Sunday, November 18, 2012
Fall 2012
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When ships to sail the void between the stars have been built, there will step forth men to sail these ships.--Kepler
The Sublime & Beautiful vs. Reality
This blog is a record of one man's struggle to search for scientific, philosophical, and religious truth in the face of the limitations imposed on him by economics, psychology, and social conditioning; it is the philosophical outworking of everyday life in contrast to ideals and how it could have been.
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The chief aim of all investigations of the external world should be to discover the rational order and harmony which has been imposed on it by God--Johannes Kepler
and which He revealed to us in the language of mathematics.
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This is the time.
And this is
the record
of the time.
Mad Russian Traveller
The Contemplator
Quotes
George Orwell
"In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”
Stephen Biko
"The oppressors' most powerful weapon is the mind of the oppressed."
Kevin A. Carson
"Ideological hegemony is the process by which the exploited come to view the world through a conceptual framework provided to them by their exploiters."
C. Spurgeon
“While I regarded God as a tyrant I thought my sin a trifle; But when I knew Him to be my Father, then I mourned that I could ever have kicked against Him. When I thought God was hard, I found it easy to sin; but when I found God so kind, so good, so overflowing with compassion, I smote upon my breast."
Madeleine L'Engle
"Truth is what is true, and it's not necessarily factual. Truth and fact are not the same thing. Truth does not contradict or deny facts, but it goes through and beyond facts. This is something that it is very difficult for some people to understand. Truth can be dangerous."
Troy Wisdom
"The truth needs no defense; it only needs witnesses."
Mark Horne
"There is no pleasure as exquisite as being told by someone with more income than you have ever had in your life that your politics are wrong because you don't have solidarity with the poor."
JRR Tolkien
"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."
Augustine of Hippo
"What are kingdoms without justice? They're just gangs of bandits."
Mark Horne
"The Bush-Obama killing continuum shows that there are no reformers; each successor builds on the power grab of the predecessor."
Robert A. Heinlein
"There is no worse tyranny than to force a man to pay for what he does not want merely because you think it would be good for him."
BECAUSE IT STARTS WITH THE TRIVIAL LIKE THE ABOVE, BUT LEADS TO THE FOLLOWING:
Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn
"And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?... The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin's thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt! If...if...We didn't love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation.... We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward."
Neal Stephenson
"The ancients who wished to demonstrate illustrious virtue throughout the kingdom, first ordered well their own states. Wishing to order well their states, they first regulated their families. Wishing to regulate their families, they first cultivated their persons. Wishing to cultivate their persons, they first rectified their hearts. Wishing to rectify their hearts, they first sought to be sincere in their thoughts. Wishing to be sincere in their thoughts, they first extended to the utmost their knowledge. Such extension of knowledge lay in the investigation of things....From the Son of Heaven down to the mass of the people, all must consider the cultivation of the person the root of everything besides. "
"In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”
Stephen Biko
"The oppressors' most powerful weapon is the mind of the oppressed."
Kevin A. Carson
"Ideological hegemony is the process by which the exploited come to view the world through a conceptual framework provided to them by their exploiters."
C. Spurgeon
“While I regarded God as a tyrant I thought my sin a trifle; But when I knew Him to be my Father, then I mourned that I could ever have kicked against Him. When I thought God was hard, I found it easy to sin; but when I found God so kind, so good, so overflowing with compassion, I smote upon my breast."
Madeleine L'Engle
"Truth is what is true, and it's not necessarily factual. Truth and fact are not the same thing. Truth does not contradict or deny facts, but it goes through and beyond facts. This is something that it is very difficult for some people to understand. Truth can be dangerous."
Troy Wisdom
"The truth needs no defense; it only needs witnesses."
Mark Horne
"There is no pleasure as exquisite as being told by someone with more income than you have ever had in your life that your politics are wrong because you don't have solidarity with the poor."
JRR Tolkien
"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."
Augustine of Hippo
"What are kingdoms without justice? They're just gangs of bandits."
Mark Horne
"The Bush-Obama killing continuum shows that there are no reformers; each successor builds on the power grab of the predecessor."
Robert A. Heinlein
"There is no worse tyranny than to force a man to pay for what he does not want merely because you think it would be good for him."
BECAUSE IT STARTS WITH THE TRIVIAL LIKE THE ABOVE, BUT LEADS TO THE FOLLOWING:
Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn
"And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?... The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin's thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt! If...if...We didn't love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation.... We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward."
Neal Stephenson
"The ancients who wished to demonstrate illustrious virtue throughout the kingdom, first ordered well their own states. Wishing to order well their states, they first regulated their families. Wishing to regulate their families, they first cultivated their persons. Wishing to cultivate their persons, they first rectified their hearts. Wishing to rectify their hearts, they first sought to be sincere in their thoughts. Wishing to be sincere in their thoughts, they first extended to the utmost their knowledge. Such extension of knowledge lay in the investigation of things....From the Son of Heaven down to the mass of the people, all must consider the cultivation of the person the root of everything besides. "
Definitions of Acronyms
GRP = General Reading Projects
PS = Propaganda Studies
CSL = CS Lewis
DH = Dashiell Hammett
RC = Raymond Chandler
YM = Yukio Mishima
PKD = Philip K. Dick
TP = Thomas Pynchon
ERH = Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy
FD = Fyodor Dostoevsky
JK = Jack Kerouac
NS = Neal Stephenson
LH = Lafcadio Hearn
HM = Herman Melville
BS = Bruce Sterling
NTW = NT Wright
LtbWS = Learning to become Web Savy
C: TND: title= Cosmos: The new daguerreotype: various photos entitled...
W: LP: GRP: title = Writing: Learning Phase: General Reading Projects: title of work being discussed.
W: LP: LG: HM: MD=Writing: Learning Phase: Literary Group: Herman Melville: Moby Dick
W: LP: LG: VH: LM=Writing: Learning Phase: Literary Group: Victor Hugo: Les Miserables
W: LP: LG: FD: EHOS = Writing: Learning Phase: Literary Group: Fyodor Dostoevsky: The Eternal Husband and Other Stories
W: LP: LG: FD: BK = Writing: Learning Phase: Literary Group: Fyodor Dostoevsky: The Brothers Karamazov
W: LP: LG: FD: C&P = as above but Crime & Punishment instead
W: LP: LG: FD: NFU = as above but Notes From Underground instead
W: FW: title = Writing: Fiction Writing: title of work
W: P: title = Writing: Poetry: title of work
W: LP: author's name: name of work discussed
others will be added as necessary