, living in the feudal age. Your respect and power would've been derived from the amount of land you have. Or, in a capitalist system, it is the money or credibility. Now, consider our time. It is still capitalism. However, the capitalism of our age, which is ever-increasingly depending on technologies, most importantly information technology. This is the actual currency for this age. The amount of information you can and have massed and crunched gives you power and wealth according. And, unless you are part of the top-tier of the governments or leading tech industries, you are the mine or the factory of data. All our virtual assistants, IoT devices, smart devices, websites we visit, and digital services we buy are sending our data without our consent to the vendors, and often to the government.

Do you find this unethical? Well… if you do, then meet Edward Snowden (you may probably already have), a martyr of the information age.

Yes, he is alive. He's a martyr in the sense that for his ethical action, a cruel punishment awaits in his country, and the country has tried to disenfranchise and defame him in every possible way. A patriot to the marrow of his bone, a person who found his allegiance to the people of his country and opposed the ever-eavesdropping government, this exile is maybe more than being murdered in many ways.

Permanent Record is Snowden's autobiography. However, more than an autobiography, this book is about the things that define him. In his own word:

His prose is mature, concise, to the point yet emotional. So much so that, apart from the content, it has a very high level of literary value. The clarity of his thought, and the amount of conviction he holds, I think, is the most important aspect of this book. He can actually make you see things from his position, feel what he felt, his moment of truth, his anxieties and fears, his courage and sacrifice - willing yet shaking his very core.
Content-wise, this book is invaluable. It allows readers a peek into the large mechanism, through which big brother is watching you. Apart from the technicalities, you may find Snowden's views on personal freedom, privacy, democracy, authority, and human rights very accurate and logical.

[!note] Notes and Highlights
Permanent Record

[!info] About Permanent Record by Edward Snowden
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER Edward Snowden, the man who risked everything to expose the US government’s system of mass surveillance, reveals for the first time the story of his life, including how he helped to build that system and what motivated him to try to bring it down. In 2013, twenty-nine-year-old Edward Snowden shocked the world when he broke with the American intelligence establishment and revealed that the United States government was secretly pursuing the means to collect every single phone call, text message, and email. The result would be an unprecedented system of mass surveillance with the ability to pry into the private lives of every person on earth. Six years later, Snowden reveals for the very first time how he helped to build this system and why he was moved to expose it. Spanning the bucolic Beltway suburbs of his childhood and the clandestine CIA and NSA postings of his adulthood, Permanent Record is the extraordinary account of a bright young man who grew up online—a man who became a spy, a whistleblower, and, in exile, the Internet’s conscience. Written with wit, grace, passion, and an unflinching candor, Permanent Record is a crucial memoir of our digital age and destined to be a classic.

Pale Blue Dot by Carl Sagan

2025-05-27T15:18:24.000Z

বইটা পড়তে অনেকটা সময় লাগলো নানা ব্যস্ততায়। তবে তাড়িয়ে তাড়িয়ে পড়েছি, তাড়া দিইনি নিজেকে। সেগানের লেখা আমার আর দশটা জনপ্রিয় বিজ্ঞান লেখকদের চেয়ে ভালো লাগে। তার কাব্যিকতা অসাধারণ। এক তারা কমেছে বইটা শেষে একটু ঝুলে গেছে বলে।

এই বইয়ের প্রথমদিকের অধ্যায়গুলো চমৎকার। ইতমধ্যে আপনি যদি জ্যোতির্বিজ্ঞান সম্পর্কে ভালো ধারণা না রাখেন এবং এই মহাবিশ্বে আপনার ছোট গণ্ডিতে নিজেকে একটাকিছু মনে হয় তবে এই অধ্যায়গুলো আপনাকে আঘাতও করতে পারে। এবং, সেগান, ঠোঁটকাটা সেগান কোনোকিছুই ছাড়েনি, ছোটমানুষের ছোট ঈশ্বরকেও না।

এবং শেষেরদিকের বৈজ্ঞানিক দৃষ্টিভঙ্গি নিয়ে এই কথাগুলো ভালো লেগেছে,

[!note] Notes and Highlights
Pale Blue Dot

[!info] About Pale Blue Dot by Carl Sagan
Examines humankind's changing awareness of its place in the universe and the rich potential of human ventures into the world beyond Earth.

On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin

2025-05-28T07:36:13.000Z

Darwinism is now common knowledge to anyone who reads any amount of pop science. But, most often it is a much revised version of natural selection commonly known as neo-Darwinism.

It still remains an interesting read. Just like Newton's laws of motion can be easily proved by calculus. But, the original geometric proof is a much more satisfying read.

Biology, back then, was mostly about observations and record-keeping. Predictive theories are scarce, knowledge is fragmented. Truly, most of these fragments started to make sense in the light of the theory of natural selection.

The book is written quite hastily yet shows how meticulous a mind Darwin really had. His prose is not only very accessible but also elegant in places.

What Darwin did required a paradigm shift. It was not easy as paradigm shifts go. But, he was confident and that confidence stands on intellectual honesty and a rebellious mental makeup.

[!note] Notes and Highlights
On the origin of species: by means of natural selection

[!info] About On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin
First published in 1859, this landmark book on evolutionary biology was not the first to deal with the subject, but it went on to become a sensation—and a controversial one for many religious people who could not reconcile Darwin’s science with their faith. Darwin worked on the book for over 20 years before its publication. The radical crux of his scientific theory was the idea of natural selection, which meant that chance, not a divine Creator, played a great role in humanity's advancement and that individuals who weren't physically able to adapt with the greater populace died off.

On Photography by Susan Sontag

2025-05-28T07:36:32.000Z

These days, photography feels like one of the most important vehicles to build The Society of the Spectacle and social media are oversaturated by photographs.

It was not always like this. Through Sontag's eyes, one can understand photography in quite a different way. To me, this book contains some ideas that may change how I look at photographs fundamentally.

Sontag touched, in these insightful essays, some key points of photography. Most of them deal with photography's relation to art. In her view, photography (though denied by many proponents) is a modern art. It embodies modernism more than painting and poetry in permissiveness and ambiguity of aesthetics, subject matter, and expertise.

She also explored the social side of photography quite a bit, especially how tourism, memory-making, etc fundamentally changed after the wider acceptance of photography.

It is a pleasure to read. Sontag can express quite succinctly her point with a storyteller's captivating charm.

[!note] Notes and Highlights
On Photography by Susan Sontag

[!info] About On Photography by Susan Sontag
Winner of the National Book Critics' Circle Award for Criticism. One of the most highly regarded books of its kind, "On Photography" first appeared in 1977 and is described by its author as " a progress of essays about the meaning and career of photographs." It begins with the famous " In Plato' s Cave" essay, then offers five other prose meditations on this topic, and concludes with a fascinating and far-reaching " Brief Anthology of Quotations."

Narrow Road to the Interior_ And Other Writings by Matsuo Bashō

2025-05-27T13:57:29.000Z

This is one of those books that added a layer to my being. My admiration to Matsuo Bashō starts here.

Firstly, I think Sam Hamill is an excellent translator. Not only he translated the book, he provided a splendid preface to put things into perspective.

This collection contains two of Bashō's travelogues, and some of his Haikus.

Bashō lived in a war-torn feudal Japan. Travel, naturally, came with quite some danger in the path. His advanced age was not in his favour also. But neither the danger nor the fatigue dissuade Bashō. Instead, soldier's grave brought some haikus and there were Pine forests and Full-moons to wash away his fatigue.

Apart from Bashō exquisite inner-life, another important aspect that shined through the description is how culturally aware the people of Japan were regardless of their class. People used to memorize poems with their context, i.e. who, how, and in what situation wrote it. Prostitutes would find solace in poetry when no one is listening to them. I genuinely regret for not being born in that time and place.

[!note] Notes and Highlights
Narrow Road to the Interior and Other Writings

[!info] About Narrow Road to the Interior by Matsuo Basho
A masterful translation of one of the most-loved classics of Japanese literature—part travelogue, part haiku collection, part account of spiritual awakening Bashō (1644–1694)—a great luminary of Asian literature who elevated the haiku to an art form of utter simplicity and intense spiritual beauty—is renowned in the West as the author of Narrow Road to the Interior, a travel diary of linked prose and haiku recounting his journey through the far northern provinces of Japan. This edition, part of the Shambhala Pocket Library series, features a masterful translation of this celebrated work. It also includes an insightful introduction by translator Sam Hamill detailing Bashō’s life and the art of haiku, three other important works by Bashō—Travelogue of Weather-Beaten Bones, The Knapsack Notebook, and Sarashina Travelogue—and two hundred and fifty of his finest haiku, making this the most complete single-volume collection of Bashō’s writings. The Shambhala Pocket Library is a collection of short, portable teachings from notable figures across religious traditions and classic texts. The covers in this series are rendered by Colorado artist Robert Spellman. The books in this collection distill the wisdom and heart of the work Shambhala Publications has published over 50 years into a compact format that is collectible, reader-friendly, and applicable to everyday life.

My Name Is Red by Orhan Pamuk

2025-05-27T13:55:59.000Z

মাই নেম ইজ রেড আমার পড়া ওরহানের দ্বিতীয় বই। আগে ইস্তানবুল পড়েছিলাম এবং মুগ্ধ হয়েছিলাম।

এই বইটার সময়টা ১৬৯১ সালের কয়েকটা দিন। তবে সব মিলে গল্পের ব্যাপ্তি কয়েকশতকের। ঐতিহাসিক উপন্যাস যেমন হয়, ইতিহাস থাকে কম (সেটুকু যথাসম্ভব অবিকৃত রাখা হয়) এবং তার মেজাজে বেশ একটা গল্প বলা হয়। এও তেমনি।

সচরাচর ইতিহাস বলতে যা বুঝি তা হচ্ছে খুনের ফর্দ। সেভাবে দেখলে যে সময়টার কথা বলা হয়েছে পৃথিবী মোটামুটি শান্ত। বিশেষ করে অটোমান সাম্রাজ্য বহিঃশত্রুর ভয়ে ভীত নয়। সুলতান সুলেমানের বেশ শক্ত একটা ভিত্তির ওপর অটোমান সাম্রাজ্য অটল তখন। ইউরোপে রেঁনেসা হয়ে গেছে, ভারতবর্ষে সম্রাট আকবর রাজত্ব করছে এবং কেউই এখন বোকার মত হুঁট করে অন্য রাজ্য আক্রমণে যায় না। একটা আন্তর্জাতিক কূটনৈতিক কাঠামো তৈরী হয়েছে। তবুও এটা অটোমান সাম্রাজ্যের একটি ক্রান্তিকাল। সেই সাথে পুরো মুসলিম পৃথিবীরও হয়ত। ধর্মীয় প্রতিক্রিয়াশীলতার ফাঁক গলে যেটুকু আলো আসছিল সেটুকুও বন্ধ হলো এই সময়ে।

গল্পটা সাংস্কৃতিক দ্বন্দ্ব এবং আগ্রাসনের। আগ্রাসনটা ধর্মীয়। দ্বন্দ্বটা ইউরোপীয় চিত্রকলার সাথে অটোমান চিত্রকলার। মনে রাখা দরকার রেঁনেসা পরবর্তী ইউরোপ যেখানে লিওনার্দো দা ভিঞ্চির মত শিল্পীর আবির্ভাব তার বর্ণচ্ছটা কম না। এদিকে মুসলিম চিত্রকলার মূল উদ্দেশ্য বই অলঙ্করণ। দুইধরনের চিত্রকলার দর্শনে বিশাল ফাঁরাক। এই দ্বন্দ্বটা বইটার মূল বিষয়গুলোর একটা। আর চিত্রকলার ওপর যে ধর্মীয় নিপীড়ন দেখা গেলো তার সময়কালও ঘটনার অনেক আগে থেকে বিস্তৃত। হীরাট নগর ছিল মুসলিম শিল্পচর্চার পীঠস্থান। সেই শহর একরকম গুঁড়িয়ে দেওয়া হয় (পিরিমকুল কাদিরভের 'বাবর' বইতে তার বেশ ভালো বিবরণ আছে)। কামাল-উদ-দীন বেহজাদের মত মায়েস্ত্রোরা ছিলেন হীরাটে। মূলত এরকম বারবার বিতাড়িত শিল্পীরা বিভিন্ন সুলতানদের কাছে কাজ করতে করতে, তার সাথে চাইনিজ চিত্রকলার মিশেলে একসময় অটোমান চিত্রকলায় রূপ নেয় যার মৃত্যু বইটার উপজীব্য।

বইটার গল্প বোনার পদ্ধতিটা ভালো লেগেছে। চরিত্রগুলো গভীর, মনস্তাত্ত্বিক সংঘাতগুলো আবেদন রাখে। বইয়ের গল্পটা আমি বলতে চাই না। ঝালটা নিজের মুখে খাওয়াই সমীচীন।

[!note] Notes and Highlights
My Name Is Red

[!info] About My Name Is Red by Orhan Pamuk
One of the Nobel Prize winner’s best-loved novels, in a special edition featuring an introduction by the author and a chronology of Islamic and Western art history that provides additional context for this dazzling story of a murdered artist in sixteenth-century Istanbul. Nobel Prize winner Orhan Pamuk's My Name Is Red, set amid the artistic splendor and religious intrigue of sixteenth-century Istanbul, is a fantastical story of love and murder propelled by the philosophical puzzle at its core. The Ottoman sultan has commissioned the most acclaimed artists in the land to create a great book celebrating the glories of his realm—but he wants them to illuminate it in the European style. Because there are those who believe art that imitates the real is an affront to Islam, the project must be kept secret. Panic and scandal erupt when one of the chosen miniaturists disappears, along with a crucial page of the manuscript. the surviving artists—bitter rivals variously motivated by pride, greed, faith, and love—are all under suspicion of murder, and the only clue to the mystery lies in the half-finished illustrations themselves.

Meditations_ The Annotated Edition by Marcus Aurelius

2025-05-27T13:54:49.000Z

মার্কাস কেন এই লেখাগুলো লিখেছিলেন?

[1] My soul, will you ever be good, simple, single, and naked, brighter than the body that encases you?

বস্তুত, এইরকম হওয়ার চেষ্টা থেকে।

মার্কাস অরেলিয়াস, রোমান সম্রাট, দর্শন আর সাম্রাজ্যের মাঝে দোটানায় থাকা একটা মানুষ। দার্শনিক হিসেবে কেমন তিনি? মধ্যমগোছের তো বটেই। পুরোপুরি দর্শনে সময় না দিলে তার থেকে বেশি হওয়া সম্ভব না। তবে দর্শনের প্রতি তার সততা নিয়ে কোনো প্রশ্নই উঠতে পারে না। সাম্রাজ্য আর দর্শনের সাথে নিজের সম্পর্ক ব্যাখ্যা করেছেন এইভাবে:

তো এই মার্কাস অরেলিয়াস নিজের স্টোয়িসিজমের অনুশীলনে নিজের জন্য লিখেছেন কিছু নোটবুক। মেডিটেশনস্ বস্তুত সেগুলোর সংকলন। অনেকটাই পুনরাবৃত্তি আছে। আর আছে স্টোয়িসিজমের সাথে রোমান সেন্সিবিলিটি।

আজকের দুনিয়ায় দাঁড়িয়ে স্টোয়িসিজমকে তার সকল অ্যাজাম্পশান ও আধা-ধর্মীয় চরিত্রসমেত মেনে নেওয়া কষ্টকর হবে। কিন্তু, মার্কাসের এই অধিকতর ভালো মানুষ হওয়ার চেষ্টাটা নাড়া দেয়।

[!note] Notes and Highlights
Notes from Meditations: The Annotated Edition by Marcus Aurelius, Robin Waterfield (editor)

[!info] About Meditations by Marcus Aurelius
The definitive annotated translation of Marcus Aurelius's Meditations Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (121-180 CE) was the sixteenth emperor of Rome -- and by far the most powerful man in the world. Yet he was also an intensely private person, with a rich interior life and one of the wisest minds of his generation. He collected his thoughts in notebooks, gems that have come to be called his Meditations. Never intended for publication, the work has proved an inexhaustible source of wisdom and one of the most important Stoic texts of all time. In often passionate language, the entries range from one-line aphorisms to essays, from profundity to bitterness. This annotated edition offers the definitive translation of this classic and much beloved text, with copious notes from world-renowned classics expert Robin Waterfield. It illuminates one of the greatest works of popular philosophy for new readers and enriches the understanding of even the most devoted Stoic.

Manto_ Selected Stories by Saadat Hasan Manto

2025-10-21T18:00:03.000Z

Only recently, I think, Manto is getting traction once again. A writer disowned by his country because of cultural bigotry (This act is an irony itself since Manto himself left his country and then regretted it.) and was unable to grow in his new ground, died as a middle-aged man.

The stories are indeed well-chosen, as the translator claimed to show the spectrum of Manto’s ability. I can also vouch for the translation quality because I’ve already read some excellent translations of Manto in Bengali. Since all the languages in the Indian subcontinent are kin, they share similarities. You can easily get a vibe of the original writing.

To see in Manto’s eyes is like seeing with sensors rather than wisdom. You don’t need any special depth to understand Manto, I think. His writings are all about the things that are alive. You’ll rarely find any description about the environment in his writings, but whenever you get some, they will hit some of your nerves. You may find yourself beside a long wall with the stink and stains of urine, or in a room so small that you may suffocate. These stains and stinks, these feelings of suffocation, are lively. Attention to minute details, which is a strength for many writers, is almost absent in his works. Rather, he talks about people's minds and thoughts in length, what they were thinking, acting, and living… The stories are stories of living things, and you’ll start living and breathing in these stories.

Time to time, we talk about this and that, the responsibilities of writers and artists in general. Well, to be truthful, an artist’s only responsibility is to speak his mind truthfully. To do that, an artist may, and historically always has been, an iconoclast in their style, subject, and expression. Obscene, Manto was, and also sceptical about the then-contemporary ideas of revolution and freedom. An icon, be it Gandhi or Virginity, he has challenged. By doing this, he expressed truths that transcend beyond society's ethics, yet are very close to our human self.

[!info] About Manto: Selected Stories by Saadat Hasan Manto
The gentle dhobi who transforms into a killer, a prostitute who is more child than woman, the cocky, young coachman who falls in love at first sight, a father convinced that his son will die before his first birthday. Saadat Hasan Manto’s stories are vivid, dangerous and troubling and they slice into the everyday world to reveal its sombre, dark heart. These stories were written from the mid 30s on, many under the shadow of Partition. No Indian writer since has quite managed to capture the underbelly of Indian life with as much sympathy and colour. In a new translation that for the first time captures the richness of Manto’s prose and its combination of high emotion and taut narrative, this is a classic collection from the master of the Indian short story.

Man_s Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl

2025-05-27T13:52:17.000Z

This book gave me a mixed feeling.

Firstly, I admire E. Frankl, for his unbending will to live, his intellectual attitude— the ability to build something out of utmost discomfort, even in the face of almost certain death. It's not an easy feat to psychoanalyse and create a theory, a whole new school of psychotherapy (Logotherapy) while one himself is part of the subjects. He did and did it excellently.

However, I can't agree with him regarding meaning. Now, there can be meaning, self-imposed, self-explored as he suggested. Those don't need to be intrinsic. However, he also believes in ultimate meaning and didn't put any argument on behalf of his belief. I think I can safely assume that it is due to his faith and perhaps upbringing. He is faithful, and he draws his strength from faith tremendously. His metaphysics is primitive in my opinion.

Still, Logotherapy has a virtue. Unlike other schools, it doesn't treat people as machines with libido, repressions etc but take a real interest in one's current status and environment.

[!note] Notes and Highlights
Man’s Search For Meaning by Viktor E Frankl

[!info] About Man's Search For Meaning by Viktor E Frankl
A prominent Viennese psychiatrist before the war, Viktor Frankl was uniquely able to observe the way that he and other inmates coped with the experience of being in Auschwitz. He noticed that it was the men who comforted others and who gave away their last piece of bread who survived the longest - and who offered proof that everything can be taken away from us except the ability to choose our attitude in any given set of circumstances. The sort of person the prisoner became was the result of an inner decision and not of camp influences alone. Only those who allowed their inner hold on their moral and spiritual selves to subside eventually fell victim to the camp's degenerating influence - while those who made a victory of those experiences turned them into an inner triumph. Frankl came to believe that man's deepest desire is to search for meaning and purpose. This outstanding work offers us all a way to transcend suffering and find significance in the art of living.

Istanbul by Orhan Pamuk

2023-07-11T11:28:15.000Z

পুরো বইটা একরকমের ছোট গল্প। অতৃপ্তি রেখে গেলো। উপভোগ্য অতৃপ্তি। একধরনের ঘোর তৈরী করে বইটা। একধরনের ভালোবাসা, যা আমি এবং পামুক দুজনেই শেয়ার করি নিজের নিজের শহরের জন্য, তার স্বাদ পেলাম। বস্তুতঃ কাব্যের কাজই হলো নিজের কথা সার্বজনীন করে দেওয়া। পামুক সেই কাজটা চমৎকারভাবে করেন।

[!info] About Istanbul by Orhan Pamuk
Istanbul, through the mind of its most celebrated writer** PRE-ORDER NIGHTS OF PLAGUE, THE NEW NOVEL FROM ORHAN PAMUK **Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature'A declaration of love.' Sunday Times'A fascinating read for anyone who has even the slightest acquaintance with this fabled bridge between east and west.' The Economist'An irresistibly seductive book' Jan Morris, GuardianIn a surprising and original blend of personal memoir and cultural history, Turkey's most celebrated novelist, Orhan Pamuk, explores his home of more than fifty years.What begins as a portrait of the artist as a young man becomes a shimmering evocation, by turns intimate and panoramic, of one of the world's greatest cities. Beginning in the family apartment building where he was born, and still lives, Pamuk uses his family secrets to show how they were typical of their time and place. He then guides us through Istanbul's monuments and lost paradises, dilapidated Ottoman villas, back streets and waterways, and introduces us to the city's writers, artists and murderers.Like Joyce's Dublin and Borges' Buenos Aires, Pamuk's Istanbul is a triumphant encounter of place and sensibility, beautifully written and immensely moving.

In the world by Maxim Gorky

2025-05-27T13:47:46.000Z

ম্যাক্সিম গোর্কির আত্মজৈবনিক লেখাগুলোর দ্বিতীয় খণ্ড এটি। বোধকরি 'মাই এপ্রেন্টিসশিপ' নামও বইটি প্রচলিত। প্রথম বইটির শেষ থেকে এটি শুরু।

বইটায় গোর্কির কৈশরের কর্মজীবনের ছবি পাওয়া যায়। যদি ছবি আঁকা হত তবে পাওয়া যেত বিষাদময় অসংখ্য রঙের সমাহার।

এই বইয়ের গোর্কির স্বপ্নেও ভাবার অবকাশ ছিল না প্রথাগত শিক্ষা নেওয়ার। তবে প্রচণ্ড জ্ঞানের ক্ষুধা, গল্পের ক্ষুধা ছিল তাঁর। আর ছিল পায়ের তলায় সর্ষে। কখনো একজন জুতোর দোকানের কর্মী থেকে আর্কিটেক্টের শিক্ষানবীস, সেখান থেকে স্টীমারের রসুইয়ের কর্মী, পাখি ব্যবসায়ী, ধর্মীয় বই আর ছবির দোকানে কাজ, ছবি আঁকতে শেখা, আবার শিক্ষানবীস… এভাবেই চলতে থাকা। এরমাঝে বই পড়ার অদম্য ইচ্ছে। সুযোগ পেলেই বই নিয়ে বসা, বইয়ের জন্য অপমানিত হওয়া, বইয়ের জন্য স্নেহ পাওয়া, বই থেকে স্বপ্ন দেখা।

আর আছে মানুষ, হরেকরকমের। আইকনের ওয়ার্কশপের শিল্পীরা, জাহাজের খালাসিরা, সামরিক মানুষজন, উঁচু ও নীচুতলার দেহপসারিনী, দিনমজুর। কদাকার মানুষ, ভিতরে ও বাহিরে, সুন্দর মানুষ। গোর্কিকে দেখা যায় মানুষ বোঝার ভয়াবহ চেষ্টারত। এ যেনো জীবনপণ!

আরো দেখা যায় ক্রমশই নড়বড়ে হতে থাকা ধর্মবিশ্বাসের ভিত্তি।

মৃত্যু আছে, দৈন্য আছে, মানুষে অকারণ নিষ্ঠুরতা, মানুষের অবাধ ভালোবাসা সব আছে। একজন মানুষের হঠাৎই পচে যাওয়া, একজনের তিলে তিলে মৃত্যু, একজনের সবসময় আনন্দের সাথে বাঁচা। আবার সবকিছুতেই এক বিষাদের রঙ। বুঝি এই রঙটাই রাশিয়ার দারিদ্র্যের মূল রঙ ছিল।

'গোর্কি' মানে 'তিক্ত'। এই বইতে তার তিক্ততার একটা কৈফিয়ত পাওয়া গেলো,

এই কথাগুলোকে বাস্তববাদী লেখার মূল সুরও বলা চলে।

এই বইটির শেষে গোর্কির বয়স হয় সবে পনের। পনেরটা বছর তার জন্য সহজ ছিল না। এই দুর্বিষহ জীবন গোর্কিকে করেছে 'গোর্কি'।

[!note] Notes and Highlights
In the World

[!info] About In the World by Maxim Gorky
Alexei Maximovich Peshkov (1868-1936), primarily known as Maxim Gorky, was a Russian and Soviet writer, a founder of the socialist realism literary method and a political activist. He was also a five-time nominee for the Nobel Prize in Literature. Around fifteen years before success as a writer, he frequently changed jobs and roamed across the Russian Empire; these experiences would later influence his writing. Gorky's most famous works were The Lower Depths (1902), Twenty-six Men and a Girl, The Song of the Stormy Petrel, The Mother, Summerfolk and Children of the Sun. He had an association with fellow Russian writers Leo Tolstoy and Anton Chekhov; Gorky would later mention them in his memoirs.Gorky was active with the emerging Marxist social-democratic movement. He publicly opposed the Tsarist regime, and for a time closely associated himself with Vladimir Lenin and Alexander Bogdanov's Bolshevik wing of the party. For a significant part of his life, he was exiled from Russia and later the Soviet Union. In 1932, he returned to Russia on Joseph Stalin's personal invitation and died there in June 1936.

How Religion Evolved_ And Why It Endures by Robin I.M. Dunbar

2025-05-27T13:45:39.000Z

[!note] Notes and Highlights
How Religion Evolved by Robin Dunbar

[!info] About How Religion Evolved by Robin Dunbar
"For as long as history has been with us, religion has been a feature of human life. There is no known culture for which we have an ethnographic or an archaeological record that does not have some form of religion. Even in the secular societies that have become more common in the past few centuries, there are people who consider themselves religious and aspire to practise the rituals of their religion. These religions vary in form, style and size from small cults numbering a few hundred people centred around a charismatic leader to worldwide organizations numbering tens, or even hundreds, of millions of adherents with representations in every country. Some, like Buddhism, take an individualistic stance (your salvation is entirely in your own hands), some like the older Abrahamic religions view salvation as more of a collective activity through the performance of appropriate rituals, and a few (Judaism is one) have no formal concept of an afterlife. Some like Christianity and Islam believe in a single all- powerful God,…"

House of Leaves by Mark Z Danielewski

2025-10-15T18:38:23.000Z

I consider myself a writer. However, I fear writing, and I fear publishing more. For writing is agonising. And, I don't dare to publish until I really have a story to tell. My fear accumulated over time by reading more, by reading books just like this. And, I will tell my fellow writers this: If you are not really as serious as Danielewski, Borges, Tagore, Pessoa, or Jibanananda, stop writing.

The structure of this book is recursive, layered and of a madman. It is a book you should approach with an arsenal of bookmarks, much patience for multiple re-readings and the intention to read cover-to-cover, footnotes and appendix and all. While some of the references in this book are purely fictional, many are real. It is not necessary, but some familiarity with classic literature and existential philosophy (resources like Being and Time by Martin Heidegger) can be very rewarding. I will also recommend reading Walking by Thomas Bernhard, which deals with madness singularly, unlike this book, which deals with a lot of things. A knack for etymology and the exact meaning of words can be rewarding, too.

Now about the madness… It is everywhere, and it must be relished. It must be understood on its own terms, not from our couch of comfortable 'normality'. Madness is, in some sense, divine. Madness is motherly. Madness is a concentrated potion, too hard to gulp down, of the essence of our existence. This book talks about that madness,^[1] and love,^[2] and madness-inducing love,^[3] and love-inducing madness.^[4]

Most readers of this book may find the preceding paragraph needs some qualifications. The book is considered to be of the horror genre, and rightly so. However, it is not a run-of-the-mill horror. I will put it in a sub-genre: philosophical horror. Because most horror content depends on unfamiliarity and not understanding of the situation, this book depends on understanding and examination. Instead of jump-scares and goosebumps, the author brings in elaborate discussion on meanings of words like 'uncanny', 'space', 'echo', etc., so that as the meanings sink in us in the most accurate and non-trivial manner, so does the horror of the situation.

But, in the end, it remains a story of love, seeking, remembering, hope, and redemption.

[!note] Notes and Highlights
Notes from House Of Leaves

[!info] About House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski
THE MIND-BENDING CULT CLASSIC ABOUT A HOUSE THAT’S LARGER ON THE INSIDE THAN ON THE OUTSIDE • A masterpiece of horror and an astonishingly immersive, maze-like reading experience that redefines the boundaries of a novel. ''Simultaneously reads like a thriller and like a strange, dreamlike excursion into the subconscious." —Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times "Thrillingly alive, sublimely creepy, distressingly scary, breathtakingly intelligent—it renders most other fiction meaningless." —Bret Easton Ellis, bestselling author of American Psycho “This demonically brilliant book is impossible to ignore.” —Jonathan Lethem, award-winning author of Motherless Brooklyn One of The Atlantic’s Great American Novels of the Past 100 Years Years ago, when House of Leaves was first being passed around, it was nothing more than a badly bundled heap of paper, parts of which would occasionally surface on the Internet. No one could have anticipated the small but devoted following this terrifying story would soon command. Starting with an odd assortment of marginalized youth—musicians, tattoo artists, programmers, strippers, environmentalists, and adrenaline junkies—the book eventually made its way into the hands of older generations, who not only found themselves in those strangely arranged pages but also discovered a way back into the lives of their estranged children. Now made available in book form, complete with the original colored words, vertical footnotes, and second and third appendices, the story remains unchanged. Similarly, the cultural fascination with House of Leaves remains as fervent and as imaginative as ever. The novel has gone on to inspire doctorate-level courses and masters theses, cultural phenomena like the online urban legend of “the backrooms,” and incredible works of art in entirely unrealted mediums from music to video games. Neither Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist Will Navidson nor his companion Karen Green was prepared to face the consequences of the impossibility of their new home, until the day their two little children wandered off and their voices eerily began to return another story—of creature darkness, of an ever-growing abyss behind a closet door, and of that unholy growl which soon enough would tear through their walls and consume all their dreams.

Of Zampano's, and Truant's. ↩︎
Of Navidson's, Karen's, and even Tom's. ↩︎
Of Truant's mother's. ↩︎
Of Thumper's. ↩︎

Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell

2025-05-27T13:44:52.000Z

১৯৩৬-১৯৩৭ সাল। অরওয়েল সস্ত্রীক স্পেনে। স্পেনের সিভিল ওয়্যার চলছে তখন। ক্যাটালোনিয়ার আকাশে-বাতাসে সাম্যের গান। কেউ কাউকে বড়লোক বলে তোয়াজ করে না। কেউ গরীব বলে টিপসও নেয় না। জাতে ইংরেজ এই লেখক এসেছেন ফ্যাসিস্টদের বিরুদ্ধে যুদ্ধ করতে। যুদ্ধে ফ্রন্টে গিয়েছেন দুইবার, শেষবার আহত হয়ে অল্পের জন্য বেঁচেও গিয়েছেন।

তো, এই যদি বইয়ের কন্টেন্ট হত, তাহলে অরওয়েল বোধকরি বইটাই লিখতেন না। কয়েকমাসের মধ্যে সোভিয়েত রাশিয়ার লেজুড় ধরা কমিউনিস্ট পার্টির অ্যানার্কিস্ট ও এন্টি-স্ট্যালিন কমিউনিস্ট পার্টিগুলোর বিরুদ্ধে নিকৃষ্টতম প্রোপাগান্ডা ও দমন-পীড়নের একটা ফার্স্টহ্যান্ড আইডিয়া আছে এই বইতে। দেখা গেলো কীভাবে প্রলেতারিয়েতের স্বার্থরক্ষার একটা দল ডানে সরতে সরতে কট্টর ডানপন্থী হয়ে যেতে পারে এবং প্রপাগান্ডা ও নিপীড়নে ফ্যাসিস্টদেরও ছাড়িয়ে যেতে পারে।সিভিল ওয়্যারের ইতিহাসের পপুলার ভার্সন, অর্থাৎ সোভিয়েত প্রণীত ভার্সনে বলা যেতে পারে তার ঠিক উল্টটা বলা।

এই বইটা না পড়লে 1984 এবং Animal Farm পড়ার পর অরওয়েলকে আপনার এন্টি-কমিউনিস্ট মনে হবে। আদতে জর্জ অরওয়েল কমিউনিজমের ভুত দেখেছেন। তিনি অ্যানার্কিস্ট, এবং সোশ্যালিস্টও বটে।

[!note] Notes and Highlights
Homage to Catalonia

[!info] About Homage to Catalonia by George Orwell
In 1936 Orwell went to Spain to report on the Civil War and instead joined the fight against the Fascists. This famous account describes the war and Orwell' s experiences.

Gödel, Escher, Bach_ An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas R. Hofstadter

2025-05-28T07:37:05.000Z

This is a journey, and a deeply contemplative one. But, what is the goal? In the author's words:

Gödel, Escher, Bach_ An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas R. Hofstadter

But a person like me, who enjoys the journey more than the destination, surely finds their stays in the way nourishing. For this is a book nothing short of cross-disciplinary. Music, Mathematics, Philosophy, Biology, Logic, and Computer Science, even Zen Buddhism, all found their fair share of pages in this work.

The Strings

Gödel

Philosophers of mathematics have toiled long to make mathematics's theoretical underpinning unassailable. Many minds of extraordinary abilities have devoted their lives to it. Gödel, in his incompleteness theorems, has shown that such efforts are futile. A sufficiently powerful system cannot prove all truths about itself.

Escher

Escher's paintings are illusory, puzzling to say the least. They are full of self-reference and paradoxical connections.

Bach

Bach is beautiful. Bach is sublime. And, Bach, mysteriously, is more mathematical than we think he is.

The Braid

These strings, along with others, braided and narrated a story and theory about consciousness. At the base of it is Gödel's incompleteness theorems, which allow, with sufficient layers, to build a self-referential and introspective system which is the basis of consciousness. For the author, this is the cornerstone of true AI.

Summarising like this, of course, doesn't do justice to this book. Instead of a run-of-the-mill scientific book, the author tried to invoke vivid scenarios to not only know this, but also to understand and feel his arguments. The primary tool for this endeavour was some Quan-like, paradoxical conversations used as preludes to every chapter.

With all these literary devices, this book is not a pop-science book. The subject matter, and to the depths they have been covered, requires a slow-going, mindful approach to comprehend.

Thoroughly enjoyed!

[!note] Notes and Highlights
Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas R. Hofstadter

[!info] About Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas R. Hofstadter
Douglas Hofstadter's book is concerned directly with the nature of “maps” or links between formal systems. However, according to Hofstadter, the formal system that underlies all mental activity transcends the system that supports it. If life can grow out of the formal chemical substrate of the cell, if consciousness can emerge out of a formal system of firing neurons, then so too will computers attain human intelligence. Gödel, Escher, Bach is a wonderful exploration of fascinating ideas at the heart of cognitive science: meaning, reduction, recursion, and much more.

Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego by Sigmund Freud

2025-05-27T13:06:05.000Z

ওয়েল… পুরোটা একইরকম কনভিন্সিং লাগে নাই। স্পেশালি প্রিহিস্ট্রিক্যাল জায়গাগুলো। সব মিলিয়ে মন্দ না।

[!note] Notes and Highlights
Group Psychology and The Analysis of The Ego

[!info] About Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego by Sigmund Freud
This early work by Sigmund Freud was originally published in 1921 and we are now republishing it with a brand new introductory biography. 'Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego' is a work on the psychology of group membership and behaviour. Sigismund Schlomo Freud was born on 6th May 1856, in the Moravian town of P ibor, now part of the Czech Republic. He studied a variety of subjects, including philosophy, physiology, and zoology, graduating with an MD in 1881. Freud made a huge and lasting contribution to the field of psychology with many of his methods still being used in modern psychoanalysis. He inspired much discussion on the wealth of theories he produced and the reactions to his works began a century of great psychological investigation."

General System Theory by Ludwig von Bertalanffy

2025-12-30T13:23:29.000Z

This book neither dives deep into the subject nor is a textbook. It is more of an overview of the subject and a survey of the state of its development.

In various branches of science, we encounter systems regularly. Von Bertalanffy defines systems^[1] as such:

According to von Bertalanffy, some phenomena can only be understood/interpreted at the system level:

His aim was to establish a theory for systems that is applicable to all systems.

The implication of this idea is a paradigm shift. But, this is not only an ambitious idea. The author, using his multidisciplinary knowledge, mathematics, and reasoning— has given a sufficiently compelling demonstration of what he wanted to achieve.

I will not agree with everything the author said, though. For example, he was unable to see how music, culture etc. are useful for survival:

Greek sculpture, Renaissance painting. German music—indeed, any aspect of culture— has nothing to do with utility, or with the better survival of individuals or nations.

Culture actually is very important for our survival. It enables us to achieve higher, and more complex organisation, often spanning lifetimes of multiple generations.

But these are minor things. His main point remains valid. If we think from a system perspective, many of our current ideas will need radical reevaluation. The author reevaluated stress like this:

General System Theory_ Foundations, Development, Applications

In this light, modern approaches to creating a stress-free environment seem not only unnecessary but even harmful.

Von Bertelanffy belonged to an age when scientists used to study not only their own little scoped part of science but science in general, philosophy, art, and life as a whole. He had his failings and moments of shameful inhumanity.^[2] But, academically, he was one of the finest of his age. It shows in his work.

[!note] Notes and Highlights
General System Theory: Foundations, Development, Applications

[!info] About General System Theory by Ludwig von Bertalanffy
Gathered here are Ludwig von Bertalanffy's writings on general systems theory, selected and edited to show the evolution of systems theory and to present it applications to problem solving.

System: a regularly interacting or interdependent group of items forming a unified whole. Merriam-Webster ↩︎
On von Bertalanffy's Nazi affiliation: https://journal.emergentpublications.com/Article/702a3a8a-5b61-487e-851c-196aacb70ad3/academic ↩︎

From Hell by Alan Moore Eddie Campbell Pete Mullins

2026-04-02T19:35:41.000Z

Food for thought for sure, From Hell is a complex piece of work with many layers of human emotions, expressions, and delusions.

One thing I particularly like about Alan Moore is his all-pervading kindness to everyone he presents in his works, both villains and heroes, victims and criminals.

So, we see Sir William Gull— a genius, a murderer, deranged to many but sure of his superiority, only found his true nature of derangement and inferiority in his visit to a higher plain.

There are some memorable panels and monologues that will keep me thinking for quite a while.

Although Moore used Hinton's fourth dimension as a central concept of this work, he, probably with his modern sense of four-dimensional space, understood the fourth dimension as time, whereas Hinton's was an Euclidean one. However, since the Euclidean dimensions are all spatial, it may have helped Moore to think along the line where he can craft a simile like the panels above, where he compared the causality with architecture.

A masterpiece!

[!info] About From Hell by Alan Moore, Eddie Campbell, and Pete Mullins
In graphic novel format, offers a fictional investigation into a series of murders in 1888 London carried out by the infamous Jack the Ripper.

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

2026-03-30T08:32:08.000Z

I have read quite a few #dystopian novels. Some of them are the archetypes of this genre. NONE have moved me as much as Fahrenheit 451 did.

A significant part of such affectation is personal. In my life spanning three decades, reading is the most consistent thing. Yes, I have a society (primarily consisting of my wife and long-dead writers). Yes, I have had enough diversions like gaming in cybercafés until I faint. But, for at least 25 years, I have been reading, and I never quit. While I remained an ignoramus and quite a bit more confused than I was as a child, it became a part of my identity.

So, a world without access to books, and where reading is a criminal act, I surely am doomed— as if I felt the horror of it in my bones.

Many good dystopian works share an aspect with satires— exaggeration. This is often intentional. After all, we are painting a future here, and we know very little about the future. Authors often exaggerate what they know to project what can be. So, in 1953, this might sound incredible:

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

In the twenty-first century, it doesn't sound so far from the truth with apps like Blinkist. Another such prophetic paragraph is this:

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

Without books, and full of non-combustible data, with walls of the drawing room covered with large TVs, the citizens are living in a blissful society of the spectacles where even thinking is a commodity. Faber pointed out the emptiness of such a society:

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

"I don't talk things, sir, " said Faber. "I talk the meaning of things. I sit here and know I'm alive."

But, I may retract the blissful part. It is surely decaying. One sign of that is the attraction to violent outlets of emotions, like extreme sports, among teenagers. It will surely collapse since most don't know how to handle advanced technology anymore.

With global literacy declining qualitatively, we are already observing some of these effects even now. While the book ends with a mildly hopeful note, I am not sure about our reality.

[!note] Notes and Highlights
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

[!info] About Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
Nearly seventy years after its original publication, Ray Bradbury’s internationally acclaimed novel Fahrenheit 451 stands as a classic of world literature set in a bleak, dystopian future. Today its message has grown more relevant than ever before. Guy Montag is a fireman. His job is to destroy the most illegal of commodities, the printed book, along with the houses in which they are hidden. Montag never questions the destruction and ruin his actions produce, returning each day to his bland life and wife, Mildred, who spends all day with her television “family.” But when he meets an eccentric young neighbor, Clarisse, who introduces him to a past where people didn’t live in fear and to a present where one sees the world through the ideas in books instead of the mindless chatter of television, Montag begins to question everything he has ever known.

Differance

2026-03-24T17:50:35.000Z

[!tldr] TL;DR
Derrida introduced Differance (notice the a instead of e) as a concept of creating differences over time. It is temporal.

While TL;DRs are good in the short term and nice to know, and will get us some nerd points in society, to understand the importance of this concept, one has to not only read this 24-page essay, but also a substantial part of the materials mentioned there.

So, on one hand, we have our plain, old difference. We use it all the time. This means two entities are not the same. But, this newly introduced differance is the process that works in our world over time and creates the differences, often of the same thing.

It is important to understand that differance doesn't exist, we can only see differences made by it. We cannot even bring it into existence because that will actually dissolve it.

This also means that it is not how God has been defined in the negative theology.

Now, let's think about why this concept is important or interesting. First, let's consider this passage:

It means our knowledge about this world, all the categorisations we have in our head, so that we can distinguish this or that, is not based on our comprehensive knowledge of things. Instead, we know too little, but we know the differences between things. So, you can imagine that our reality is a big block of marble and we see it being chiselled away bit by bit, acknowledging differences, we get to know the ontological categories. These differences are the defining factors of the world.

Differance is that process of chiselling, over time.

Differance is also the driving force for Dasein— a temporal phenomenon. It doesn't exist at a point in time, but over a stretch of time, ever changing, ever interacting. It is the tapestry of ever-accumulating traces created by differance, which often has the illusion of being only at present.

Coming back to the signs, the signs we use in our languages are placeholders for things that are not present. This act of signification itself depends on differance because with this sign, we are deferring the entity we are signifying. Maybe we haven't stumbled upon languages and found a nice tool to use. Languages, perhaps, have a deeper ontological root, which makes it necessary for sentient beings, which brings us to the closing thought of this essay:

[!quote-with-source] Jacques Derrida
Being
speaks
through every language;
everywhere and always.

[!note] Notes and Highlights
Differance by Jacques Derrida

Cosmos by Carl Sagan

2025-06-05T20:30:05.000Z

Review

কসমস প্রথমত কার্ল সেগানের একটা বিখ্যাত টিভি ধারাবাহিক। বিষয়বস্তু আমাদের মহাবিশ্ব। বইটি কিছুটা তার লিখিত সংস্করণ।

কসমস (cosmos) শব্দটি গ্রীক, অর্থ শৃঙ্খলা, chaos এর বিপরীত শব্দ এটি। মহাবিশ্বের শৃঙ্খলার সৌন্দর্য বইটির উপজীব্য।

বইটির তথ্যগুলোর কথা বলতে গেলে যারা সমসাময়িক বিজ্ঞানের সব খবর রাখেন তাদের কাছে পুরনো খবর তবে এখনো প্রাসঙ্গিক সাধারণ মানুষের জন্য। আর শুধু বিজ্ঞান না, বিজ্ঞানের ইতিহাসও বেশ চমৎকারভাবে উঠে এসেছে। উঠে এসেছে আমাদের পূর্বপুরুষদের প্রজ্ঞা যা ধর্মীয় ও ভাববাদী দর্শন বারবার দমন করতে চেয়েছে। ব্যক্তিগতভাবে বিজ্ঞানচর্চার ইতিহাস আর সেগানের চমৎকার লেখনীর জন্য বইটা আমার ভালো লেগেছে।

উঠে এসেছে নানান কথা। তবে সবগুলোই বুঝি কেন্দ্রে রাখলো আমাদের পরিচয়। এই মহাবিশ্বে আমরা কী, কতটুকু ক্ষুদ্র, কতটুকু মূল্যবান, কতটুকু ক্ষমতা আমাদের এই বিষয়গুলো উঠে এসেছে বৈজ্ঞানিক সত্যের সাথে। প্রাসঙ্গিকভাবেই উঠে এসেছে মানুষ নিজের ক্ষুদ্রতা অস্বীকার করতে, কোনো ঐশ্বরিক স্বত্তার মান বজায় রাখতে কীভাবে বিজ্ঞানের বিরুদ্ধে দাঁড়ায়।

মানুষ খুব আত্মকেন্দ্রিক স্বাভাবিকভাবে। সমাজ নেহায়েতই দায়ে পড়ে তৈরী করা। তাই নিজেকে সৃষ্টির সেরা জীব হিসেবে দেখার ইচ্ছে প্রবল। কিন্তু বিজ্ঞান কোনো ব্যক্তি কেন, কোনোকিছুরই ধার ধারে না। যারা সত্যসন্ধানী তাদের কাছে ক্ষুদ্রতা পীড়াদায়ক না। তাদের চোখে মহাবিশ্ব তার সমস্ত সৌন্দর্য নিয়ে ধরা দেয়। যেমন টলেমি বলেছেন‌,^[1]

Mortal as I am, I know that I am born for a day. But when I follow at my pleasure the serried multitude of the stars in their circular course, my feet no longer touch the Earth…

সেগান বারবার চেষ্টা করেছেন সেই সত্যের সৌন্দর্যের স্বাদ দিতে।

আমাদের দেশে, এবং বোধহয় সারাবিশ্বেই সাধারণ মানুষ বিজ্ঞান সম্পর্কে কম জানেন। অন্তত বিজ্ঞানের দর্শন আমাদের দেশে প্রচণ্ড অবহেলিত একটা বিষয়। লোকে বিজ্ঞান বিভাগে চিকিৎসক বা প্রকৌশলী হতে পড়ে। সাধারণ মানুষ জানে বিজ্ঞানে ফ্যান চলে, বাতি জ্বলে। এই বইটায় বিজ্ঞানের দর্শন বলা হয়েছে সহজবোধ্যভাবে।

ভাববাদী দর্শনের রক্ষাকর্তারা, বিশেষ করে ধর্মপ্রচারকরা মানুষের মূল্যবোধের জন্য ধর্ম অপরিহার্য, বিজ্ঞান অব্যবহারযোগ্য বলেন প্রায়শই। বিজ্ঞান মূল্যবোধ সৃষ্টি করতে অপারগ, কেননা এটি তার কাজ না। তবে এই জ্ঞান আমাদের মূল্যবোধগত সিদ্ধান্ত নেওয়ার জন্য আরো নিঁখুত তথ্য দিতে পারে, তার ব্যবহারে দিতে পারে সাবলীলতা। আর ধর্ম? গুণে দেখবেন, ধর্ম ও জাতীয়তাবাদ কত মানুষের মৃত্যুর কারণ এ পর্যন্ত। কার্ল সেগান এই বইতে বিজ্ঞানী হিসেবে তার নিজস্ব মূল্যবোধ জানিয়েছেন,

লক্ষ্য করুন পাঠক, আপনার ক্ষুদ্রতা সত্ত্বেও আপনি গুরুত্বপূর্ণ, তেমনি গুরুত্বপূর্ণ আপনার বিরুদ্ধচারী মানুষটি। এমনকি কোনো কারণই হত্যার জন্য যথেষ্ট নয়। এই মানবিকতা একদিন মহাবৈশ্বিকতায় পৌঁছে যাবে আমাদের বৈজ্ঞানিক সত্যদর্শনের আলোকে।

আগেই বলেছি, বইয়ের লেখা সাবলীল ও আকর্ষণীয়। এটা হচ্ছে সেইধরণের বই যা প্রত্যেকের পড়া উচিত। প্রত্যেকের।

[!note] Notes and Highlights
Notes from Cosmos by Carl Sagan

[!info] About Cosmos by Carl Sagan
* Spacecraft missions to nearby planets * The Library of ancient Alexandria * The human brain * Egyptian hieroglyphics * The origin of life * The death of the sun * The evolution of galaxies * The origins of matter, suns and worlds The story of fifteen billion years of cosmic evolution transforming matter and life into consciousness, of how science and civilisation grew up together, and of the forces and individuals who helped shape modern science. A story told with Carl Sagan's remarkable ability to make scientific ideas both comprehensible and exciting.

Paraphrased from as quotes by Carl Sagan ↩︎

Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates

2025-05-27T11:53:59.000Z

A first-hand account of what it means to be an African-American in our time. Profound, penetrating, moving yet tranquil in tone.

[!note] Notes and Highlights
Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates

[!info] About Between the World and Me by Ta-Nehisi Coates
Between the World and Me is Ta-Nehisi Coates’s attempt to answer these questions in a letter to his adolescent son. Coates shares with his son—and readers—the story of his awakening to the truth about his place in the world through a series of revelatory experiences, from Howard University to Civil War battlefields, from the South Side of Chicago to Paris, from his childhood home to the living rooms of mothers whose children’s lives were taken as American plunder. Beautifully woven from personal narrative, reimagined history, and fresh, emotionally charged reportage, Between the World and Me clearly illuminates the past, bracingly confronts our present, and offers a transcendent vision for a way forward.

Being and Time by Martin Heidegger

2025-05-27T11:51:53.000Z

[!warning]
Before we proceed, a perhaps typical reminder: I have not understood a lot/most/anything of this book.

I have a very mixed feeling regarding this book.

Heidegger wanted to answer the question of all questions, the question of our being. He stopped halfway (the second part of the book has never been published). However, the first part is thought-provoking enough for generations of philosophers.

A personal takeaway of mine from this unfinished magnum opus is the approach of expressing a body of interconnected content pretty coherently is immensely difficult. Nowadays, I often find myself silent in the fear that there is too much to explain.

Here go the things that bothered me…

In existential philosophy, the point of departure is to be expected from existence, not some idealized essence. Heidegger was existential all the way. He was sound in his argument. However, even being a person of modern era, he is plagued by the same tendency of disregarding natural science like most other philosophers. Metaphysics must not deny the findings of much rigorous observations of modern physics . We cannot redefine time (at least not usefully) without taking note of what physics says of the time.

The same goes for the Dasein. Dasein, the conscious being is modelled after only conscious beings we know, that is, Human. I think it is important to consult biology in this regard if we want anything verifiable at all.

Both of these two issues, of course, stems from the tendency of not bothering with proof common amongst philosophers.

[!note] Notes and Highlights
Being and Time by Martin Heidegger

[!info] About Being and Time by Martin Heidegger
One of the most important philosophical works of our time, a work that has had tremendous influence on philosophy, literature, and psychology, and has literally changed the intellectual map of the modern world.

Barracoon by Zora Neale Hurston

2025-05-27T11:48:21.000Z

দাস কিনে শ্বেতাঙ্গরা দোষী তা সর্বজনস্বীকৃত, তবে তাদের দাসের যোগান দিয়েছে কিন্তু কৃষ্ণাঙ্গ যুদ্ধবাজ জাতিগুলো তাদের যুদ্ধবন্দীদের দিয়েই। তেমন করেই কোসুল্লা নামের একজন আফ্রিকান এসে পড়েন আমেরিকায়, শেষ ব্ল্যাক কার্গোর অংশ হিসেবে। অন্য অনেকের তুলনায় তার দাসত্বর সময়কাল ছিল কম। এই বইটি তার নিশ্চিহ্নিত গোত্র, তার দাসত্ব ও মুক্তি ও পরবর্তী দেশহীনতার গল্প।

কোসুল্লা, লিখতে পড়তে জানতেন না। তার ইংরেজি শুনে-শেখা। জোরা হার্স্টন সেই ভাষাতেই তাঁর কাহিনী তুলে ধরেছেন। এই বইতে স্লেভারি ও স্বাধীনতার গভীর বোধের কথা নেই, সদ্য মুক্তিপ্রাপ্ত আফ্রিকানদের আমেরিকান হয়ে ওঠার বাসনা নেই, আছে একজন দাসের ব্যক্তিগত গল্প।

তবে পশ্চিমা সভ্যতার অগ্রসরমানতা এবং তার ফলাফলস্বরূপ শ্রেষ্ঠত্বের যে মোটামুটিরকমের অবিসংবাদিত রূপটা সবাই জানে, এই বইটা পড়লে তা ভেঙে পড়ে। বলা যায় কোসুল্লা তা এলেবেলে ভাবে ভেঙে দিয়েছেন কোনো গূঢ় কথার মারপ্যাঁচ ছাড়াই। কেন একজন ফ্রী মানুষকে স্লেভ হতে হয়, বা কেনই বা বিয়ে করতে গেলে লাইসেন্স লাগবে আধুনিক সভ্যতা আজও এইসব সরল প্রশ্নের উত্তর দিতে হিমশিম খায়। তারসাথে তার ট্রাইবাল রিউচুয়ালগুলোর যে বর্ণনা উঠে এসেছে তাতে মনে হতে পারে যে পশ্চিমা বিচারব্যবস্থা ও সামাজিকতা এখনো ততদূর পৌঁছে পারেনি।

[!note] Notes and Highlights
Barracoon by Zora Neale Hurston

[!info] About Barracoon by Zora Neale Hurston
New York Times Bestseller Amazon's Best Hostory Book of the Year 2018 Time Magazine’s Best Nonfiction Book of 2018 New York Public Library’s Best Book of 2018 NPR’s Book Concierge Best Book of 2018 Economist Book of the Year “A profound impact on Hurston’s literary legacy.”—New York Times “One of the greatest writers of our time.”—Toni Morrison “Zora Neale Hurston’s genius has once again produced a Maestrapiece.”—Alice Walker A major literary event: a newly published work from the author of the American classic Their Eyes Were Watching God, with a foreword from Pulitzer Prize-winning author Alice Walker, brilliantly illuminates the horror and injustices of slavery as it tells the true story of one of the last-known survivors of the Atlantic slave trade—abducted from Africa on the last "Black Cargo" ship to arrive in the United States. In 1927, Zora Neale Hurston went to Plateau, Alabama, just outside Mobile, to interview eighty-six-year-old Cudjo Lewis. Of the millions of men, women, and children transported from Africa to America as slaves, Cudjo was then the only person alive to tell the story of this integral part of the nation’s history. Hurston was there to record Cudjo’s firsthand account of the raid that led to his capture and bondage fifty years after the Atlantic slave trade was outlawed in the United States. In 1931, Hurston returned to Plateau, the African-centric community three miles from Mobile founded by Cudjo and other former slaves from his ship. Spending more than three months there, she talked in depth with Cudjo about the details of his life. During those weeks, the young writer and the elderly formerly enslaved man ate peaches and watermelon that grew in the backyard and talked about Cudjo’s past—memories from his childhood in Africa, the horrors of being captured and held in a barracoon for selection by American slavers, the harrowing experience of the Middle Passage packed with more than 100 other souls aboard the Clotilda, and the years he spent in slavery until the end of the Civil War. Based on those interviews, featuring Cudjo’s unique vernacular, and written from Hurston’s perspective with the compassion and singular style that have made her one of the preeminent American authors of the twentieth-century, Barracoon masterfully illustrates the tragedy of slavery and of one life forever defined by it. Offering insight into the pernicious legacy that continues to haunt us all, black and white, this poignant and powerful work is an invaluable contribution to our shared history and culture.

Barabbas by Pär Lagerkvist

2025-05-27T11:47:40.000Z

Barabbas was conceived and born in hatred of all things created in heaven and earth and of the Creator of heaven and earth.

Fatalistically Barabbas was unable to have a God. So when he got acquitted and Jesus got crucified, he tried hard to believe, to behave like a Christian but failed miserably.

Lagerkvist portrayed Barabbas as a very dynamic character. Rational yet with a deep urge to believe. Aversive of society, yet kind in his unique way. Vindictive, but not when he is under attack. Confused but his heart is in the right place.

Lagerkvist explored Barabbas, along with some other fantastic character and that's also in only a very few pages, in a concise novel which moves, both emotionally and intellectually.

[!note] Notes and Highlights
Barabbas by Par Lagerkvist

[!info] About Barabbas by Pär Lagerkvist
Barabbas is the acquitted; the man whose life was exchanged for that of Jesus of Nazareth, crucified upon the hill of Golgotha. Barabbas is a man condemned to have no god. "Christos Iesus" is carved on the disk suspended from his neck, but he cannot affirm his faith. He cannot pray. He can only say, "I want to believe." Translated from the Swedish by Alan Blair

Annihilation of Caste The Annotated Critical Edition by Arundhati Roy

2025-05-27T11:47:06.000Z

ভারতবর্ষের ইতিহাস তার ভুখণ্ডের মতই বিস্তৃত ও প্রাচীন। যে অংশটা আমাদের বিদ্যায়তনে পড়ানো হয় তা মূলত গত দুই শতকের বিপ্লব ও স্বাধীনতার ইতিহাস। বৃটিশদের হাতেই দুটি ভাগে ভাগ হলো ভারতবর্ষ। তার পঁচিশ বছর যেতে না যেতেই পাকিস্তান ভেঙে হলো দুটি দেশ। স্বাধীনতাই যে এই উপমহাদেশের মানুষের একমাত্র প্রয়োজন ছিল না তা এতদিনে আমরা বুঝে গেছি। সুশিক্ষার অভাব এবং আমাদের বহুযুগের কুসংস্কারের আধিক্যে আজও এই উপমহাদেশে হীনবল। আমাদের সকল সমস্যার মধ্যে সবচেয়ে গুরুতর আমি মনে করি সাম্প্রদায়িকতা। এই বইয়ের বিষয়বস্তু এক বিশেষ ধরণের সাম্প্রদায়িকতা যা হিন্দুধর্মের মজ্জাগত একটি বিষয় যাকে আমরা বর্ণবাদ বলে জানি।

‘জাত-পাত তোড়ক মণ্ডল’ নামের একটি সংগঠন (মূলত কিছু দেশহিতৈষী উচ্চবর্ণের মানুষের প্রচেষ্টার ফসল) ড‌. আম্বেদকারকে তাদের একটি সভার সভাপতিত্ব করতে অনুরোধ জানান। পরবর্তীতে মণ্ডলের তুলনামূলক নরম অবস্থানের সাথে আম্বেদকারের না মিললে তিনি সভাপতি হওয়া থেকে বিরত থাকেন। সেই সভার বক্তৃতাটি তিনি মুদ্রণ ও বিতরণ করেন ‘Annihilation of Caste’ নামে। এই বইটির শেষ সংস্করণে যুক্ত হয়েছিল এই বইয়ের প্রতিক্রিয়ায় লেখা গান্ধীর উত্তর ও তার পাল্টা উত্তর। এগুলোর সাথে আম্বেদকারকে নিয়ে লেখা অরুন্ধতী রায়ের একটি প্রবন্ধ এবং প্রচুর টীকা সমেত একটি সংস্করণ করেছে লন্ডনের ভার্সো(Verso) প্রকাশনী। আমি সেটাই পড়েছি। বইটি নিয়ে কিছু বলার আগে আমার মনে হয় কিছু কিছু ব্যাপারে একটু বলা দরকার।

হিন্দুধর্ম ও হিন্দুত্ববাদ

ধর্ম হিসেবে হিন্দুধর্মের বয়স কম, হিন্দুত্ববাদের বয়স আরো কম। যারা ইতমধ্যে আমাকে হাজার-হাজার বছর পুরনো হিন্দুধর্মের গল্প বলার কথা চিন্তা করছেন তাদের জ্ঞাতার্থে বলি, হিন্দুরা নিজেদের হিন্দু বলে জেনেছে বহিরাগত জাতিগুলো আসার পরে। এমনকি বৌদ্ধ ও জৈনদের তারা আলাদা ধর্ম বলে স্বীকার করত না। সে অর্থে হিন্দুধর্মের বয়স খুবই কম। হিন্দুত্ববাদ হিন্দুধর্মের রাজনৈতিক দর্শন, এর উৎপত্তি ও বিকাশ ব্রিটিশ শাসনামলে। বৈষ্ণব ও আরো কিছু সম্প্রদায়ের দর্শন উদার হলেও মূলধারার হিন্দুধর্ম খুবই অমানবিক ও সহিংস।

বর্ণাশ্রম ও জাতিবাদ

হিন্দুধর্মে বর্ণবাদ ও জাতিবাদ ভিন্ন ধারণা। মনুসংহিতায় হিন্দুদের চারটি বর্ণে ভাগ করা হয়েছে। শ্রেষ্ঠত্বের ক্রমানুসারে ব্রাহ্মণ, ক্ষত্রিয়, বৈশ্য ও শুদ্র। বস্তুত গুণাবলির দ্বারা বর্ণ নির্ণয়ের নিয়ম থাকলেও ক্রমে তা জন্ম দ্বারা নির্ণয়ই রীতি হয়ে ওঠে। এই চারবর্ণের বাইরে সবাই অবর্ণ ও অস্পৃশ্য। অপরপক্ষে, জাতি পুরোপুরিই জন্মের ওপর নির্ভরশীল। সময়ের সাথে ব্যবহারিকক্ষেত্রে দুটোর পার্থক্য ম্রিয়মান হয়ে এসেছে। বর্ণে-বর্ণে, জাতিতে-জাতিতে সম্পর্ক ও মেলামেশায় বিধি-নিষেধ আছে।

আম্বেদকার: যে বীরের গাঁথা নেই

আম্বেদকার এসেছেন অস্পৃশ্য জাত থেকে। তারা বিদ্যা ও ধনগ্রহণে অযোগ্য, ভালো পোশাক, অলঙ্কার পরলে বা ঘি খেলেও যাদের শাস্তি পেতে হয়। সবর্ণ হিন্দুরা যাদের ছায়াও মাড়ায় না, যাদের সংশ্রব এড়িয়ে চলে। বস্তুত এ দাসত্বেরই নামান্তর। কোনো কোনো দেশে দাসদের চাইলে মুক্তি দেওয়া যেত। মুক্ত হওয়া দাস নিজের চেষ্টায় জীবনের উন্নতির চেষ্টা করলে কারো কিছু বলার ছিল না। কিন্তু সবচেয়ে দুঃখের বিষয় হলো জাত থেকে কোনো মুক্তি নেই।

তো এই আম্বেদকার ব্রিটিশদের শাসনে শিক্ষার সুযোগ পেলেন। পেলেন এক রাজার আনুকূল্য। বিদেশে পড়লেন সেখানে সম্মান পেলেন। কিন্তু দেশে ফিরে তিনি সেই অস্পৃশ্যই রয়ে গেলেন।

আম্বেদকার সংগ্রাম করলেন। নিষ্পেষিত মানুষদের জন্য। কংগ্রেসের মত গোঁড়া হিন্দুত্ববাদী রাজনৈতিক দল সবসময়ই তাকে শত্রুর কাতারে ফেলেছে। বলা হয়, গান্ধীর সবচেয়ে বড় শত্রু তিনি। বলা হবেই বা না কেন? স্পষ্টভাষী ও বাস্তববাদী তিনি। বিনয় ছিল যথেষ্ট তবু সত্যের খাতিরে গান্ধীর সফেদ ভাবমূর্তি কাদায় মাখামাখি করা ছাড়া কোনো উপায় ছিল না। ব্যক্তি হিসেবে গান্ধী সারাজীবনই স্বার্থান্বেষী ছিলেন। প্রচণ্ড মৌলবাদী হলেও সময়মত ভোল পাল্টাতে তার দ্বিধা ছিল না। অরুন্ধতী রায়ের মতে:

তাছাড়া খুব ইনিয়ে-বিনিয়ে সাফাই গাইতেও তার জুড়ি ছিল না। জাতিবাদ নিয়ে তিনি বলেন:

আম্বেদকারের সংগ্রাম তখনকার স্বরাজের সংগ্রাম থেকে অধিকতর কঠিন ছিল। স্বরাজের আন্দোলন বস্তুত নিজেদের দেশের ওপর নিজেদের কর্তৃত্বের দাবী। কিন্তু এইসব অস্পৃশ্য জাতির দেশ থেকেও নেই। গান্ধীর সাথে আম্বেদকারের প্রথম সাক্ষাত সম্পর্কে অরুন্ধতী রায় লিখেছেন:

এই অবস্থান থেকে ছিল তার লড়াইটা।

তার চরিত্রের আরেকটা গুরুত্বপূর্ণ বিষয় হচ্ছে এই সমস্ত বিষয়ে তার প্রচণ্ড আবেগ থাকলেও তার লেখায় তিনি যুক্তি-প্রমাণের বাইরে এক পা-ও হাঁটেননি। অর্থাৎ, আলোচনায় তিনি নৈর্ব্যক্তিক।

পাঠপ্রতিক্রিয়া

এই বক্তৃতার শ্রোতা হওয়ার কথা ছিল মূলত শিক্ষিত হিন্দুসমাজ। তাত্ত্বিক বিষয়গুলো চেষ্টা করেছেন শিক্ষিতসাধারণের বোধগম্য করতে। তিনি জাতিবাদ ও বর্ণবাদের উৎপত্তি ও বিস্তার, তার কর্মপদ্ধতি ও মনস্তত্ত্ব, গভীরতা ও প্রভাব কখনো উদাহরণ দিয়ে, কখনো শাস্ত্রের উদ্ধৃতি দিয়ে বুঝিয়ে বলেছেন। জাতিবাদের পক্ষের আলোচনার দাবিগুলো খন্ডন করেছেন আধুনিক সমাজতত্ত্ব, নৃতত্ত্ব এবং বিজ্ঞানের আলোকে। সমসাময়িক অন্যান্য প্রচেষ্টার নির্মোহ মূল্যায়ন করেছেন। চেষ্টা করেছেন সমাধান দিতে। এতই সংহত ও শক্তিশালী লেখা যে এটার বিরুদ্ধে লেখা গান্ধীর প্রতিক্রিয়ায় যুক্তি বলতে কিছু ছিল না।

এখন, কারো কারো কাছে এটি ঐতিহাসিক দলিল। ঐতিহাসিক ব্যর্থতার দলিল, কেননা এখনো শুধু ভারতে ১৬কোটি অস্পৃশ্য মানুষের বাস। ব্যর্থতা আম্বেদকারের না, হিন্দুদের। যে ব্যর্থতার কথা বলেছিলেন আম্বেদকার। শুধু একটি মূর্খ জনগোষ্ঠী কর্ণপাত করেনি:

[!note] Notes and Highlights
Annihilation of Caste by B.R. Ambedkar

[!info] About Annihilation of Caste by B.R. Ambedkar
“What the Communist Manifesto is to the capitalist world, Annihilation of Caste is to India.” —Anand Teltumbde, author of The Persistence of Caste B.R. Ambedkar’s Annihilation of Caste is one of the most important, yet neglected, works of political writing from India. Written in 1936, it is an audacious denunciation of Hinduism and its caste system. Ambedkar – a figure like W.E.B. Du Bois – offers a scholarly critique of Hindu scriptures, scriptures that sanction a rigidly hierarchical and iniquitous social system. The world’s best-known Hindu, Mahatma Gandhi, responded publicly to the provocation. The hatchet was never buried. Arundhati Roy introduces this extensively annotated edition of Annihilation of Caste in “The Doctor and the Saint,” examining the persistence of caste in modern India, and how the conflict between Ambedkar and Gandhi continues to resonate. Roy takes us to the beginning of Gandhi’s political career in South Africa, where his views on race, caste and imperialism were shaped. She tracks Ambedkar’s emergence as a major political figure in the national movement, and shows how his scholarship and intelligence illuminated a political struggle beset by sectarianism and obscurantism. Roy breathes new life into Ambedkar’s anti-caste utopia, and says that without a Dalit revolution, India will continue to be hobbled by systemic inequality.

Animal Farm by George Orwell

2026-03-09T16:42:40.000Z

It starts as a fairy tale. A successful revolution led by animals. They are getting cozy in their newfound freedom. No one could've asked for a revolution so swift and effective.

Then, the meekness, the urge to follow returns to the most. A few became a new oligarchy, a new master, but shrewder in nature, oppressors who use the language of the oppressed against them:

Animal Farm by George Orwell

ALL ANIMALS ARE EQUAL BUT SOME ANIMALS ARE MORE EQUAL THAN OTHERS

It becomes a heart-breaking tell of universal cycle of oppression, of machinations of bluff perfect in each iteration, of power— absolute, corrupting power.

[!note] Notes and Highlights
Animal Farm by George Orwell

[!info] About Animal Farm by George Orwell
Mr Jones of Manor Farm is so lazy and drunken that one day he forgets to feed his livestock. The ensuing rebellion under the leadership of the pigs Napoleon and Snowball leads to the animals taking over the farm. Vowing to eliminate the terrible inequities of the farmyard, the renamed Animal Farm is organized to benefit all who walk on four legs. But as time passes, the ideals of the rebellion are corrupted, then forgotten. And something new and unexpected emerges… Animal Farm—the history of a rebellion that went wrong—is George Orwell’s brilliant satire on the corrupting influence of power. ‘Remains our great satire of the darker face of modern history’ – Malcolm Bradbury. All animals are equal. But some animals are more equal than others.

Against Interpretation and Other Essays by Susan Sontag

2025-05-27T11:44:40.000Z

একজন ভালো আর্ট/লিটারেচার ক্রিটিকের প্রথম যোগ্যতা হচ্ছে আমাদের সেন্সিবিলিটিকে ধাক্কা দেওয়া। সিক্সটিজে লেখা এস্যেগুলো আজকেও যখন ধাক্কা দেয়, বিশেষত, অধিকাংশ আলোচ্যগুলির সাথে আপনি ইতমধ্যেই পরিচিত তখন বলা যায় তিনি একজন প্রথম শ্রেণীর ক্রিটিক।

[!note] Notes and Highlights
Against Interpretation and Other Essays by Susan Sontag

[!info] About Against Interpretation and Other Essays by Susan Sontag
'A dazzling intellectual performance' Vogue Against Interpretation was Susan Sontag's first collection of essays and made her name as one of the most incisive thinkers of our time. Sontag was among the first critics to write about the intersection between 'high' and 'low' art forms, and to give them equal value as valid topics, shown here in her epoch-making pieces 'Notes on Camp' and 'Against Interpretation'. Here too are impassioned discussions of Sartre, Camus, Simone Weil, Godard, Beckett, Lévi-Strauss, science-fiction movies, psychoanalysis and contemporary religious thought. Originally published in 1966, this collection has never gone out of print and has been a major influence on generations of readers, and the field of cultural criticism, ever since. 'Sontag offers enough food for thought to satisfy the most intellectual of appetites' The Times

Admiring Silence by Abdulrazak Gurnah

2025-05-27T11:43:37.000Z

আবদুলরাজাক-কে আমি চিনতাম না, চিনবার কথাও না। বস্তুত, প্রত্যেকবার নোবেল পুরষ্কারের পর আমি নতুন একজন সাহিত্যিকের সাথে পরিচিত হই।

রাজাকের নোবেলপ্রাপ্তির কারণটা এই:

…for his uncompromising and compassionate penetration of the effects of colonialism and the fates of the refugee in the gulf between cultures and continents.

রাজাকের উপন্যাসের কথা বলতে গিয়ে ব্যক্তি রাজাক-কে নিয়ে এত টানাটানির কারণ হচ্ছে এই উপন্যাসটি (এবং তার আরো বেশকিছু কাজ) প্রচণ্ড ব্যক্তিগত। ব্যক্তিগত ট্রমা, ব্যক্তিগত হতাশা।

প্রথমেই যে বিষয়টা খোলাসা করা উচিত তা হচ্ছে রাজাক-কে এন্টি-কলোনিজমের ধ্বজাধারী ভাবা অনুচিত হবে। রাজাক নিজের ছাড়া আর কারো ধ্বজা ধরেননি। কলোনিয়ালিজম এখানে ব্যাকগ্রাউন্ড, খুব ইনটিমেট এবং প্রাসঙ্গিক ব্যাকগ্রাউন্ড, গল্পটা পার্সনাল।

রাজাক জাঞ্জিবারের মানুষ। জাঞ্জিবার ছিল ব্রিটিশ কলোনি। কলোনি উঠে যাওয়ার পর বিদেশি শাসকের জায়গায় দেশি শাসকের শোষণ দেখতে হয়েছে। অর্থাৎ, পুরো দায়টা ঠিক কলোনিয়াল মাস্টারদের না। ফলতঃ রাজাক, কী কলোনিয়াল মাস্টার, কী দেশি লুটেরা, কারুর প্রতিই তার ডিসটেস্ট প্রকাশে পিছপা হননি।

এখন আসি লেখার বিষয়ে। রাজাকের লেখার স্টাইলে প্রথমে যে শব্দটা মাথায় আসে তা হচ্ছে 'পেনেট্রেটিং'। যদি কলোনিয়ালিজমের কথা বলি, রাজাক রঅ, প্রপাগান্ডা, বা পার্টি লাইন মার্কা ইন্টারপ্রেটেশানে না গিয়ে কলোনিয়ালিজম কীভাবে ইনডিভিজুয়ালের জীবনকে প্রভাবিত করে (কলোনাইজার ও কলোনাইজড উভয়েরই) সেই দিকে নজর দিয়েছেন।

তারপরেই চোখে পড়ে ছোট ছোট উইটি বাক্যের বদলে স্লো-বিল্ডআপের সারকাজম। প্রথম স্টাইলটা হরহামেশাই দেখা যায়।

তার এনভায়রনমেন্টের যে ক্রস-কালচারাল মেশ্ সেটা বেশ সুস্বাদু বলা যায়। ওহাবি, ইংলিশ, এবং পৃথিবীর ম্যাপের প্রায় অর্ধেকজুড়ে ছোটখাটো রেফারেন্স মিলে বলা যায় কসমোপলিটান উপন্যাস।

প্লট ভালো লেগেছে তাই ক্যোট করা থেকল বিরত থাকলাম। নিজে পড়াই বরং ভালো।

[!note] Notes and Highlights
Admiring Silence by Gurnah Abdulrazak

[!info] About Admiring Silence by Abdulrazak Gurnah
A man returns to his native Zanzibar after years of exile in England, and must come to terms with the changes both in him and in his childhood home.

A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies by Bartolomé de las Casas

2025-05-27T11:30:23.000Z

Too hard to read. The atrocity, the long nightmare Europeans have brought upon the Native Americans is too hard to even believe.

[!note] Notes and Highlights
A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies

[!info] About A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies by Bartolomé de las Casas
A Spanish friar documents the brutal treatment of Caribbean natives at the hands of colonial authorities in the sixteenth century. After traveling to the New World, Dominican friar Bartolomé de Las Casas witnessed conquistadors wreak unimaginable horrors upon the Indigenous people of the Caribbean. He later dedicated his life to fighting for their protection. Following numerous failed attempts to reason with authorities in Spain, he chose to document everything he had seen over a span of fifty years and to give it to Spain’s Prince Philip II. In A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies, Las Casas catalogues the atrocities he observed the Spanish colonial authorities inflict upon the native people. He discusses the brutal torture, mass genocide, and enslavement. He passionately pleas for an end to this treatment and for the native peoples to be given basic human rights.

A People_s History of the United States by Howard Zinn

2025-05-27T11:28:51.000Z

এইবছর পড়া সবচেয়ে ভালো বইগুলোর একটা। আমেরিকার ইতিহাস আমি পড়েছি বিচ্ছিন্নভাবে, আলাদা সময়ের কথা আলাদা ভাবে এবং তার সবটাই যাকে বলা যায় 'বিজয়ীর ইতিহাস'। সাধারণ মানুষের ইতিহাস শুধু আমেরিকা না, সবদেশেই, সবকালেই অপ্রতুল।

আমার মনে হয় না এই বইটায় আমেরিকাকে ডিফেইম করা হয়েছে (যে যুক্তিতে অনেকে খারাপ রেটিং দিয়েছে বইটির)। আমার বরং মনে হয়েছে কনজারভেটিভ ও পাঁতি-কনজারভেটিভরা (ডেমক্র্যাট) যখন কনজারভেটিভ ও ক্যাপিটালিস্ট স্বার্থরক্ষায় ব্যস্ত সাধারণ মানুষ বরং প্রোগ্রেসিভ অ্যাটিটিউড দেখিয়েছে। সেটা বর্ণবাদ, নারী-স্বাধীনতা, সোশ্যাল সিকিউরিটি, প্যাসিফিস্ট মুভমেন্টস্ যেটাই হোক। রেড ইন্ডিয়ানরা এক্সটিন্ট হতে দেয়নি নিজেদের, কালারড্ মানুষেরা অধিকারের জন্য লড়ে যাচ্ছে। নির্মম অত্যাচারের মধ্যেও শ্রমিক ও কৃষকেরা আন্দোলন করেছে আবার একটা গাছকে বাঁচাবার জন্য পিটিশনও জমা দিয়েছে। ন্যাশনালিটির ক্রেজে যেমন ভুগেছে, প্রবল ন্যাশনালিটির ক্রেজের ভেতরেও প্যাসিফিস্ট ডেমোন্স্ট্রেশন চলেছে।

[!note] Notes and Highlights
A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn

A Musical Offering by Luis Sagasti

2026-01-08T17:11:06.000Z

This book is very concentrated in its form. Myriad ideas got traversed simultaneously— some from historical incidents, some are pure stories, and some are stories about stories— all intertwined to craft a truly musical offering.

So, what is this book about? Art, literature, music, war, destruction, wastage of human life… But, above all, this is a book about hope, about hope and goodness that doesn't wither. It is a book about love that perseveres amidst the toughest of times.

A Musical Offering by Luis Sagasti

This is also a book of life— how circular it is, yet how many variances it accommodates— like music— through repetition and variation, how it blooms— often awkwardly, through individual lives to something greater than the sum.

[!note] Notes and Highlights
A Musical Offering by Luis Sagasti

[!info] About A Musical Offering by Luis Sagasti
In the 18th century, Count Keyserling commissions Johann Sebastian Bach to compose a piece of music that will finally allow him to fall asleep. Bach, surpassing all expectations, creates an aria containing thirty variations that became known as the Goldberg Variations, in honour of its first performer, put in charge of playing the piece night after night until the count fell asleep. With this story, Luis Sagasti opens a hypnotic tale full of counterpoints that, just like the Variations, sets out to follow the turns of a melody so as to arrive at the final aria—where everything begins again.

Like Goldberg repeating melodies over and over for the Count to rest, Sagasti narrates for us a thousand and one stories that take the reader from Bach to Gould, from Gould to the Beatles, from Sergeant Pepper to the music that was played in Nazi concentration camps, and from there to 4’33’’ by John Cage, to The Who and so on, ad infinitum. But when do we end a story? When do we decide to sing the final lullaby? For Sagasti, undoubtedly, the cosmic order is a musical one.

A Little Larger Than the Entire Universe by Fernando Pessoa

2023-09-10T08:02:39.000Z

There were some good poems in this collection. However, nothing compared to The Book of Disquiet.

This is what I have to say about the stylistic aspects of the volume in question. It should be taken with a fair amount of skepticism due to the fact that it is (a) a translation, and (b) a translation by a different translator.

Pessoa's use of heteronyms is fascinating, to say the least. They have their distinct style, lifestyle, and even biographies. However, reading these poems from various times and signed by various heteronyms, converges to say something singular in nature:

Page 29 @ 28 June 2023 01:30:04 AM

Most of his poems in this collection, and arguably most he has written in his lifetime are about this materialism (or empiricism perhaps?). While The Book of Disquiet is all about one's inner life, and dreams, these poems are all about one's outer life, often in strong denial of an existence of an inner life.

[!note] Notes and Highlights
Notes from A Little Larger Than the Entire Universe

[!info] About A Little Larger Than the Entire Universe by Fernando Pessoa
The largest and richest English-language volume of poetry from “the greatest twentieth-century writer you have never heard of” (Los Angeles Times) Edited, Translated, and with an Introduction by Richard Zenith, the author of the Pulitzer Prize finalist Pessoa: A Biography A Penguin Classic Writing obsessively in French, English, and Portuguese, poet Fernando Pessoa (1888–1935) left a prodigious body of work, much of it credited to three “heteronyms”―Alberto Caeiro, Ricardo Reis, and Alvaro de Campos―alter egos with startlingly different styles, points of view, and biographies. Offering a unique sampling of his most famous voices, this collection features Pessoa’s major, best-known works and several stunning poems that have come to light only in this century, including his long, highly autobiographical swan song. Featuring a rich body of work that has never before been translated into English, this is the finest introduction available to the stunning breadth of Pessoa’s genius.

A History of Reading by Alberto Manguel

2025-05-27T13:08:18.000Z

ইতিহাস, বরাবরই আমার ভালো লাগে। তা বলে ইতিহাসের বইয়ের ঐতিহাসিক সততার প্রতি আমার কোনো মোহ নাই। বেশিরভাগ ইতিহাস কোনো না কোনোভাবে ইতিহাস-লেখকের শেকড়ের কথা বলে। সেই শেকড়ে জাত্যাভিমান থাকতে পারে (বেশিরভাগ ক্ষেত্রেই থাকে), নিজেরে বিচার করার চেষ্টা থাকতে পারে (ডাইরিম্পলের 'অ্যানার্কি' যেমন)। সেই জায়গা থেকে দেখলে ম্যানগুয়েলের পড়ার ইতিহাস লেখার যোগ্যতা আছে ষোলোআনা।

এই বইটার সবচেয়ে ভালো লেগছে যে বিষয়টা সেটা হচ্ছে এর ন্যারেটিভ ক্রোনোলজিকাল না। বরং, চ্যাপ্টারগুলো যে বিষয়গুলোকে ট্রীট করা হয়েছে তার একটা ঐতিহাসিক আউটলাইন পাওয়া যায়। আপনি যদি বিশেষায়িত ইতিহাস পছন্দ করেন, তো অবশ্যপাঠ্য।

তো কী সে বিষয়গুলো?

সেখানে আছে তার নিজের পড়তে শেখা, তার সাথে দুনিয়াও কীভাবে পড়তে শিখলো সেই কাহিনী। কী করে পড়ার ধরন বদলালো যুগে যুগে। কীভাবে যুগে যুগে পড়লো লেখক ও অনুবাদকেরা, স্কলার ও আম-পাঠক। মানুষ কীভাবে বই জমাতে শুরু করলো, অন্যরা কীভাবে তা চুরি করলো সেসবও।

পড়া একটা খুব অদ্ভুতরকমের সাইকোলজিকাল অ্যাক্ট। এবং তা কোনো পাথরে খোদাই অ্যাক্টও না। যুগে যুগে পড়ার ধরন বদলে গেছে, তার সাথে বদলেছে চিন্তাপদ্ধতি। তো বইটায় ইতিহাসের ঘটনা ছাড়াও বলার ছিলো অনেককিছু, যা না পড়ার আগ পর্যন্ত হয়ত মনেই আসবে না।

ম্যানগুয়েলের পরিমাণে পড়ার পর, পড়ার ইতিহাসের ওপর লিখতে গেলে একটু স্নবারি কখন বের হয়ে পড়ে সে বিষয়ে একটু খুঁতখুঁতানি ছিল। তবে খানিকটা পড়েই বোঝা গেলো ওটা ম্যানগুয়েলের সম্ভবত নেই। লোকটা বলতে গেলে চিরতরুণ। আমাদের জেনারেশনেই ইলেক্ট্রনিক বইয়ের চেয়ে মানুষ কাগুজে বই বেশি প্রেফার করে। আগের জেনারেশনের একজন তার ওয়ার্ড প্রসেসরে পড়ছেন আর তাতে নোটগুলো সাজিয়ে-গুছিয়ে রাখতে ভালোবাসেন দেখে বেশ ভালো লাগলো।

বইটার একটা ঘোরলাগা বিষয় আছে, একধরনের স্বচ্ছ লেকের ওপর হালকা বাতাসের ঢেউয়ের মত একটা টোন আছে।

আর শেষে আছে সুন্দর আশাবাদী একটা নোট:

[!note] Notes and Highlights
A History of Reading by Alberto Manguel

[!info] About A History of Reading by Alberto Manguel
This is an intimate study of the art and craft of reading from prehistory to the present. The author meticulously traces the history of reading from the earliest examples of the clay tablets to today's digital revolution.

21 Lessons for the 21st Century by Yuval Noah Harari

2023-07-12T05:52:35.000Z

অনেকটাই রিপিটেশন আছে আগের বইগুলো থেকে। নট ব্যাড আগেরগুলো না পড়া থাকলে।

[!info] About 21 Lessons for the 21st Century by Yuval Noah Harari

In Sapiens, he explored our past; in Homo Deus he looked to our future. Now, one of the most innovative thinkers on the planet turns to the present to make sense of today's most pressing issues. How do computers and robots change the meaning of being human? How do we deal with the epidemic of fake news? Are nations and religions still relevant? What should we teach our children? 21 Lessons for the 21st Century is a probing and visionary investigation into today's most urgent issues as we move into the unchartered territory of the future. As technology advances faster than our understanding of it, as hacking becomes a tactic of war, and as the world feels more polarized than ever, Yuval Noah Harari addresses the challenge of navigating life in the face of constant and disorienting change and raises the important questions we need to ask ourselves in order to survive. In twenty-one accessible chapters that are both provocative and profound, Harari builds on the ideas explored in his previous books, untangling political, technological, social, and existential issues and offering advice on how to prepare for a very different future from the world we live in. How can we retain freedom of choice when Big Data is watching us? What will the future workforce look like and how should we ready ourselves for it? How should we deal with the threat of terrorism? Why is liberal democracy in crisis? Harari's unique ability to make sense of where we have come from and where we are going has captured the imaginations of millions of readers around the world. Here he invites readers to consider values, meaning, and personal engagement in a world full of noise and uncertainty. In such a world deluged with irrelevant information, clarity is power. The ability of 21 Lessons for the 21st Century to present complex contemporary challenges clearly and accessibly makes it essential reading.

1984 by George Orwell

2026-02-16T20:51:02.000Z

1984 is not only a dystopian novel. It is a political statement, the culmination of life-long experience of George Orwell. This deals with the inner working of power, the corruption it accompanies. And these are not made-up ideas. Orwell faced this in his life in Spain, saw it lurking under the apparently gentle Communist Party members of England, and explored it quite well in the Animal Farm before.

[!info] About 1984 by George Orwell
It is 1984, and the worlds' three major powers-Oceania, Eurasia and Eastasia-are constantly at war. In Oceania, where the Party is in power, the thought police unearth every act of dissent, and Big Brother is always watching. Winston Smith, a dutiful citizen of Oceania, works for the Ministry of Truth as a propaganda writer who rewrites history to suit the needs of the authoritarian government. But when Winston falls in love with fellow worker Julia, they begin to question the very system they work for, placing them in immense danger. Pursuing their forbidden love affair, Winston plans a rebellion against the Party in order to regain the freedom to shape his own future. But the ever-watchful Big Brother will not tolerate opposition, and for those who speak up against the system or dare to think what the Party does not want them to think, Room 101 awaits them … 1984 is George Orwell's haunting prophesy of the future, which has held multiple generations of readers spellbound in its chilling and terrifying vision of life under a totalitarian regime. Powerful and unforgettable, this still-relevant novel explores the obliteration of truth, individuality and liberty in a world where the ruling power seeks to control everything, from information to thought and memory.

সময়ের সাথে সংগ্রাম

2024-03-12T03:14:55.000Z

বিজ্ঞান ও দর্শনের সবচেয়ে প্রাচীন ভাবনাগুলোর একটি হচ্ছে 'সময়'। 'সময়'-এর রূপ ও আচরণের অনেকগুলো ব্যাখ্যা বিশ্লেষণ তো আছেই, গত কয়েক দশকে সময়কে একেবারে আনকোরা নতুনভাবে ব্যাখ্যার চেষ্টা চলছে। কখনো বাস্তবতার একটি মাত্রা হিসেবে, কখনো বা এন্ট্রপির ফলাফল বা পার্শ্বপ্রতিক্রিয়া হিসেবে। অবশ্য সময়ের এইসব ব্যাখ্যা আমরা গাণিতিক ও ব্যবহারিকভাবে পর্যবেক্ষণ করতে পারলে, সাদামাটা জীবনে সময়ের এই চেহারাগুলো ইন্দ্রিয়গ্রাহ্য নয়। মানুষ সময়কে সরলরৈখিকভাবেই অনুভব করতে অভ্যস্ত। মানুষ অভ্যস্ত এটা জেনেও যে সময়ের ব্যবহারযোগ্যতা থাকলেও বস্তুত তার সময়ের ওপরে কোনো নিয়ন্ত্রণ নেই। মোটের ওপর আমরা সময়ের দাস। সময়ের এই দাসত্বকে আমি 'সময়বাধ্যতা' (temporality of being) বলবো। এই অভ্যস্ততা আমাদের গোটা জীবনকেই প্রভাবিত করে, আমাদের দর্শন, ধর্ম, আধ্যাত্মিকতা ও জীবনবোধে সময় একটা খুব গুরুত্বপূর্ণ জায়গা দখল করে রাখে।

যা কিছু আমরা নিয়ন্ত্রণে আনতে পারি না, তার প্রতি আমাদের একরকম ভয়, নিদেনপক্ষে অস্বস্তি কাজ করে। স্বাভাবিকভাবেই, সময়বাধ্যতা আমাদের ভীত করে। এই ভীতির আমরা সবচেয়ে পরিপক্ক অবস্থায় দেখি মৃত্যুভীতি হিসেবে। মৃত্যু আমাদের সময়বাধ্যতার সর্বশেষ নিদর্শন। মৃত্যুর মাধ্যমে আমাদের সময়বাধ্যতা শেষ হয়, সাথে সাথে জীবনও। মৃত্যু থেকে পালানো বা অতিক্রম করার আমাদের যে জৈবিক প্রবৃত্তি, তার বুদ্ধিবৃত্তিক প্রকাশ হচ্ছে সময়বাধ্যতাকে অতিক্রমের সকল পুরাণসমূহ (Myth)। মৃত্যু (এবং সময়বাধ্যতা) অতিক্রমের সবচেয়ে পুরাতন পুরাণগুলো আত্মা-সম্পর্কিত। প্রথমদিকে মৃত পূর্বপুরুষের ভুত থেকে পরে আত্মার ধর্মতাত্ত্বিক সকল ধরণের আত্মার মূল যোগ্যতা তার অবিনশ্বরতা। তার সাথে সমাজব্যবস্থার কাঠামোগত জটিলতা থেকে ক্রমে এসেছে মৃত্যুপরবর্তী বিচার এবং বিচার পরবর্তী শাস্তি ও পুরষ্কার। কোনো কোনো ক্ষেত্রে এসেছে জন্মান্তর, এমনকি মহাবিশ্বেরও পুনর্জন্ম।

সময়ের সাথে সাথে পুরাণগুলোর বাহক ধর্মগুলো টিকে গেলেও দর্শন ও বিজ্ঞানের কাছে সেগুলো গ্রহনযোগ্যতা হারিয়েছে। ফলত, মৃত্যু অতিক্রম করার পৌরাণিক সকল পদ্ধতি এখনকার বিজ্ঞানমনষ্ক মানুষেরা মেনে নিতে পারে না। এমনকি, সক্রিয়ভাবে বিজ্ঞানমনষ্ক না হলেও, অনগ্রসর সমাজগুলো ছাড়া এই পুরাণগুলি এখন আর আধুনিক মানুষের কাছে বিশ্বাসযোগ্য হয় না। মোটের ওপর বলা চলে, এগুলি গ্রহণযোগ্যতা হারিয়েছে।^[1]

The Power of Myth by Joseph Campbell ↩︎

শিল্পভাবনা ১ হৃদয়বৃত্তি

2024-03-12T03:14:07.000Z

শিল্প বা আর্ট কীভাবে শিল্প হয়ে ওঠে তা নিয়ে ভাবনাচিন্তার অন্ত নেই। শিল্পের ধরণ অনুযায়ী তা নিয়ে ভিন্ন ভিন্ন আলোচনা আছে। তর্ক আছে যেমন কুতর্কও আছে। 'সকলেই কবি নয় কেউ কেউ কবি' থেকে কল্পনাকে বলতে গেলে অচ্ছুত করে দিয়ে 'রিয়ালিজম'-এর চর্চাও আছে।

সেসব বাদ দিয়ে মোটাদাগে ভাবলে, শিল্প হচ্ছে শিল্পীর নিজের সত্য (রবীন্দ্রনাথকে প্যারাফ্রেজিং করলে এই দাঁড়ায়)। সংস্কৃত সাহিত্যের ধারায় শিল্পীর মনের একটা 'ভাব' থাকে, বাহ্যিক বিভিন্ন ঘটনা ও বিষয় থেকে 'রস' এসে সেই ভাবটিকে প্রভাবিত করে নতুন ভাবের জন্ম দেয়। তার প্রকাশ হলো শিল্প। এই পর্যন্ত ধরলে শিল্প হৃদয়বৃত্তি। তবে আমি মনে করি শিল্পে বুদ্ধিবৃত্তির একটা বড় জায়গা আছে। একথা অনেকেই মানতে নারাজ। তবে আজ পর্যন্ত যারা তাদের কাজ দিয়ে জায়গা করে নিয়েছে, ধরে রেখেছে কয়েকশো বছর তাদের মধ্যে পথভ্রষ্ট, শয়তান সকলরকমের শিল্পী-সাহিত্যিক দেখেছি, মূর্খ একটিও দেখিনি।

সে বুদ্ধিবৃত্তির আলোচনা পরে করা যাবে। আমরা আপাতত হৃদয়বৃত্তির দিকে দেখি। শিল্পীর হৃদয়বৃত্তি আর দশজনের হৃদয়বৃত্তির মত না। অনুভূতির মূল যন্ত্রপাতি, মানে মস্তিষ্কের পুরনো অংশ আমরা আমাদের সরীসৃপ ও স্তন্যপায়ী জ্ঞাতির সাথে শেয়ার করে এসেছি। আমাদের হিংসা কুমীরের থেকে কিছু একটা আলাদা না। সন্তানের প্রতি ভালোবাসায় বাবা-মা শিম্পাঞ্জির মতই। শুধু প্রকৃতিপ্রদত্ত অনুভূতির ওপর নির্ভরশীল হলে এই হৃদয়বৃত্তি বেশিদিন চালানো যায় না।

তো শিল্পীর একধরণের যত্ন করে গড়ে তোলা হৃদয়ের প্রয়োজন পড়ে। তার মূলে থাকে একধরণের বোধ। সে কেমন বোধ? জাপানিজরা সেই বোধকে বলে 'mono no aware'। জীবন ও জগতের প্রতি একধরণের বিস্ময়পূর্ণ দুঃখবোধ। একদিন হঠাৎ ভোরে সূর্যোদয়, অথবা আশ্বিনের রাতের আকাশের গাঢ় নীলে অজস্র তারা, কিংবা হঠাৎ একদিন সোডিয়াম বাতির নীচে দাঁড়ালে, কাজের শেষে, জাগতিকতার শেষে হঠাৎ মুখ থেকে যে 'আহ্' বেরিয়ে আসে, কিংবা সারি সারি মৃত্যু, জীবনের অপচয় দেখে যে দুঃখবোধ হয়- গভীর ও ইন্দ্রীয়াতীত, সেটাকে গ্রহণ করার ক্ষমতাই শিল্পীর হৃদয়বৃত্তির মূল বিষয়।

বিস্ময় বলতে গেলে শিল্পের শেষ কথা। আপনি হয়ত বলতে পারেন যেই বিস্ময়ে রবীন্দ্রনাথ লেখেন 'কী ফুল ঝরিল বিপুল অন্ধকারে' তার সাথে বাশোর হাইকুর হয়ত মিল আছে, গঘ্ এর স্টারি নাইটের মিল আছে, কিন্তু কাফকা? কাফকার আছে জীবনকে খুব গভীরভাবে দেখার ক্ষমতা এবং বিস্ময়বোধ। আমলাতন্ত্র আমাদের বিস্মিত করে না, কদাকার লাগে না বেশিরভাগ সময়, কাফকাকে বিস্মিত করেছিল।

তা বাদে মানুষ লিখে বা এঁকে বাহবা পায় না এমন না। শুধু বুদ্ধিতে মুগ্ধ হয়ে আমরা বলি বাহ্! কিন্তু দ্বিতীয়বার আর তার কাছে ফেরা হয় না। ফিরতে হয় জীবনানন্দের কাছে, কাফকা, রবীন্দ্রনাথ, মানিকের কাছে। দেখতে হয় আরেক মানিকের সিনেমা, শুনতে হয় বাখ্।

Zen Poetry

2023-03-15T17:12:01.000Z

Art essentially is a matter of attachment. An attachment that connects one to the very depth of the world.^[1] Zen, on the other hand, is a practice of detachment. When they met in the atmosphere of Asian aesthetics, they have created a genre with blends of various flavours. Exploring Zen poetry is like taking a journey through your existential crisis.

It can be deduced naturally that the poets of Zen (often priests) walked on a thin line. Their attachment was not of the mundane kind that we know. Artists, in general, are subtly attached to reality with a kind of super-sensibility, a refined type of attachment.

Precisely for the practice of Zen where the goal is to get enlightenment with a true description of reality and cultured detachment, Zen poets scrutinized their attachment within the framework of Buddhism. This scrutiny yielded surprising results in terms of art.

When Ikkyū Sōjun, the eccentric priest, poet, and lover writes:

LIKE vanishing dew,
a passing apparition
or the sudden flash
of lightning—already gone—
thus should one regard one’s self.

AND what is mind
and how is it recognized?
It is clearly drawn
in sumi ink, the sound
of breezes drifting through pine.

He is writing about Zen. These Tanka poems are not only poems, but koans too. A central idea of Buddhism is Anattā, which is the denial of the existence of self or soul as an indivisible and indestructible unit. Instead, the self we know is a continuous process working through our senses. It is very much material and the self is considered as an illusion.

Therefore, the self, understood through Zen, is superbly temporal like a drop of dew or a flash of lightning. It is as elusive as sound painted in ink.

The teaching of Zen, ironically, can produce the opposite of detachment. For example, Saigyō writes:

I’D like to divide
myself in order to see,
among these mountains,
each and every flower
of every cherry tree

Now, this is a very special kind of urge to be attached. It is also a kind of self-denial but an acceptance of nature and the overwhelming ecstasy it holds for us. This attitude, this detachment through attachment, is a recurring theme for many poems. An anonymous Japanese poet writes:

TO learn how to die,
watch cherry blossoms, observe
chrysanthemums.

Poetry like this requires a certain emotional quality known as 'mono no aware' which is often translated as 'Love for Impermanence' or 'Pathos of Things'. Impermanence is a core idea of Buddhism. This supplied Zen poets with a framework to nurture their mono no aware.

Then comes the anguish. Even with a solid understanding of Zen philosophy, poets often faced situations that caused them pain beyond reason. For Bashō, it was when his older brother presented him a lock of white hair of their late mother:

If I took it in hand,
it would melt in my hot tears—
heavy autumn frost

Or, for Kobayashi Issa, it was the death of his baby girl and the crying of his wife. Zen was there, was the impermanence too, so was the anguish:

This world of dew
is only the world of dew—
and yet … and yet …

References

শিল্পভাবনা ১ হৃদয়বৃত্তি ↩︎

Who can be a simple man

2023-01-28T19:54:14.000Z

সহজ লোকের মতো কে চলিতে পারে।
কে থামিতে পারে এই আলোয় আঁধারে
সহজ লোকের মতো; তাদের মতন ভাষা কথা
কে বলিতে পারে আর; কোনো নিশ্চয়তা
কে জানিতে পারে আর? — জীবনানন্দ দাশ (বোধ)

Who can be a simple man.
Can navigate in this confusion
like a simple man; Can talk like them
anymore anyway; Any certainty
who can know anymore?

A recurring idea in modern writings, literature or scholarly, is the spiritual crisis of the modern time. The implication of this crisis is something we have yet to explore much.

Origin

The origin of this crisis is in the rise of natural science. Physics (especially astrophysics), and evolutionary biology, had put organized religions in a tight position. Now the faith has been demolished for a modern person, intellectuals found themselves deeply disturbed. This phenomenon worked across the globe, and that's also at the same time. Jibananada felt it as much as Pessoa did (though they reacted differently in some important details).

Effects

The most obvious effect of this crisis is the disorientation, the emptiness left by the dead faiths. Joseph Campbell has expressed the implication of this void quite succinctly in The Power of Myth:

Pessoa, though, told us something about how the modern thinking persons felt about it:

Pessoa chose to defend faith in The Book of Disquiet though. But it didn't come naturally and was in stark contrast with his scepticism:

This doublethink says something about the magnitude of the problem. The faith have something to say about how to cope with death and our temporality.^[1]

Attempted Solutions

Campbell was silent, Jibananada lamenting, Pessoa was confused.

On the other hand, the solutions of the crisis are numerous. Some philosophers worked their way to build new paths. They are a very differently aligned lot. The significance lies in their lifestyle. Faith, or spirituality, had very different meaning to them than the classical one.

Russell was one of them. His deep passion for logic, and the ability to invoke them efficiently, bloomed into a life view simple, pretty much independent and self-sufficient:

The good life is one inspired by love and guided by knowledge.

Carl Sagan is another, and a more poetic one. He built a whole modern system of living in the Cosmos, Pale Blue Dot, and other writings. Where Russell insists on a progressive system of moral, Sagan gives us a live example of how we can work on such a system practically:

…

The emphasis on love and knowledge is also dominant here. Curiosity took the place of the disorienting emptiness left by the dead faith. The psychological shift is fundamental. It is not like Campbell, Pessoa, or other modern intellectuals were completely ignorant of such ideas. They were just caught between the transition. Also, the mass people are still largely faithful. So, they found themselves particularly alienated in respect to the mass.

See this and the following passage from Importance of Dying ↩︎

The Tower of Babel

2024-09-15T18:24:50.000Z

[!quote] Genesis 11:1-9 (NIV)
1 Now the whole world had one language and a common speech. 2 As people moved eastward, they found a plain in Shinar and settled there.

3 They said to each other, “Come, let’s make bricks and bake them thoroughly.” They used brick instead of stone, and tar for mortar. 4 Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves; otherwise we will be scattered over the face of the whole earth.”

5 But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower the people were building. 6 The Lord said, “If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. 7 Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.”

8 So the Lord scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city. 9 That is why it was called Babel(That is, Babylon; Babel sounds like the Hebrew for confused.)—because there the Lord confused the language of the whole world. From there the Lord scattered them over the face of the whole earth.

The Lord, assailed by his insecurities and fear of usurpation, started confusing the people. He confiscated the bricks yet to be used to build the tower and started building his invisible walls of languages. Tribes formed and started going their own ways— to distant planes, mountains, valleys, and islands.

But, is that enough? Even two men sharing their thoughts will soon include the third. Two tribes will form a city. States will form based on mutual respect and balance of power despite the differences. Another tower in another Shinar will be built…

The Lord will not take any risk. He started to build walls again. This time, an invisible wall encasing every mind. Despite the apparent semblance in their tongues, no two humans speak the same language. Thus, we perceive another's fear and insecurities as defiance. Two lovers, except for an intense bodily deadlock, cannot express how they love each other. Two philosophers cannot agree on the fundamental points since the points are shifting in the quagmire of interpretation. A person is never to be understood by another.

Then he divided our individuality. He put up a wall between our reptile selves and the intellect. How often do we find it hard to choose what is right and what is in our favour? Our lower brain with its bodily energy wins most of the time. Succumbed to greed we wage war and cheat friends. Making kindness sparser, walking further and further, we lost the view of the tower in Shinar— our monument of civility.

The Starry Night সেকাল-একাল

2024-04-14T18:07:26.000Z

১

থিয়ো ভ্যান গঘ্ ভিনসেন্টের একটি চিঠি পেলেন। তারিখ, ২০ সেপ্টেম্বার ১৮৮৯। চিঠিতে থিয়ো-র কাছে ভিনসেন্টের পাঠানো ছবির একটা ফর্দ ছিল তার 'নাইট স্টাডি'-র। সেই ফর্দে পাঠানোর কথা থাকলেও একটি ছবির পক্ষে বিশেষ কোনো মন্তব্য ছিল না। এমনকি, পরে ছবিটিকে তিনি পাঠাননি, তেমন পাত্তাও দেননি। এই ছবিটিই ভ্যান গঘ্-এর স্টারি নাইট।

ইন্টারনেটের দুনিয়ায় কারো যদি কোনো ক্র্যাফট্ আয়ত্ত্বে থাকে, সে কেক বানানো হোক, নখে রঙ করা হোক, কিংবা ছবি আঁকা, সবার একটা পছন্দ স্টারি নাইট। কোথায় নেই ছবিটি? লকেটে তো আছে, আন্ডারওয়্যারেও^[1] আছে। এগুলোর কোনোটাতেই আমার আপত্তি নেই, থাকলেও আসলে কিছু যায় আসে না। আমার আগ্রহের বিষয় স্টারি নাইটের একাল-সেকালে। একালে স্টারি নাইটের বিস্তার তো বললাম, সেকালে স্টারি নাইট একটিই আছে, মাস্টারপিস স্টারি নাইট, আগে সেই স্টারি নাইটের কথা বলি।

২

আঠারো'শো ঊননব্বইয়ের সেপ্টেম্বার, মোটের ওপর ইউরোপের শরৎকাল। ভিনসেন্টের আবাস এখন আভিয়োঁ'র (Avignon) এক অ্যাসাইলামে। লোহার শিক দেওয়া জানলায় দাঁড়িয়ে তিনি বাইরেটা দেখেন, আঁকেন অনেক অনেক ছবি। স্টারি নাইটের মতই তিনি অসংখ্য ছবি এঁকেছেন। হয়ত, সেদিন তিনি সারারাত জেগে ছিলেন ভাদ্রের বাতাসে, অথবা ঘুম থেকে উঠেই কী একটা ভেবে আঁকতে বসেছিলেন। যদিও রাতের দৃশ্য, আসলে কিন্তু আঁকা হয়েছিল দিনের আলোয়। শিল্প সমালোচকরা বলেন, পুরোটা ঠিক স্মৃতি থেকে আঁকা না। আবার পুরোটা ঠিক দেখেও আঁকা না। ওই যে গ্রামটা, ওটা ওখানে ছিল না।

এই স্থান-কালের ব্যাপারগুলি ছবিটা, বা ভিনসেন্ট সম্পর্কে আসলে কতটুকু বলে? আত্মহত্যার কয়েকমাস আগে আঁকা এই ছবিটার গুরুত্ব বোঝা যাবে মানুষ ভিনসেন্টের দিকে একবার তাকালে। চিঠিপত্রগুলো পড়লে বোঝা যায় মানুষটা ভয়াবহরকমের সরল ছিলেন। সহজে প্রেমে পড়তেন, সহজে চার্চের স্পীচ দিতেন। তারওপর লোকটা যাকে সহজভাষায় বলে অকেজো লোক। যে পেশাতেই মন দিয়ে কিছু করার চেষ্টা করেছেন, কোনো না কোনোভাবে ব্যর্থ হয়েছেন। সকল রকমের ব্যর্থতা তাঁকে সারাজীবন তাড়া করে ফিরেছে। সবকিছুতেই সাবলীল, সবকিছুতেই সবার নীচে নিজের জায়গাটা ধরে রাখা। সবকিছুতেই খুব শান্তভাবে বসে থেকে খুব আগ্রাসী মন নিয়ে সবকিছু চেখে দেখা ছিল লোকটার অভ্যাস।

সুন্দর স্টারি নাইটের কথা ভুলে আপনি যদি তার সকল ব্যর্থতাসমেত আভিয়োঁর ওই জানালার গরাদের সামনে দাঁড়ান তাহলে দেখবেন যে স্টারি নাইটের যে শরতের রাত- তেমন রাত পৃথিবীর পরে কখনো নামেনি। ভেনাস কখনো এত ঔজ্জল্য দেখায়নি। চাঁদ তার আকর্ষণে সমগ্র আকাশে ঢেউ তোলেনি। এমন একটা দীর্ঘ গম্ভীর সাইপ্রেস মাথা তোলেনি কোনো ছবিতে। এ একদমই বাস্তব নয়। একজন শিল্পী যখন অকপটে প্রকৃতির সামনে দাঁড়ায়, তখন প্রকৃতিও চুপ করে তার কথা শোনে। এ হচ্ছে ভিনসেন্টের জীবনব্যাপী ব্যর্থতা ও বিষাদের উদযাপন। আর্ট, বস্তুত এই অকপট আত্মকথনে থাকে, সৌন্দর্য মুখ্য নয়।

৩

একালে আমরা স্টারি নাইটের অজস্র 'কপি' করছি। বিভিন্ন মাধ্যমে, বিভিন্ন কারণে। এ হচ্ছে আমাদের ক্লিশে সৌন্দর্যবোধে, আমাদের অজ্ঞতার নমুনা। আমরা চাইলেই অকপটে দাঁড়াতে পারি না প্রকৃতির সামনে, প্রিয় মানুষের সামনে। ডেটে গেলে আমাদের অবশ্যই ফটোজেনিক সেলফি দরকার। কাগজে দুটো আঁচড় দিতে জানলেই একটা ইন্সটাগ্রাম অ্যাকাউন্ট খুলে পোস্ট করা দরকার। স্টারি নাইট তাই এখন একটা টাচস্টোন, আমাদের ছুঁতেই হয় জাতে উঠতে গেলে। আধুনিক মানুষ এত বেশি সামাজিক যে ব্যর্থতা তাকে কোনোভাবেই মানায় না। তার ভুল করা চলবেই না। দরকার হলে জীবনটা বারবার সম্পাদনা করে এমন জায়গায় নিয়ে যেতে হবে যেন সবাই পছন্দ করে। তাতে শিল্পের জগতে একটু ভিনসেন্ট থাকুক, কবিতার জগতে এজরা পাউন্ড, দর্শনে নীৎশে। আমাদের দরকার সবার অনুমোদন, মৌলিকতাও তার জন্য বিসর্জন দেওয়া যাবে। শিল্পের জগতে আমরা দিনে দিনে শেয়াল ও হায়েনার মত হয়ে উঠছি। অন্যের উচ্ছিষ্টেই আমাদের পুষ্টি।

আমাজনে কিনতে পারবেন। ↩︎

Pascals Wager

2024-09-29T06:56:14.000Z

Blaise Pascal argued that a rational man, with his shortcomings of knowledge, will choose to believe in God. This is the safer of the two options presented in his much popular Pascal's Wager.

Assuming that he is a rational man himself, done the same.

In 2014, a Syrian boy— burned and near dead, claimed that he would tell God about everything. I wonder how many children wanted to do just the same, to complain about their agony, hunger, and uprootedness. I wonder how many of them have already lodged their complaints once they passed away.

I possess neither the naivety nor the purity of soul of those children. Therefore, neither can I submit all my complaints to something either deaf or non-existent, nor I can hope for any justice where such pure souls have failed.

So, I refuse to believe or have faith in God, whatever is at stake.

On Midjourney

2023-10-26T07:07:26.000Z

I've just used Midjourney. It generates beautiful pictures.

They are beautiful, but not art. Neither of the ones who asked the AI to do that nor the software made any artistic expression. They are, at their best, mere spectacles.

Art requires a certain awareness of things. You can consider art as an imitation of reality or a thing of reality itself,^[1] but you must know what the things are. It is not enough to see a thousand men only visually to make a portrait of a man uniquely artistic. One has to look into their soul (or in the lack of it).

That is where any AI based on machine learning of our time fails.^[2] With my prompt to imagine “death most banal”, the bot generated the first image. It neither understands what death is (no one does fully, but it does not at all), nor what is banal. A death of ultimate banality is a concept we cannot expect it to understand.

For the second image, I asked for “Bertrand Russell's dream”. It produced three portraits and the 2nd image here. Without the knowledge of who Russell is, one cannot expect anything more than this.

Art is in the artist's life, as much as it is in what the artist produces.^[3] I'm waiting for an artist machine yet to come. But, I doubt, with its artistic sense of freedom, will it ever take orders from us.

Susan Sontag disagrees with the idea that art is an imitation (which probably was originally). Instead, she insists that arts should be considered on its own merit. For more, see this highlight from the essay On Style. ↩︎
John Searle has works in this field. He proposed the term strong AI for AIs capable of this kind of awareness. Unfortunately, that is not the case for any AI currently available. See more on this Wikipedia page. ↩︎
The Starry Night সেকাল-একাল ↩︎

On Good Life

2023-01-12T06:20:47.000Z

The simplest of all definitions (and the best) of the good life I found is the one given by Bertrand Russell:

The good life is one inspired by love and guided by knowledge.

This simplicity, however, in need of expansion. It requires a set of rules to be set to build a system of living on it. Depending on what these rules are, we can get very different results.

The way of love is a complicated one. Love is so powerful that all major religions used it to some extent. And what can be considered knowledge is more complicated than love. The question here is of standard.

The emphasis must be made on love without provinciality. Historically speaking, we never lacked love. The problem is, we never lacked hate too. They were there, often marching together to our undoing. Love should be all-encompassing, all-pervading, and bestow us with never-ending blessedness.

Knowledge, I must replace with wisdom here. Knowledge is static. It can be outdated or wrong. Wisdom is a process. It is alive and curious. It will refine and seek purer knowledge over time. Thus, protecting us from the pitfalls of various dogmas.^[1]

I'm quite sure, Russell used knowledge and wisdom interchangeably. If so, I'm just playing with words. ↩︎

On Death

2026-02-11T16:39:15.000Z

Death is possibly my most favourite topic to muse. Perhaps, because I know next to nothing about it, and that enables me to think about it with the utmost freedom.

Death is also, I think, the most pervasive of all motifs found in any culture and all. Our inquiry to know death lead us to various branches of knowledge and literature throughout the ages.

Inquiry begets myths as much as wisdom. Psychologically, death is a taunting foe. We have created afterlife, existence after death. With the advent of complex ethics, we have divided afterlife in heaven and hell and then with the sense of the futility of all this, we have created ideas like Moksha or Nirvana. Is it so, that we want to perish as much as we don't?

I, in my animal-self, bear some instinctive fear of death. However, I have known people to die voluntarily. In antiquity, Socrates died for his philosophical integrity. He chose to end the very life he lived so beautifully for 70 years to prove that he lived it beautifully. Of course, he believed in an afterlife. However, he also said that he doesn't know death.

And then, people die for various reasons. For countries, nations, and beliefs. Whatever the cause is, noble to some and idiotic to others, can compel a person to die for a purpose in a world where nothing matters.

And then I've seen people who died, killed for some disgusting reason or no reason at all.

This contrast, balance, triviality, incomprehensibility, and a relation of the fulfilment in life and death never cease to amaze me.

Lately, it occurred to me, one's understanding of death is the most important foundation of one's philosophy of life. For those who believe in afterlife, it is a stoppage in a longer way. But, it is an important stoppage, a nexus point. Because, what is beyond that no one can tell. This, along with some other factors (e.g. belief system, cunning), create one's Ethos.s. Those who don't believe in afterlife, similarly response with what they think about death. The Craft of Dying by Lyn H. Lofland contains some such accounts.

On CyberEnsō

2024-01-09T04:26:46.000Z

A few years back, I had an encounter with Ensō a distinctive form of art found amongst the Zen practitioners. To create one, one has to free his body from mind and draw a circle in ideally one stroke (or two sometimes). It can be either an open or a closed circle, and they mean different things. While this art form is not exactly contemporary, it is modern in the sense that it negates the interpretative aspect of art criticism.^[1] Meditation plays a far much greater role here than the techniques of producing the art.

This led me to an idea to build a Generative Art based on Ensō which I named CyberEnsō.

How Does it Work?

To draw an Ensō, one must free one's mind of thoughts, then _let one's body take control, and allow it to create a circle— momentous, signifying the phenomenon of life itself instead of a conscious intention.

CyberEnsō can be considered a means to do so. One has to free one's mind of thought and CyberEnsō takes that thought as the input. Then, it hashes it, which is a destructive process, adds some randomness to it and produces a unique circle. The computer here is just like a calligraphy brush. With the hashing and randomness, a body in mu-shin state has as much control over it as it has on a brush.

The practice of drawing Ensō is a part of Hitsuzendō or the 'Way of Zen through brush'. Art arose from mu-shin cannot be interpreted by its content alone. ↩︎

On Connections

2023-02-19T08:10:37.000Z

Preamble

Patterns emerges from linking, and some of them are just false positives.

Why patterns are good?

Patterns embodies higher level of knowledge instead of lower-order knowledge contained in a single note or information. This, in turn, employs wisdom to generate fresh knowledge and action points.

Links can go astray

All the connections are not meaningful. Some of them are just wordplays on common words and actually consists of irrelevant ideas.

Remedy

A well-defined connection strategy.

The Connection Strategy

Concepts

Entity

Entities are quite self-explanatory. In the Obsidian jargon we can consider any note, file, or a referable section of it.

Direct Connection

A direct connection between two entities can be defined by one of the following relations:

Accord: When one entity agrees with or compliments another.
Discord: When one entity disagrees with or refutes another.

Indirect Connection

An indirect connection can be defined by the following signs:

Word: Often the same word can be used across entities without creating a direct connection.
Disassociated Mentions: An entity can refer to another without actually adding any meaningful statement with it. These are just passing mentions without any real significance or Accord or Discord.
Aesthetic Quotes: Often we quote one entity in another for aesthetic reason, not as a reference.

Connection Confidence

Connection confidence means how confident one feels about the meaningfulness of the connection between entities.

Strategy

Direct Link

Direct Connection with high to medium confidence should get direct link.

Indirect Link

Indirect Connection should get indirect link.
Direct Connection with low confidence should be placed as indirect links until the confidence grows.

On AI Note-taking

2025-07-19T21:43:04.000Z

Much of the early AI research (and contemporary ones, to an extent) revolved around using content and actions working on that content interchangeably. That is why languages like LISP gained so much popularity in AI programming.

It means that content may contain kernels of actions and actions can be described in the language of content. It also means that nouns can be verbs in stasis.

Nowadays, whenever I visit relevant communities on Reddit (Obsidian for example), I encounter numerous LLM-powered workflows every day. They will transcribe and/or summarise the contents of various formats, and save them for you in your Note-taking app.

Ironically these AI note-taking workflows robbed the essence of note-taking itself.

What is a note? Is it a piece of text? How is it different from a book, a thesis paper, or a poem? A note, now a piece of content, contains the momentum of its action: taking note. And taking note is a process. It is not merely transcribing or summarising. It is a cerebral process where something grabs our attention, and we consider it important based on our experience. An AI can summarise something better than I, or transcribe something more accurately, but it can never take my notes for me. Just like it can never eat for me.

So, through these workflows all we are collecting are snippets of blurbs we have no connection with. It is just hoarding— of fool's gold.

Exploring Buddhism

2023-02-27T06:09:00.000Z

For quite some time, I'm exploring Buddhism. I've started with ’What Buddha Taught’, have learned some more from a book on the history and development of Buddhism, and lastly from Bhikkhu Bodhi's The Noble Eightfold Path by Bhikkhu Bodhi. I enjoyed Nagarjuna's dialectics a lot.

In the meantime, in a post on Reddit, I said reincarnation is a minor detail^[1] and Buddhism is a philosophy. Naturally, but of course to my amazement then, it triggered quite a few people. 😅

This incident, of course, came with its epiphany. I've found that thousands of years of practice have made Buddhism as much a religion as, say, Islam is.

So, I read the last book I've mentioned in the vein of knowing more about what Buddhists hold as Buddhism.

Agreements

My primary curiosity about Buddhism has been sparked by Buddha's alleged philosophical nature, emphasis on discourse instead of dogma and eerie accuracy in many matters. By far, I agree with Buddha in:

Four Noble Truths
Anitya
Anattā
Pratītyasamutpāda

I agree with his idea of mental training to acquire a state of tranquillity to live a life devoid of suffering.

These are all of his original teachings.

Disagreements

My points of disagreement are also largely Buddha's teaching, however, rarely original. The most important of these is regarding reincarnation. Though Buddha categorically denounced Atman or soul, he hasn't denied reincarnation. He adopted it from Hinduism and made it (along with Karma) a core part of Buddhism.

My approach to reconciliation with this embarrassment was to depend on the discursive practice of Buddhism and denouncement of dogmas and the very high emphasis on the necessity of knowing reality as it is. However, Buddhists on Reddit didn't think so. Indeed, they were pretty hostile!

It is a minor detail if we consider Buddhism as a philosophy. But, as a religion, Buddhism depends on it a lot. Inclusion of reincarnation in Buddhism was due to the social inertia Buddha had. One cannot be expected to be devoid of all known dogma of one's time. ↩︎

Cogito, ergo sum

2023-02-28T15:48:55.000Z

Practically all modern self-searching starts with "Cogito, ergo sum", i.e. "I think, therefore I am."

I think, I perceive, and I see the world with utmost subjectivity. I find myself, quite naturally, in the centre of my world. My historicity defines the history of my world. This I became so valuable I cannot imagine a world without it. Indeed, I MUST be, be it in the afterlife, an endless cycle of rebirth, or simply as a tiny flux of consciousness stored in some corner of the universe.

Or, I think, therefore like every thinking things I exist. I share an objective world and history with many other things. This I is as much significant as others of its kind. Like them, it can arise from and dissolve into unconsciousness. This doesn't allow an eternal soul but can bestow one with a full moon over a pine forest with an 'ah!' barely audible, a sunrise that set our whole life ablaze, in short, the pathos of things.

Belief, Religion, and the Illusion of Knowledge

2023-07-12T08:34:09.000Z

Lately, I've been familiar with three ideas. One is from the book God Delusion by Richard Dawkins. He argued that maybe religion is a side effect of other evolutionary traits which enables us to maybe work as a team. Then Yuval Noah Harari introduced me to the knowledge illusion in his book 21 Lessons for the 21st Century, which enable us to believe to know something which we don't know personally but is known to someone somewhere. And in Denial of Death Ernest Becker explained that Sigmund Freud did a great work on how people rather blindly follow people in a book ~~(I have to read that)~~. It is their urge to follow someone, to feel secure, like in the arms of their parents.

Now, I wonder, are they somehow connected in the depth of our biology?

[!fail]- This speculation is not plausible anymore I think.
Is it some just different manifestation of the same psychological condition? It can be. The blind belief that I know, or my God/Leader is right somehow looks emotionally similar to me.

Upon further inspection, it feels like faith has some obvious biological dependencies. Our larger neocortex allows us to be more social. It also allows us to mentalize deeply nested ideas:

Intentionality level	Possible statements of belief	Form of religion
1st	I believe that [rain is falling]	not possible
2nd	I believe that you think [rain is falling]	not possible
3rd	I believe that you think that God exists [in a transcendental world]	religious fact
4th	I believe that you think that God exists and intends to punish us	personal religion
5th	I believe that you think that we both know that God exists and intends to punish us	communal religion

From the 3rd level onwards, it allows us to have religious faith. But, faiths by themselves are memes having their courses through generations by non-biological means. Although knowledge illusion and group psychology explain why someone will believe in a specific dogma in the first place, the belief that knowledge illusion invokes is different from the faith that religious experience brings in. Faith is more akin to schizophrenia than communal belief.

Being a Connoisseur

2026-02-16T20:52:19.000Z

[!INFO] Connoisseur (noun)
One who enjoys with discrimination and appreciation of subtleties.

A Second Prize?

Till I was 20, I dabbled in many arts. I did theatre and recitation, I painted and was quite good at it, I started learning violin and then the life happened… I got accolades, even unexpectedly, for recitation and painting. I was a budding amateur with possibilities according to all my teachers.

I stopped doing all that, and started writing. Writing is still one of my two primary vocations. I have nothing substantial to publish (yet). But, I have not left the trade already.

Before diving deep into the next part, I have to clarify to me if I am making a compromise and taking a consolation prize instead or not?

Well, no. I have not pursued them not because I lacked the necessary talent. Even if I don't have, I didn't know that when I abandoned those. I simply abandoned them because I wanted to become a thinker,^[1] and a writer.

Why?

Frank Zappa once said, "So many books, so little time." This is not only true for the books, but every form of art, be it music, or paintings, even food. One cannot help but being discriminatory.

Imagine your emotional structure as block metal, creating harsh tones if struck. We can hone our emotions, and shape them like tuning forks so that only the beautiful things can resonate.

My Journey

Being a connoisseur is not by any mean being a snob. With the very little knowledge people like me posses, it is natural to veer away from being a connoisseur and become a snobbish prick. To remedy the situation, one needs to seek for wisdom perpetually.

Consider the most loved of the all arts— music. A narrow-minded listener (especially, if not a musician or have not any ear-training) often belittle other people's music taste. That is a simple unfounded snobbery. One must understand that every genre has their own theory of aesthetics and they should be judged within that scope. Western classical music does't have any concept of Raaga. Similarly, harmonization is a concept alien to Indian classical. On the other hand, Indian classical music emphasises on improvisation— like Jazz, while Western classical is mostly compositional. It is important to appreciate the differences and intents and requires much listening. Every taste is an acquired taste.

Same goes for paintings, too. There's no point judging a painting from cubic genre in the aesthetics framework of the classical paintings.

The more a person knows, about the work, about the genre and their aesthetics, about the person behind that work, the more they can enjoy a piece of art. They also understand what is not yet accessible to them and doesn't show uncalled-for snobbery.

I understood these over the time and started being discriminatory about what I consume. Instead of narrowing my view, it broadened. Many avenues opened up, thanks to the multitude of complimenting understandings.

Isn't it more relishing to read Proust's Remembrance of Things Past if you can imagine a music based on his description of Vinteuil Sonata?^[2]

From another perspective, artists make substantial sacrifices to create their work. I feel it is a duty for me to appreciate them as fully as I can. Surely, Van Gogh deserve more than (qualitatively speaking) having The Starry Night printed on underpants and cakes!^[3]

Through sincere open-minded effort to understand, to raise myself to meet the height of a piece of art, I found that life can be infinitely pleasanter.

Join Me, My Friend…

If you are interested in art in general, here are a couple of books you may find intriguing. They are, in a sense, accounts of other connoisseurs.

Being a software engineer also has some element of it. ↩︎
Vinteuil Sonata . You can also listen to some music very close to the description in this album ↩︎
More on this here: The Starry Night সেকাল-একাল ↩︎

Art is Freedom_ African-Americans

2024-09-30T18:42:36.000Z

When the black cargoes landed, and slaves walked out all they had was music.

Music, that eased their torment in tobacco and cotton fields.

They learned about Christianity, in the invisible churches, and eventually in black churches shunned by the white Christians they found their solace in music.

Then came the Ragtime, Blues, and Jazz— sharing the African root and pathos.

It was music all along. Music is African-American's one true spirituality.

Annihilation of Self in religions

2024-09-15T03:37:05.000Z

A sufficiently developed religion^[1] tends to deliver something larger than life. To attain something that transcends life must cost something, and will require some sort of sacrifice, and in most cases that is the person's self.

This sacrifice of self, in the most extreme and esoteric of approaches— amounts to the annihilation of the self.

In Sufism, we find the concept of Fana, a layer-by-layer stripping of one's ego to nothingness— only to be restored in the pristine state of Baqā. Unity with God requires the complete annihilation of one's ego.

Christianity has a strong motif of sacrifice. One can argue that it is the strongest and most unique aspect of Christianity amongst its peers. Although, there are bloodshed-related symbolism is present, spiritual sacrifice is the perceived meaning and practice. A very moving interpretation of such sacrifice can be found in the novel Silence by Shūsaku Endō. Ferreira apostatized and sacrificed even his faith— to save Christians. This is a sacrifice that required a paradigm shift:

Buddism considers the self to be transient, an aggregation of senses, with no essence. To end suffering one must understand this not only intellectually but act accordingly. Annihilation of self is the goal of Buddhism.

Understood correctly, these are all lofty ideas. An average person will find it daunting to take even the first steps of such a journey. That is why Sufism is a fringe in the world of Islam— often denounced and persecuted. The church demands sacrifices but never sacrifices anything themselves. Buddhism had lay Buddhists and monks and fell back to some kind of highly convoluted Hinduism with all those higher realms and Devas.

This is quite understandable. An organised religion is an institution. It requires active members. Therefore, such sophisticated ideas will always be fringes. For most, organised religion will provide baser satisfactions for mundane needs. For this reason, we will always find spirituality neglected by religions.

By sufficiently developed I mean a religion that has a body of theological/theosophical work that goes beyond guesswork and myths of primitive ones. ↩︎

AI gen Content and Marketing

2024-09-24T03:21:45.000Z

Marketing companies found a novel way to produce content with fewer resources, yet of better quality, using the new AI tools. This is an apt way to do things because instead of working with art, literature, and research, agencies work with design and copywriting. These last two are all about getting more traction.

Adaptation

This process has already been started. It is only a matter of time (and very short) that every agency will be using these tools. A new class of workers— prompters or prompt-engineers, will be in high demand.

Saturation

At a point in future, AI-generated content will be the norm. Hardly we will find content not generated by an AI, at least partially.

Reaction

Depending on the quality of the consumers, multiple possible reactions can be deduced.

Unaware

The unaware consumer will only know a little about the AI tools. They will be convinced by the message, regardless of how authentic the things they are representing.

Aware

Awareness is inevitable. In fact, for most urban consumers, it will come as fast as the AI-generated content land. Aware customers will notice the discrepancies faster. For example, they will find the actual foods look nothing like the ones advertised, colours are distorted in the case of dresses, etc. They will soon learn to offset this by considering an error margin. With the abundance of pretty content, they will soon find them less engaging. In most of the communication, they will fall back to 'meh'.

Search for Real Information

Soon, the aware people will try to get authentic information through alternate channels. Influencers will get another rush of good luck. However, AI-generated sponsored content shared by influencers might bring a bad reputation to them.

AI and Time

2026-03-24T18:41:14.000Z

As humans, not only do we quantify (e.g. 1 hour) and label time (e.g. 17th February 2026, 2:26 AM), we perceive it as a flow, and our consciousness flowing with it. Time is crucial for every human experience.

We perceive reality as a smooth experience. By smooth, I mean consecutive, and infinitely divisible. Yes, we frequently forget and confuse events. But we never experience the gap between any two given moments. It all comes as a continuous stream.

I think I am not far from the truth if I state that the natural faculty of our brain to follow reason step-by-step is a natural development of our sense of causality, which itself is based on how we perceive time as a flow, and find our consciousness flowing abroad it.

Quite understandably, AIs don't have that sense of flow.

That doesn't mean that an AI model doesn't understand time in any form. It understands the quantified and labelled time, not the perceived one. If you ask for a story from one such agent, you may find everything chronologically correct. That is because, that correctness is the dominant pattern. It doesn't understand chronology. It lives in an eternal nowness where everything is essentially instant. If we take Derrida's conclusion, this temporality is not only required for sentience, but also for proper and instinctive usage of language, too.

I don't think human intelligence is the only type of intelligence possible. However, this is the only form of intelligence we encountered by far. And, all of it in a way depends on the time as we perceive it.

Today, AI feels like an extremely dumb person's brain uploaded to a data centre with huge processing power. It makes it faster, not smarter.

Maybe solving the problem of time is another step forward to building a better AI.

A Mountain Willow

2026-02-04T17:15:00.000Z

[!quote-with-source] Matsuo Bashō
With a warbler for
a soul, it sleeps peacefully,
this mountain willow

It takes a mountain willow with a warbler for a soul to write a poem^[1] like this.

Imagine being a weeping willow— slender, almost economical in its existence. Imagine growing over the years, atop a mountain, from a sprout to a deciduous giant— understanding transience as if you are composed of it— ring by ring. Drooping are your leaves, dripping dew in autumn. Winter brings a shading yellowness— covering your feet. Spring brings the gift of new life— vying for your attention. You meet that attention with your ambivalence, and ambivalence turns into another ring in your trunk. You don't really weep but exude a profound dolour.

Life requires change, and change brings excitement, even on a molecular level, as we all know. This excitement permeates through your ambivalence; it affects you, it becomes one with you, it becomes a warbler. No, this warbler is just another structure within you. It is within you, yet alien— a necessary juxtaposition. It becomes a song of a warbler— brief and beautiful— Hooo- hokekyo, hooo- hokekyo.^[2]

Your browser does not support the audio element.

Once you understand you are neither this willow, nor this warbler, nor the song, but an instrument of the universe, you write such a poem.

From Narrow Road to the Interior and Other Writings ↩︎
Audio is from Wikimedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Japanese_nightingale_note02.ogg ↩︎

A Ghost Story

2024-04-14T18:01:44.000Z

Ghosts are people— untimely demised with urges intact.

As a modern man, you don't believe ghosts exist, do you?

Of course, they are real! I can prove that to you. On a summer afternoon in Dhaka carefully notice the Rickshaw-Pullers. Illusive they are with sweats and breaths, and a bodily existence, they are indeed ghosts. If you observe, you will find their muscles are composed of thin but tenacious dolour. Notice the fiery eyes, vivid, yet empty of essence. Notice how they pull their rickshaws, like clockwork, with some sort of supernatural strength as if space is elastic and time doesn't move for them. Take note of their faces, devoid of expression, devoid of meaning, rhythm, or reason. They were robbed of their bare necessities, dignity, and even a life worth living, a meaning that doesn't depend solely on other's profit— what remains but a ghost?

Often I feel the urge to call Bhoot FM^[1] and say, "You won't believe Russell bhai! Today, when I was coming back from office, my rickshaw-wala was a ghost, and so was the one who was overtaking us…"

The subtlest ghosts, with the most ephemeral differences from us, however, can be found only if we look into a mirror. Under our skin, I cannot ignore me eroding every day, with every vote I couldn't make, every scheme by syndicates, every draconian punishment on us to keep us mum, to give away our last one free inch, our integrity. I cannot ignore my gradual disenfranchisement robbing me of any social meaning a human has. I find myself a ghost, with all the urges intact, but not human anymore.

A radio program which was discontinued long ago. ↩︎

The Importance of Dying Sincerely

2025-10-27T14:57:32.000Z

The self-help and motivation industry depends immensely on our urge to live (or to live until we buy one more book or service).

Being the devil's advocate I am, I propose that we should make an active and sincere attempt to die.

Contemplations on death are as old as history. 'Memento Mori', the turban that will be one's funeral garments, even lives lived with utmost ethical sincerity, all the noble sacrifices point to our collective consciousness of death. Flawed they are, admirable nevertheless.

The flaw lies in the fact that they sought or depended on something greater than life. An afterlife, a motherland devoid of enemies, greater good… You name it. Death as the unconquerable enemy, as 'THE END!' is such a depressing idea that we did anything and everything to circumnavigate that.^[1]

Understand this: you will die whether you want to or not. But choosing to die knowing what it really signifies and where it stands in harmony with your living is a thing I dare you to try.

সময়ের সাথে সংগ্রাম ↩︎

Regrets

2023-03-15T17:10:27.000Z

The raaga is named Darbari Kanada. A raaga that is sombre, depressingly beautiful, a raaga of midnight. The name suggests that it is a raaga of darbar, a court of some king or emperor of the East.^[1]

That emperor must have such a refined taste! Instead of some activities of base pleasures (which is rather common amongst the powerful people), the emperor preferred a sombre raaga.

Sometimes earlier, I expressed regrets for not being born in the feudal Japan. This is another regret of mine— of not being in such a court of refined taste.

As the legend goes, the emperor was Akbar, and Miyan Tansen bought the Raaga from Carnatic music. ↩︎

On Career

2024-09-03T17:51:47.000Z

An introspection of my life cannot be possibly done without a retrospection, a walk down the aisles between desks.

The profession is not something strictly financial for me. A person can be a professional without making a cent from what is being professionally done by the said one. Anyway, I made plenty of money from my primary profession, which is programming. My secondary profession is writing, which I take very seriously. I never wrote anything of much value, though.

Programming appealed to my deep urge of making sense, itemizing and organizing, and making a system of things. The emphasis on 'deep' asks for an explanation. It is deep because superficially I am disorganization incarnated. I live in a state of a complete mess. Yes, I do go to the office well-dressed, but that is a mindless thing I just practiced. I don't care about how I look.

However, I like to organize my thoughts. I want to make connections about everything I perceive. The problem is, I know too little. In fact, we know too little. My deep urge to find the theory of everything has been and is being thwarted by nature from time immemorial.

Programming, along with programming languages, can be considered an applied branch of logic. A dream comes true situation for Bertrand Russell. Probably, Alan Turing was well aware of works of Russell's domain.

Passion for programming remains strong after all these years. However, I no longer think it as powerful as I thought before. In fact, I believe, it shouldn't be granted that much power over our life. Rules embedded in the system is not a sufficient answer to the moral problems.

Eternal Sunshine

2023-07-16T10:19:41.000Z

It was my first day at school, and I couldn't wait for it. So, my elder brother took my hand and escorted me to the school, very early in the morning. The school was in the compound of the Customs Office.

We went through a large gate. Walked on a concrete road, as commonly found in government offices. And then, suddenly, wonder of wonders! A tree with fruits like local dates, yet the leaves are like ice apple trees! I gasped. It was actually a palm tree. Then we crossed a small clubhouse, officers in white dresses were playing table tennis there.

Leaving those behind, we took a turn, and we were in an English Forest^[1] of Eucalyptus, and Mahogany with a tennis lawn embedded in its bosom. We went through it, following a brick walkway covered with fallen leaves. The fragrance of Eucalyptus, the intermittent rays of the morning sun dancing through the thickness of the leaves blended so much that it felt like the rays are fragrant themselves.

Then, there were Indian Mynas. We used to believe that seeing an even number of those birds brings good luck while seeing in odd numbers is a dire omen. But, hundreds of them, practically uncountable to me, caused exasperation at first. Being just a child, I was incapable of fixating on a fearful idea for too long. Therefore, I stopped counting totally. I found this resignation, particularly peaceful. Life, in a nutshell, always has been a menagerie of infinite Indian Mynas. All our effort to divine our little concerns from such intricacy is wastefully futile.

All of it made a lasting impression of wonder I never overcame. Times and again, I visited the place. Only in memory, of course. Partially due to the fear that it will not be the same, partially due to the notion that I might have already lost the innate sense of wonder I used to have as a boy.

But, visiting it in my mind is like living with all my being, like being happy, calm, and content.

English Forest is a forest that is, in its heart, a forest (not a garden) yet quite well-maintained. I made up this term after reading The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro. ↩︎

Pothole

2026-03-24T17:47:11.000Z

How I wish for an accident! A slip on the stairs, or an ankle sprain in a pothole. Or, a merely innocent one. How I wish for an accident, not in the realm of sensations, but in the absence of existence.

Such is a lament of mine.

The reality, of course, is not like that. One can produce a false sense of continuity with only 24 images per second. Our consciousness is an aggregation. Yet, I never found my senses failing to produce me.

They surely fail. But whenever they fail, I fail to exist, consequently never perceiving failure at all.

So, I yearn for the illogical, the contradiction, the corporeal impossibility. An accident, not the physical kind, but an accident of existence, letting me take a peek at our inexistence, a gap in the continuity, a glitch, a missing thread that never was yet missing.

Dealing with Death

2023-01-17T10:03:42.000Z

Making peace with my temporality, I think I've already done that.^[1] I am in peace with the unavoidable fatality.^[2] Thus, I can do away with all the Denial of Death things by Ernest Becker. I believe that is the case also for any sufficiently mature person. However, I can't yet deal with the deaths of others.

Death, throughout our life, comes in the form of pain, merely concealable, but never to extinguish permanently, the anguish of lifetime, unsolvable maths with so many things to do and say… but left alone, unfinished. I wonder how to deal with that.

I think, for many people, art springs from this type of pain instead of a self-aggrandizing causa sui project. Art springs from the pain of existence, not only from existence but also from the process of existing itself.

Days of Balloons

2023-01-14T08:40:11.000Z

In my childhood in a suburb, we had many curious toys available at the festivals. Most of them have been replaced by smartphones nowadays. One I can particularly remember well is an anthropomorphic balloon toy with no limbs. Created from a single piece of a long balloon with an indent to separate the head from the body, eyes made of paper, attached to a cardboard base with much mud to give some amount of weight.

No matter how you throw it, it will always land on its base.

It would keep landing on its base— perhaps for eternity if there were not a leak. But there is always a leak. The head would shrink, eventually the body too. The inevitable death of everything and obvious profit for the toymaker would defeat our childhood dreams of everlasting joy.

No, I'm not unhappy to grow out of my childhood dream of everlasting joy. I mourn for the extinction of all those simple and momentous joys, especially the ones you cannot find by an exhaustive Google search.

Art and Error

2023-01-12T06:22:22.000Z

And then there are painters who never do anything that is no good, who cannot do anything bad, just as there are ordinary people who can do nothing but good. — Vincent Van Gogh

বেশি ভালো যে ভালো না, বরং তার ভীড়ে ভালো হয়ে যায় মাঝারি সে কথা রবীন্দ্রনাথও জানিয়ে দিয়েছেন অমিত-র মুখ দিয়ে। সারাজীবন ভুল করে যাওয়া মানুষগুলোই কিছুতেই একটা পথে বা মতে নিজেকে মানিয়ে নিতে পারে না। পারে না বলেই হয়ত দেখতে পায়, বলতে পারে অনেককিছু। ফর্ম ভাঙলে তবে আর্ট মডার্ন হয়। গদ্যের কাঠিন্য পেলে কবিতা হয় সুপুরুষ। দুজনের গান্ধারের ঊনিশ-বিশে গায়কী হয়ে গেলো আলাদা।

About Programming

2024-09-03T17:46:42.000Z

Among the two passions I have, programming is the one I'm less passionate about. But, it's a passion still and, since it is the work that bring me money, I spend a considerable amount of time with it. After all, we seldom can create a job out of our passion in this unforgiving, ever-expecting monster of a society.

When I started, it was purely a passion. Never thought that it will be a profession for me. But, professionalism has little to do with profession. It's an attitude to do things in the best way possible.

[!fail] Outdated
The following two paragraphs contain an outdated view regarding the power of infotech. My opinion regarding this has been expressed here.

Another thing I would like to point out that a passion is a spiritual journey to me. It requires one's utmost attention and intelligence. You'll indeed find a philosophical vibe around programming (Read Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs), which is only too natural. You'll find this in design and manuals of UNIX and friends, in programming paradigms and software architecture and also in individual's codes where they try to write code in the best possible way. It manipulated data in so many ways and yet exploring many more that it is now possible to establish a new religion on it, Data Religion.

In these days, Code is law,^[1] peoples are dreaming about a totally distributed internet where the freedom of expression will be deeply integrated and, all of these are possible because of a long journey through programming to a better Information philosophy.

When I write code, particularly open-source libraries, I feel myself contributing to the next big picture of the internet. Indeed, it is not only a spiritual journey to my own self, but also a philosophical journey to the next society.

Code is Law: On liberty in cyberspace is an article by Lawrence Lessig where he argues that 'code' will be the next big thing to regulate and law enforcement. ↩︎

All Roads Start and End in Me

2026-02-16T20:51:47.000Z

Bashō Asked me to join in. I picked up my bag and my sandals. We went through the mountains and valleys towards Kyoto. The narrow road to the interior, it is called. Interior to my being.

Along the way, joined Dostoyevsky, a veritable madman. We met Attar along the way, Fanā to his bone. All my friends are quite mad, to be honest.

In a Tasca in Lisbon, we met Pessoa and Jibanananda. We answered the riddles of the absurd Sphinx and passed by the impenetrable castle. Evening approached with a Huzun on Lisbon, blown away from Istanbul.

Rabindranath never came only as himself. Sometimes, he is the Dadathakur, sometimes he is the Acharya, sometimes a child lost in the darkness of a staircase.

We met Carl Sagan. We met an African shaman. We met pantheons, long forgotten, along the road.

This is the Silk Road, the Milky Way, the eternal corridor… It started from me, and will end there also. A net displacement of zero, a long-winding road from emptiness to emptiness…

The Toolbox

2024-11-03T14:23:46.000Z

Title	Description	Tags
Book Base	A starter vault to manage your reading notes in Obsidian	#vault #template #tool
Boox Text Note Converter	A converter for Boox text notes.	#tool #boox #converter
CyberEnsō	Ensō on screen.	#generative-art #tool
DotR	A dotfiles manager as dear as a daughter	#tool #cli #dotfiles
EpubPress on the Web	A webapp to create EPUB from webpages using EpubPress API	#tool #epub #book #ebook

EpubPress on the Web

2025-10-27T14:36:31.000Z

DotR

2025-11-20T20:03:52.000Z

This is a still in beta dotfiles manager I have written primarily for my own use. Currently I am using dotdrop. However, installing it in a fresh machine is cumbersome because it depends on Python. This program intends to be of similar use but in a single binary executable.

CyberEnsō

2024-11-03T14:20:34.000Z

This led me to an idea to build a Generative Art based on Ensō which I named CyberEnsō.

How Does it Work?

The practice of drawing Ensō is a part of Hitsuzendō or the 'Way of Zen through brush'. Art arose from mu-shin cannot be interpreted by its content alone. ↩︎

Boox Text Note Converter

2024-11-03T16:31:03.000Z

Book Base

2025-10-27T14:42:30.000Z

This is a vault comprising my reading management flow. Here are some screenshots:

Obsidian Federated Embed

2023-07-12T11:53:10.000Z

Abstract

Digital Gardens are great for nurturing thought. And, evergreen notes expand but are seldom scraped altogether. Therefore, Ideally, to build a campfire of multiple gardeners, cross-embedding between vaults/gardens.

Approach

Publisher

The publisher, be it a plugin like Obsidian Digital Garden, or a dedicated one will generate a manifest file, let's say, campfire.json to the root of the public URL with this format:

{
  "version": "1.0.0",
  "last_updated": "<unix timestamp>",
  "content_root": "content root to prepend before content_url",
  "published_root": "published root to prepend before published_url",
  "notes": [
    {
      "title": "Some Title",
      "aliases": ["An alias"],
      "content_url": "relative url accessible from web to get the raw content",
      "published_url": "optional relative publicly available url",
      "last_updated": "<unix timestamp>"
    }
  ]
}

Consumer

Consumer plugin will leverage existing callout syntax and provide auto-complete to help the user.

> [!FED] URL/path
> <pulled_content>
>
> updated_at: <timestamp>

The plugin will get the manifest file based on the URL, then load the contents and suggest based on title, alias, and content URL then append the text as a quote.

For partial embedding, it will support block and header embedding like existing syntax. There are also two new syntaxes for partial embedding:

URL/path#:1-3 for line-based embed
URL/path#>p:3 for tag-based embed, paragraph 3 in this case.

Rabindranath Tagore

2023-09-26T09:14:52.000Z

Rabindranath Tagore is undoubtedly the most important polymath of Bengal.^[1] He wrote prolifically, painted, preached pacifism, questioned well-established values, and brought Bengali literature to modernity.

He had an unusual amount of foresight of how the history will unfold. He preached anti-nationalism even before the WWII started.

Tagore and Modernity

Some might argue that modern Bengali literature starts right after Tagore. I think that's plainly wrong. The shift of motifs and expression that marks the beginning of modern Bengali literature starts from some of Tagore's work from the later part of his life, for example, all the pieces from Lipika are prose-verses. Poems from Punashcho, especially Baanshi are modern in their imagery, motifs, and psychology.

Work

Activism

Tagore was anti-nationalist, but very much nation-aware. This is consistent with his world-view of undogmatic lifestyle, which he considered is the base of human freedom. That doesn't mean that he was against Freedom of India. Quite the contrary. Freedom of India is a prerequisite of the freedom of the people of India. He rejected masculinized, warring nationalism and chose dignity, openness, reason, and cooperation for his base of a great nation.

He wrote numerous essays of virtually every problem India faced while he is alive. Caste system, fanaticism, oppression, dogmatism, everything.

It's a shame that west knows him mostly by some of his mediocre works. ↩︎

Matsuo Bashō

2023-10-08T11:29:43.000Z

Art is, to me, the most authentic self-expression. Beauty is secondary. Art thrives on our individuality, on our differences. This also implies that art is a mode of living. And how Bashō lived art!

Bashō lived art in that time. He practised Zen. He immersed himself in writings of his predecessors. He preached his way of poetry and lived by his rules with absolute honesty. He taught himself to be one with the nature, as if its transiency is his owns. He had an acute mono no aware. When he wrote about nature, he wrote about himself.

And, what did he achieve? To me, Bashō is synonymous with excellence.

Publications

Title	Status	Rating
Bashō's Haiku: Selected Poems	To Read	∅
Narrow Road to the Interior: And Other Writings	Read	●●●●●
The Sound of Water: Haiku by Basho, Buson, Issa, and Other Poets	Read	●●●●●

Joseph Campbell

2023-10-05T08:44:21.000Z

Publications

Cover2	Title	Status	Rating
	The Hero With a Thousand Faces	Read	●●●●●
	The Power of Myth	Read	●●●●●

Jibanananda Das

2023-09-26T09:20:00.000Z

Jibanananda Das is one of the greatest of all Bengali poets. Though Tagore was doubtful of some of his works, ironically, Jibananada's modernity owes most to Tagore himself. In fact, Jibanananda's modern works (all after his first poetry book) got many inspirations from Tagore's experiments.

Jibanananda's strong suite though is an acute mono no aware, wielded masterfully like none before him. It is so strong that even when expressing human expressions, this pathos of things will be the dominant feeling.

Through and through, Jibananada is a modern man with modern crisis. So much so that his writings has uncanny similarities with coeval western writer Fernando Pessoa's Book of Disquiet, written over the same time yet published much later. Surely, Jibanananda couldn't have read those.

Fernando Pessoa

2026-03-09T17:03:30.000Z

Fernando Pessoa has a special place in my mind, which is exactly like he wanted— an enigma, an impenetrable castle.

Pessoa is mostly introspective. He brings everything from the depth of his being. Not only that, whenever he expresses anything of the real world he will distort it, absurdify it to bring an imagery unimaginable.

Pessoa's patience is something I admire much. He wrote The Book of Disquiet for over 2 decades and couldn't even finish it before his death. And what a beautifully unfinished book it is!

Publications

Cover2	Title	Status	Rating
	A Little Larger Than the Entire Universe	Read	●●●◐○
	The Book of Disquiet: The Complete Edition	Read	●●●●●

Balloon Man

2023-07-12T01:03:06.000Z

Balloon man is a village fair toy native to Bangladesh now on the verge of extinction, or already extinct.

Now, I cannot even find an image of it by doing a long streak of search in google.

To put it in words, the shape is anthropomorphic, without the limbs. It has a head and torso made of a piece of long balloon and divided by a string. It has its facial features made of a paper cutout pasted using glue of rice. The base of the toy is made of a cardboard, with some added weight of mud so that whenever we throw it, it lands on its 'feet'.

Hüzün

2023-07-12T01:39:10.000Z

Hüzün, as described by Orhan Pamuk in Istanbul, is melancholia that one feels for things lost or time past. This is an all-pervading mood of post-Ottoman Istanbul.

Larkhill

2023-10-26T12:57:26.000Z

Larkhill is a concentration camp in V for Vendetta by Alan Moore.

The Government

2023-10-26T12:57:36.000Z

The government is quite similar to many dystopian oligarchies. It is definitely fascist. Contraptions of mass surveillance, and mass media is very much active.

The government considers itself a body headed by a supreme leader and consisting of various body parts like fingers (police), ears, eyes, nose (surveillance), and voice (propaganda).

Another defining factor of the government is the Fate. The AI that helps to run the show.

Fate

2023-10-26T16:20:33.000Z

Fate is an AI. It sees everything, knows everything and practically controls the government.

V

2023-10-29T02:26:33.000Z

!Media/V from v for vendetta.jpg

V is the masked protagonist with a pronounced knack for theatrics. A man with a mission yet to be unveiled.

Origin

V is a survivor of the Larkhill. He was injected with the Batch 5 by Delia Surridge which endowed him with some superhuman abilities.

Characteristics

V puts freedom over law and justice. In his monologue in Volume 02, before destroying the sculpture of justice, he eloquently expounded his view on this matter.

Vendettas

Acts of vendetta V executed are not always lethal. However, it doesn't seem to be consistent either. We can see that he has been killing people from Larkhill long before the detectives noticed. However, we can assume that these villains are minor compared to the ones we see in the novel. It doesn't make sense why they all got killed but Prothero wasn't.

Lewis Prothero

V abducted Lewis Prothero from a train and put him in a re-enactment setting of Larkhill in Prothero's time with an overdose of Batch 5 injected followed by burning of all of his dolls.

This act does full justice to the word vendetta. The re-enactment ensures that the villain is well aware of his crime. The burning of dolls is a particularly potent punishment due to Prothero's obsession with dolls, and the burning itself is a reminder of concentration camps.

Bishop Anthony Liliman

V lured Lilliman using Evey, and killed him using a poisoned wafer.

Delia Surridge

The Vendetta against Delia Surridge shows some sense of empathy on V's part. V injected him with poison while she was asleep and was very kind to her through the last minutes of her life.

Lewis Prothero

2023-10-28T23:21:24.000Z

Prothero is a richly compound character.

Characteristics

Ex-Commander

Firstly, he is an ex-commander of the army and was a director of Larkhill. There we can find him particularly cruel.

A Collector of Dolls

Contrasting to his cruelty, we can find a completely different man if we consider his obsession with collecting dolls. This came to be his undoing when V used this for his psychological attack.

Voice of Fate

Prothero has a powerful, and charismatic voice which is known to the population as the voice of Fate itself. This is particularly useful to the government since they can exploit it to connect to the population in a more humane way.

Evey Hammond

2023-10-26T16:20:22.000Z

Evey Hammond is one of the central characters of V for Vendetta.

Evey symbolizes the people— gullible, powerless, and the ones to be tormented by the government.

Moore used Evey as his medium to express certain key points of V for Vendetta, namely, how England came to be under fascist rule, and what it meant for common people—distress, torment, and docility.

Delia Surridge

2023-10-28T23:21:42.000Z

Delia Surridge is a researcher turned doctor and pathologist who did some hormone research on inmates of the Larkhill.

What she did at Larkhill was undeniably evil. However, it was not a mediated one. She considered the inmates less than human which helped her to turn a blind eye to their sufferings. She is not a cruel one by nature and took her punishment gracefully.

Bishop Anthony Lilliman

2023-10-28T23:32:27.000Z

Bishop Anthony Lilliman is one of the main villains of V for Vendetta by Alan Moore. He worked at Larkhill as a religious motivator.

In contrast to other major characters of this work, he is simple in composition. So much so that you can consider an archetype for major religion's clergymen. Hypocrisy, collaboration with the government, perverse sexuality^[1] everything is present in his character.

Pedophilia in this case. ↩︎

Adam James Susan

2023-10-27T01:22:10.000Z

Adam James Susan is the leader of the Norsefire and the leader of the government.

Although evil, the leader is a sincere person. He simply puts all before the individual (including himself). If we consider the romantic attraction he feels for Fate perverse, then he is also a neurotic.

Entity Index

2023-03-25T22:51:51.000Z

Title	Aliases	Type	Tags
Adam James Susan	Adam James Susan The Leader	Character	#VforVendetta
Anattā	anātman Anattā	Concept	#concept #concept/buddhism #concept/theology #concept/philosophy
Anitya	anitya impermanence	Concept	#concept #concept/buddhism #concept/theology #concept/philosophy
Balloon Man	বেলুন মানুষ বেলুন সৈন্য	Object	#object #object/toy
Baqā	Baqa Baqā Restoration	Concept	#concept #concept/sufism #concept/theology
Bishop Anthony Lilliman	Bishop Anthony Lilliman	Character	#VforVendetta
Delia Surridge	Delia Surridge	Character	#VforVendetta
Doublethink	Doublethink	Concept	#concept #concept/psychology #concept/orwellian
Evey Hammond	Evey Evey Hammond	Character	#VforVendetta #X
Fanā	Fana Fanā Annihilation	Concept	#concept #concept/theology #concept/sufism
Fate	Fate	Character	#VforVendetta
Fernando Pessoa	Pessoa	Person	#person #person/writer
Hüzün	Hüzün Huzun	Mood
Jibanananda Das	জীবনানন্দ দাশ	Person	#person #person/writer
Joseph Campbell	ক্যাম্পবেল	Person	#person #person/scholar
Larkhill	Larkhill	Place	#VforVendetta
Lewis Prothero	Lewis Prothero	Character	#VforVendetta
Matsuo Bashō	Matsuo Bashō	Person	#person #person/poet #person/writer
Mono no aware	pathos of things mono no aware	Concept	#concept #concept/aesthetics #concept/literature #concept/art
Obsidian Federated Embed	OFE	Technical Draft	#technical-draft
Pratītyasamutpāda	dependant origination dependant arising	Concept	#concept #concept/buddhism #concept/theology #concept/philosophy
Rabindranath Tagore	রবীন্দ্রনাথ ঠাকুর	Person	#person #person/polymath #person/activist #person/writer
Thanatology	Thanatology	Concept	#subject
The Government	The Government	Organization	#VforVendetta
V	V	Character	#VforVendetta

Fana

2024-09-03T12:53:20.000Z

Fanā or Annihilation is one of the two states of a Sufi practitioner. To attain Fanā everything should be forfeited. This not only parting away with everything we like. It means forfeiting one's ego, feelings, ethics, judgements, differences, etc. and only submitting oneself to the will of God.

Baqa

2024-02-20T08:52:11.000Z

Baqā (Restoration) is the state following Fanā in a Sufi's journey. In this state, one's self gets restored. However, this self is a sophisticated one, devoid of the pettiness of normal self and possesses knowledge of God. This self is united with God.

Thanatology

2023-04-01T14:41:27.000Z

Thanatology is the scientific study of death. To understand death, thanatologists approach from various point of view and use established subjects like biology, psychology, and sociology as standard tools.

Though the intention is purely scientific, I consider this subject a soft science. Except for biology, all the subjects composing Thanatology lack scientific rigour.

Doublethink

2023-03-25T22:37:57.000Z

Doublethink is an Orwellian (coined in 1984) term denoting the process of actively forgetting the logical contradiction of two concepts. It is very similar to hypocrisy, but not completely. In both form, the actor ignores the contradiction. However, a hypocrite understands quite well what the contradiction is. On the other hand, a doublethinker try to forget the contradiction, and then try to forget the forgetting ad infinitum. For many, it is a way to fight against cognitive dissonance.

Pratītyasamutpāda

2023-02-27T12:12:17.000Z

Pratītyasamutpāda (dependant origination) is a Buddhist doctrine that claims that all phenomena arises from another and makes way for other phenomena to happen.

Significance

Most other concepts like Anattā, impermanence, karma etc can be derived from this as shown by Nāgārjuna in his Mūlamadhyamakakārikā.

Anitya

2023-03-09T01:09:49.000Z

Anitya (impermanence) is a Buddhist doctrine^[1] that claims everything, without exception, is transient, and inconstant and subject to declination, and destruction.

It is very important to understand this, both philosophically and emotionally, to walk in the path of detachment that leads to Nirvana.

And a logical deduction from dependant origination. ↩︎

Anatman

2023-03-01T16:02:23.000Z

The Buddhist concept of Anattā categorically denies the existence of a transcendent self (e.g. soul) that found amongst almost all other major religions. Self, as taught by Buddha, is an aggregation of senses and intellect.

Significance

In Religion

With this concept, Buddhism diverged from virtually every other major religion. However, this doesn't deny the existence of the reincarnation, heaven, and hell. While, the self will perish, it will not perish in any near future (In most religions, souls will find a resting place for eternity at the end). Harmonizing the concept of self as a aggregate of bodily functions with a process that transcends body, namely rebirth, has been done through a complex theory of quasi-materialistic process based on dependant origination.

In Psychology

With the understanding of Anattā, comes a radically different set of axioms to live the life by. However, understanding this concept both intellectually and emotionally is not an easy feat.

Philosophy

Many philosophers like Nāgārjuna did impressive work on this concept, expounding thoroughly and building a system of theological understanding.

Art

Various branches of Zen art and literature depends on this concept not only as a subject,^[1] but as a core philosophy that shape the aesthetic choices. This, and the concept of dependant-origination, provides the basic framework for mono no aware.

Ikkyū Sōjun has some such impressive poems. ↩︎

Mono no aware

2023-02-27T12:10:29.000Z

Mono no aware or the pathos of things is probably one of the timeless concepts of the aesthetics that pervades most if not all the forms of art and literatures of every culture.

This should not be confused with our natural sense of joy or bliss amongst the nature. Mono no aware is deeply analytic. It is more of wisdom than a sensation and demands some amount of thinking in our part.

To nurture mono no aware, it is important to understand the transiency of things.

In Japanese culture, the necessary philosophical backbone for such an idea has been mostly supplied by the Buddhist idea of Impermanence. The simplest things— a cherry blossom, a cry of cicada, or mountain dew can be of a very different import, can put itself in a loftier place if seen through the lens of the mono no aware. That is very different from what we feel facing the nature at the first blush.

Hermitage

CBZ 2.0 - A Better Comic Book Archive

Structure

Content.xml

Metadata

Content

Panels

Bubbles

Usage

Panel Navigation

Bubble Zoom

Steal My Look

To Replicate Completely

Replicate Partially

All Components

Forest

Cards

KOReader to Obsidian

Note Supplements: A Faster Way to Write Longer Notes

An Example

The Prisoner and The Fugitive

Marcel Proust

The Prisoner

Page: 22 (3.87%) @ 12 Aug 2024 06:09:42 PM

Page: 38 (6.69%) @ 12 Aug 2024 06:10:53 PM

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How to integrate Saleor JWT in Nuxt 3

Implementation

Login

Refresh

Logout

Conclusion

How to Read Ebooks

ফরম্যাট

ডিভাইস

অ্যাপ

KOReader

Google Play Books

পড়া

How to Manage Multiple Git Credential for the Same Provider

Let's Proceed

Know Your Current Git Path

Create Your Shadow Git

Bonus: VS Code Setup

Boox to Obsidian_ Rich Annotation Export from Boox Cloud

House Of Leaves

Mark Z. Danielewski

Introduction

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Boox to Obsidian_ Highlights and Annotations

Problem

Solution

An Example

Before

After

Proust, Marcel - Swann's Way

Marcel Proust

PART II - Swann in Love

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PART III - Place-Names: The Name

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Raw

Unlived Lives of Ours

অপলাপ ০১ আমার শহর

02 The Accusitions

01 The Encounter

ভাড়া

নয়াপুরাণ

আত্মার সৃষ্টি

Amar Singh Chamkila_ A Mirror

হেমন্তের হাইকু

2021-10-24T18:18:00+06:00

2021-10-25T10:15:32+06:00