Tag: Philosophy

John Cheever – Desultory Quotes

“I know some people who are afraid to write a business letter because they will encounter and reveal themselves.”

“I was brought up in southern Massachusetts, where it was thought that mythology was a subject that we should all grasp. It was very much a part of my education. The easiest way to parse the world is through mythology.”

“These stories seem at times to be stories of a long-lost world when the city of New York was still filled with a river light, when you heard the Benny Goodman quartets from a radio in the corner stationery store, and when almost everybody wore a hat.”

“Everything outside was elegant and savage and fleshy. Everything inside was slow and cool and vacant. It seemed a shame to stay inside.”

“The secret of keeping young is to read children’s books. You read the books they write for little children and you’ll keep young. You read novels, philosophy, stuff like that and it makes you feel old.”

“Like all bitter men, Flint knew less than half the story and was more interested in unloading his own peppery feelings than in learning the truth.”

“The city is full of accidental revelation, half-heard cries for help, and strangers who will tell you everything at the first suspicion of sympathy.”

https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/7464.John_Cheever?page=1

Is It the Universe or Is It Me?

Some have seen tragedy as issuing from a wound in the hero, but, since Nietzsche, it has been commoner to find the flaw in the universe itself; or in man’s relation to it; or in man’s lack of relation to it. In Paul Tillich’s phrase, which is in the Nietzschean tradition, “man is maladjusted to the universe.” Life is “absurd,” as the French existentialists have it. Camus finds human effort symbolized in the myth of Sisyphus.

To what extent we need implicate the universe I don’t know. I. A. Richards once paraphrased “All’s right with the world,” as: “All’s right with the nervous system.” If that’s valid, we could paraphrase “Something’s wrong with the universe,” as “Something’s wrong with the nervous system.” At bottom, these contrasting statements aren’t as different as they sound. If man and the universe don’t suit each other, we have our choice as to which to lay the blame on. When we complain that the universe is so big, we mean we can’t fit it into our heads. When we complain that we are so little, we mean we cannot fit ourselves into the scheme of things.

The Life of the Drama
Eric Bentley

God’s Spies – King Lear quote, ChatGPT on

In King Lear there is a speech containing the phrase God’s Spies. Can you elaborate on what this means?
ChatGPT
The phrase “God’s spies” appears in King Lear, Act 5, Scene 3. This is part of Lear’s speech to Cordelia after they are captured and imprisoned. Lear, despite their grim fate, imagines a life of spiritual reflection and connection between himself and Cordelia, insulated from the corruption of the outside world.

Here is the excerpt:
“We two alone will sing like birds i’ the cage:
When thou dost ask me blessing, I’ll kneel down
And ask of thee forgiveness: so we’ll live,
And pray, and sing, and tell old tales, and laugh
At gilded butterflies, and hear poor rogues
Talk of court news; and we’ll talk with them too,
Who loses and who wins; who’s in, who’s out;
And take upon’s the mystery of things,
As if we were God’s spies: and we’ll wear out,
In a walled prison, packs and sects of great ones
That ebb and flow by the moon.”

Interpretation of “God’s spies”:
The phrase has a profound and multi-layered meaning.

Spiritual Insight and Detachment: Lear imagines that he and Cordelia, by being isolated in their prison, will achieve a higher perspective on life, akin to “spies” for God, observing human folly and the mysteries of existence from a distance. This reflects a sense of spiritual transcendence—being able to see the world’s troubles and vanities from an almost divine vantage point, while remaining apart from them.

Reflection and Observation: Spies gather secret knowledge, and by calling themselves “God’s spies,” Lear implies that their suffering and isolation will allow them to perceive deeper truths about life, society, and human nature. They’ll observe the rise and fall of power and the transient nature of worldly concerns as if they were privy to a divine understanding.

Redemptive Suffering: The idea that suffering and imprisonment might bring them closer to God or divine purpose is also present. Shakespeare often explores how suffering can lead to enlightenment or redemption, and Lear’s vision here reflects his longing for peace, forgiveness, and reconciliation after the chaos and betrayal earlier in the play.

Contrast and Irony:
This hopeful vision of Lear’s is deeply poignant because it is tragically short-lived. The audience knows that this imagined life of peace and reflection will not come to pass; Cordelia will soon be killed, and Lear will die in anguish. Thus, the phrase “God’s spies” also carries an ironic undertone, highlighting the contrast between Lear’s idealistic hope and the brutal reality of the play’s conclusion.

In summary, “God’s spies” encapsulates Lear’s yearning for redemption and meaning, his newfound humility, and his desire to rise above worldly concerns through a deeper, almost divine perspective on life. However, this vision is tragically unattainable in the context of the play’s devastating ending.

No Philosophers Stone for Solving Things – How to Solve It, Quote From

Rules of discovery. The first rule of discovery is to have brains and good luck. The second rule of discovery is to sit tight and wait till you get a bright idea.

It may be good to be reminded somewhat rudely that certain aspirations are hopeless. Infallible rules of discovery leading to the solution of all possible mathematical problems would be more desirable than the philosophers’ stone, vainly sought by the alchemists. Such rules would work magic; but there is no such thing as magic. To find unfailing rules applicable to all sorts of problems is an old philosophical dream; but this dream will never be more than a dream.

A reasonable sort of heuristic cannot aim at unfailing rules; but it may endeavor to study procedures (mental operations, moves, steps) which are typically useful in solving problems. Such procedures are practiced by every sane person sufficiently interested in his problem. They are hinted by certain stereotyped questions and suggestions which intelligent people put to themselves and intelligent teachers to their students. A collection of such questions and suggestions, stated with sufficient generality and neatly ordered, may be less desirable than the philosophers’ stone but can be provided. The list we study provides such a collection.

How to Solve It: A New Aspect of Mathematical Method
G. Polya (Author), John H. Conway (Foreword) 

Searching for the Book of Vindication – The Library of Babel, Borges

When it was proclaimed that the Library contained all books, the first impression was one of extravagant happiness. All men felt themselves to be the masters of an intact and secret treasure. There was no personal or world problem whose eloquent solution did not exist in some hexagon. The universe was justified, the universe suddenly usurped the unlimited dimensions of hope. At that time a great deal was said about the Vindications: books of apology and prophecy which vindicated for all time the acts of every man in the universe and retained prodigious arcana for his future. Thousands of the greedy abandoned their sweet native hexagons and rushed up the stairways, urged on by the vain intention of finding their Vindication. These pilgrims disputed in the narrow corridors, proffered dark curses, strangled each other on the divine stairways, flung the deceptive books into the air shafts, met their death cast down in a similar fashion by the inhabitants of remote regions. Others went mad . . . The Vindications exist (I have seen two which refer to persons of the future, to persons who perhaps are not imaginary) but the searchers did not remember that the possibility of a man’s finding his Vindication, or some treacherous variation thereof, can be computed as zero.

Labyrinths
Jorge Luis Borges

The Slacker – Background and Philosophy of

The term achieved renewed popularity following its use in the 1985 film Back to the Future in which James Tolkan‘s character Mr. Strickland chronically refers to Marty McFly, his father George McFly, Biff Tannen, and a group of teenage delinquents as “slackers”.[11] It gained subsequent exposure from the 1989 Superchunk single “Slack Motherfucker”, and the 1990 film Slacker.[12] The television series Rox has been noted for its “depiction of the slacker lifestyle … of the early ’90s”.[13][14][15]

Slacker became widely used in the 1990s to refer to a type of apathetic youth who were cynical and uninterested in political or social causes and as a stereotype for members of Generation X.[16] Richard Linklater, director of the aforementioned 1990 film, commented on the term’s meaning in a 1995 interview, stating that “I think the cheapest definition [of a slacker] would be someone who’s just lazy, hangin’ out, doing nothing. I’d like to change that to somebody who’s not doing what’s expected of them. Somebody who’s trying to live an interesting life, doing what they want to do, and if that takes time to find, so be it.”[17]

The term has connotations of “apathy and aimlessness”.[18] It is also used to refer to an educated person who avoids work, possibly as an anti-materialist stance, who may be viewed as an underachiever.[12]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slacker

V: What are your parent’s occupations?
DP: My mom’s a teacher and my dad was a white collar clerk working in the customs field. We were pretty poor, and throughout childhood we watched our dad lament about coming to America filled with visions of wealth, and how everybody was becoming rich except him. He struggled and worked well beyond the age of retirement and still never really got ahead. I don’t know how young  I was – maybe around ten – when I realized that you can work all your life and still end up poor. I’d rather not go chasing those rainbows and just be happy with what I have.

Zines, Volume 2 – RE/Search
More self-expression obsession coming at you: in-depth interviews with 12 more unusual publishers. From a 15-year-old suburbanite former punk, to a filmmaker and “tracker” (8-track collector/expert); a French self-publisher of art books (in the original meaning of the word), to the dishwasher whose goal it is to wash dishes in every state of the U.S.A. Also, a history of proletarian novels, zine reviews and much, much more. Read all about it in Zines! Vol. 2!

Excerpt from the interview with Dishwasher Pete

Sunday Evening with Emerson

In this refulgent summer, it has been a luxury to draw the breath of life. The grass grows, the buds burst, the meadow is spotted with fire and gold in the tint of flowers. The air is full of birds, and sweet with the breath of the pine, the balm-of-Gilead, and the new hay. Night brings no gloom to the heart with its welcome shade. Through the transparent darkness the stars pour their almost spiritual rays. Man under them seems a young child, and his huge globe a toy. The cool night bathes the world as with a river, and prepares his eyes again for the crimson dawn. The mystery of nature was never displayed more happily.

AN ADDRESS Delivered before the Senior Class in Divinity College, Cambridge, Sunday Evening, July 15, 1838

“The Divinity School Address” is an essay by Ralph Waldo Emerson delivered as a lecture to the divinity school of Harvard College in 1838. In the essay, Emerson critiques traditional forms of Christianity and religious institutions and calls for a new kind of spirituality based on individual experience and personal insight. He argues that organized religion and its institutions have become stale and irrelevant and that people should seek a deeper understanding of the divine through intuition and experience. He believes that each person has access to the divine within themselves and that this inner spiritual connection is more important than any external religious authority. Throughout the essay, Emerson emphasizes the importance of individuality, self-reliance, and self-discovery in the spiritual realm and calls for a return to a more authentic and personal form of spirituality. By doing so, he challenges the dominant religious and intellectual norms of his time and lays the foundation for a new kind of spiritual and philosophical thought in America.

Good Person Drag

“But you’re not a bad person trying to get good. You’re a sick person trying to get well,” Gabe responded.

Cyrus sat with the thought. Gabe went on, “There’s no difference to the outside world between a good guy and a bad guy behaving like a good guy. In fact, I think God loves that second guy a little more.”

“Good-person drag,” Cyrus thought out loud. That’s what they called it after that.

Martyr!
Kaveh Akbar

Walt Whitman – The Expansive Self

The supreme contemporary example of such an inability to feel evil is of course Walt Whitman.

“ His favorite occupation,” writes his disciple, Dr. Bucke, “seemed to be strolling or sauntering about outdoors by himself, looking at the grass, the trees, the flowers, the vistas of light, the varying aspects of the sky, and listening to the birds, the crickets, the tree frogs, and all the hundreds of natural sounds. It was evident that these things gave him a pleasure far beyond what they give to ordinary people. Until I knew the man,” continues Dr. Bucke, ”it had not occurred to me that any one could derive so much absolute happiness from these things as he did. He was very fond of flowers, either wild or cultivated; liked all sorts. I think he admired lilacs and sunflowers just as much as roses. Perhaps, indeed, no man who ever lived liked so many things and disliked so few as Walt Whitman. All natural objects seemed to have a charm for him. All sights and sounds seemed to please him. He appeared to like (and I believe he did like) all the men, women, and children he saw (though I never knew him to say that he liked any one), but each who knew him felt that he liked him or her, and that he liked others also. I never knew him to argue or dispute, and he never spoke about money. He always justified, sometimes playfully, sometimes quite seriously, those who spoke harshly of himself or his writings, and I often thought he even took pleasure in the opposition of enemies. When I first knew [him], I used to think that he watched himself, and would not allow his tongue to give expression to fretfulness, antipathy, complaint, and remonstrance. It did not occur to me as possible that these mental states could be absent in him. After long observation, however, I satisfied myself that such absence or unconsciousness was entirely real. He never spoke deprecatingly of any nationality or class of men, or time in the world’s history, or against any trades or occupations — not even against any animals, insects, or inanimate things, nor any of the laws of nature, nor any of the results of those laws, such as illness, deformity, and death. He never complained or grumbled either at the weather, pain, illness, or anything else. He never swore. He could not very well, since he never spoke in anger and apparently never was angry. He never exhibited fear, and I do not believe he ever felt it.”

Walt Whitman owes his importance in literature to the systematic expulsion from his writings of all contractile elements. The only sentiments he allowed himself to express were of the expansive order; and he expressed these in the first person, not as your mere monstrously conceited individual might so express them, but vicariously for all men, so that a passionate and mystic ontological emotion suffuses his words, and ends by persuading the reader that men and women, life and death, and all things are divinely good.

The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature
William James

“feelings don’t just matter – they are what mattering means”

As Plato asked, “Are these things good for any other reason except that they end in pleasure, and get rid of and avert pain? Are you looking to any other standard but pleasure and pain when you call them good?” Indeed, feelings don’t just matter—they are what mattering means. We would expect any creature that feels pain when burned and pleasure when fed to call burning and eating bad and good, respectively, just as we would expect an asbestos creature with no digestive tract to find such designations arbitrary. Moral philosophers have tried for centuries to find some other way to define good and bad, but none has ever convinced the rest (or me). We cannot say that something is good unless we can say what it is good for, and if we examine all the many objects and experiences that our species calls good and ask what they are good for, the answer is clear: By and large, they are good for making us feel happy.

Stumbling on Happiness
Daniel Gilbert

Desire and the Airport

Senior year of high school my best friend and I, who were both virgins, had to spend at least one night a week hanging around the San Francisco Airport. Why? The dirty magazines they let us flip through at the newstand, of course, and the sexy stewardesses tugging their luggage like dogs on a leash, but more than that it was everybody marching with such military urgency to their destinations, as if everywhere – everywhere in the world: Winnepeg, Tokyo, Milwaukee – were to be desired.

Desire
David Shields
From Collection – In Brief: Short Takes on the Personal