Unbearable Ambition

I understand what you’re saying well. Talking about motivation in a general way is difficult for me, allow me to say a word about something below then I will come back to it.

I felt reading Strauss and others of his school like I was getting philosophical steroids. Some of Strauss is deeply esoteric, and in honesty I am sometimes by the hermeneutical games but I feel the reward is greater than the effort, and a lot of his teaching is on the surface, even if you have to connect a few dots and discard what is contradicted by the rest. Strauss in a lot of ways continued the work of Nietzsche, Heidegger, Plato, and other philosophers. Part of the underlying purpose of his work is to return to the common sense view of the world and examine its underlying impetus, so in this there is a strong influence of Plato and Heidegger. Politics, for Leo Strauss, is basic because everything we do and strive for becomes integral to the political situation, and the political situation bears on what we strive for.

In this sense I find his philosophy useful and illuminating because there is no real going at it alone as the solitary and courageous figure. Just like Plato’s figure must redescend into the cave, Zarathustra descends from his back into the world. This is a political act. In some sense, even us discussing here is a political act insofar as we might sway each other or others into actions which affect the political situation. Even if we are driven by the heart, our hearts often long for the society of others.

I’m not sure if it was just God who inspired people to courage, maybe I’m wrong. I think the stakes were different at earlier points in history, now we have the opportunity to remain in our comforts and we are reluctant to lose them. Soon, it seems, even war might be fought from the safe distance controlled by drones, and in a lot of ways it already is. God maybe helped people to feel that if they did lose all they had they would still find more in the afterlife, so there was that extra push. Now it is all about what will happen here, and so the reward has to be worth the potential consequences.

I am wondering here, Nietzsche sought to impart a noble courage, but has anyone ever followed through with it for the sake of something like glory alone? I know that the Nazis were inspired by other philosophy than Nietzsche’s and in some ways opposed his teachings, but I think they came closest to a large scale historical act inspired by Nietzsche. (I do not admire the nazis) But even the ones who read his philosophy and were originally inspired by it, I wonder if they themselves fought in the war, or if they merely had soldiers do it? And I know they did not merely inspire the populace with talk about courage, Goebbels was even inspired by Bernays and used his techniques among others to activate the instinctual drives of the people, so it wasn’t really about accomplishing noble deeds for those fighting, at least not in the conscious and willed sense that Nietzsche would have had in mind.

Perhaps the closest that have come to setting out to accomplish monumental deeds are venture capitalists and entrepreneurs. I don’t think they intend to build a “great society” in any sense except that it is great for keeping themselves in power and rolling in cash. :confusion-shrug: Who knows, do you think that is the extent of human nature?

I understand reluctance to undertake acts on a large scale, humanity has learned a lot of hard lessons in the past century, but as I see it everything is taking place on the political realm.

Coul you recommend some works? The most relevant book I’ve read is the Closing of the American Mind, which contains much astute insight but overall speaks a moral contradiction; the philosophical ethics eroticized contradicts the authors true moral nature. I prefer the clean cut Sloterdijk so far, who has no moral stance save a sly German naturalness to power-lusting. He brings up a great new meaning of the thymos, the rage principle, he considers to be the monad of existence, where eros is the resulting dyad.
VO: self-valuing is thymos, valuing is eros. The former applies to the singularity, the irreducible, the latter to the cosmos; harmony, will to power, ordering-in-time, fractal-flux. The mapping of reality is impossible. It mirrors itself falsely from the beginning, and keeps mirrorring. Nothing is quite exact, everything is askew. What is because everything is always in motion, and it is in motion because it was askew from the beginning. That is why rage is the only thing that sets things right; it does so from one perspective.
But this Relativity Theory, and we were engaging the social sciences. But this is the beauty to me, the place where they meet. And I believe it’s the only way to understand either is to understand both; Einstein was a very clever psychologist, that is why he managed to stay alive in those days - his real counterpart was Bernays. That is the social scientist of our age, and we are by no means rid of him by recognizing that. I fear or - I think that he will come to rule the next two thousand years. Or his method, the new crucifixion. Now man is crucified for real; we have now let the state of Rome, Spain, Germany, America complicit in our innermost secrets; there is no more devil; hwe is fully exteriorized. Now we will feel what it is like to be a Christ. The world will be forced into war. The elites will crus the populace so hard that it must divide into two qualities, like a piece of burnt wood kicked along the tail splits open in two spinning parts, spin and counter spin; and this will be the birth of the Higher Man, the New Knight.
This has already come to pass, the eleventh of september, the splitting open of consciousness into two parts; self-valuing blindness and self-valuing martyrdom. Man had collectively been forced into primitive religion. Only the philosophers stand out; but even they are marked by their time; their assertion is of crisis, of the absence of power in man; and only the first glimmerings of honesty are crystallizing out of the Abyss - damnation is a blessing in disguise; but the robe of the magician is the leopards hide and the skin of the dragon, the patterns of our fractal. The best itself; this is the monad. In so far as there is a beast behind the web, blood under the skin, this is rageful. But be alarmed, rage is good. Rage contained in the heart is lie a crispy hearth, rage is always only for one thing alone, and that is liberty. Nietzsche called it power but I see liberty; the two can be equals but power can refer to charge, and the will to charge is impossible; liberty signifies release but not dissolution.
Quite starkly a enters vision now; In Nietzsche release is not possible; every overcoming is again an enslavement to a newer greater will. Will to power to will to powee to will - it is cycle of drives without crystalizing. Much that has willed to power now wills to stability and perhaps a slow decline into a more subtle form.
Alright I will grant this is of course of course always reducible to will to power, if one wishes to interpret will to power in such a way - but the will to be more subtle; yes indeed this is also the will to power. But subtlety itself? There is the crux, here Heidegger has begun building the bridge - from two sides, as is natural; thinking, building, dwelling; but dwelling is also a thinking and building is also a dwelling. And mostly thinking is a dwelling, and a building. Is this not most pleasant of being human - being able to build, and cultivate? And second best is burning down, or at least to our fellow humans in time.

But some ancient groves have not burned and stand. There is a very good reason for that. The gods never left the shrubbery; and small they are, gods; they come at night and whisper; but osme gods are large, and they have never even appeared to have vanished.
I find it most useful to talk of gods than of political parties. They are both signifiers for processes and protagonists, but gods are more subtle in type, and they are always represented. The god of wings and word, the goddess of fairness and fortitude, the father of reckless splendor and truth, the wife of jealousy, the surf-born principle of lust, the hoarding king on his throne of time, and the always angry ocean. These are metaphors for things that always play a part in all of our lives. And they are revered; by me, as I am a Hellenist - I revere Zeus because I am awe inspired by the lightning and the sunset and this is the name our people gave to that power, the promise, hope, reason for awesomeness in man.

Did you ever think that perhaps we are all, animals and man and tree alike, so awesome because of the sunrise?
What we value is our self-valuing; we are children of the sun;

it is only in the deepest principle; the possibility of being itself, are we not children blind to our bliss, but true beings, suns -
and this bestowing bliss is not rare, either. Most philosophically inspired people have so become because of having felt the plasmatic nature of happiness, and find only in the limits thew amalgamate of yes and no which becomes “hell yes” - to put it in a phrase -
this ‘will to’ - yes to what indeed?
That is the question of our time;
what can we inflict, without contradicting our instincts and spirit?

I find this Straussian vision of Plato most interesting; if I am not mistaken it has led Sauwelios, who is an expert on Strauss, to the belief in four ages, a Homeric, a Platonic, a Machiavellian and a Nietzschean age. Have you heard of this?

As you notice I find it more convenient now to be poetic than to be political’ I pretend to be prophetic but I present a possibility and use it to say a few words about what I think is worthy of them. But Let us now consider Politics; is the nature of politics not that it is always hidden? Is politics not a euphemism for a kind of phantom-acting? Is this not why war is said to be the continuation of politics by other means – all of it is one thing; maneuvering.

But this is too cynical because there are of course aims, and statements, and perhaps principle and philosophy and expression of what one has learned about oneself and wants to change in the world is the beginning of politics. But what it comes down, to, always - the method; but precisely that which remains consistent in von Clausewitz is what lives both in politics and in war; and I say it is maneuvering. It is willing to power in a certain compliance with the laws in the world. Fidel Castro is a politician. He says one thing and does another; but in a way that they do not bite. This is what seems to be the art, what really drives men who become politicians.
And might we not say with a pun “there are no politics, only politicians”? Hm. That is very questionable.

What I am trying to raise as a point is that Strauss is playing that maneuvering game. He is dangerous. He leans here and there, and leaves what those who have ears to these same eavesdroppers; those energetic opportunists that know how to make a word into a profile.

“All things are born of war”.
But of what is war born?
Of things that are born of war.

I mean this; world-peace is never in sight and never a goal of a single person. The only thing in this world that can ever be attained is the goals of single minds.
The magnetism of the thymotic minds singularity breaks into the pure realm of possibility and invents truth; this power attracts mates and students. It is not a ‘good will’ - it is the will to truth that inspires. Or rather the truth itself. And ‘good will’ is not the truth.

The thing with politics is that playing it and identifying it are two perfectly separate issues. Sometimes we express our play, but that is only when we have already won.

That was quite the post. I hope you will forgive me if I can’t do it justice. There is a second reason besides your eloquent expression of ideas that might hold me back from an adequate response.

In this I know your mode of expression to be necessary for our age, as I mentioned in my first comment on this thread about philosophy reuniting with poetry. I had learned about their separation first through Strauss and some of his students who write on the ancient quarrel between philosophy and poetry. What keeps me from it is my personal history which is too long and tortuous to adequately express here, but suffice it to say it is something I have not yet had the strength to overcome.

This is relevant to your comment, I assure you, despite its seeming obscurity.

I think your recognition of thumos is astute and relevant to thoughts I’ve been having about eros, but I have no doubt what’s kept me from coming to any such connection of my own. Without going into it too much and so probably leaving it unhelpfully obscure at the risk of misunderstanding, I have a bad inner nature, and much of my growth has arisen from holding my instincts and inclinations at bay, including my drift towards philosophy.

I learned from Joseph Cropsey, another student of Strauss and Plato, that though the city contradicts us and angers our deeper nature, the city is also the place that allows us to practice philosophy and seek the good. For that reason I am trying to balance my relation to the city, while not allowing the city to inhibit the good it could otherwise nurture.

I also learned from Plato that poetry and even myth contain in them something closer to experience that technical philosophizing and description can never get at. In this I value them. But as my relation to pure experience is itself wounded, this is for me an issue as yet incomplete.

I hope that might suffice to explain why I cannot do your post justice.

This actually reminds me of the teaching of Plato, particularly in the Theatetus and The Statesman. In the former he teaches the incommensurability of knowledge, that is never complete, and how an incomplete knowledge causes an inevitable incomplete knowledge of parts which would be known in full in their relation to the whole. In The Statesman the eleactic strange talks about the inadequacy of theory to account for what takes place, for the the statesman must act beyond law using prudence or phronesis to deal with situations as they arise.

Also I believe it is the Symposium, but I may be wrong, Plato brings in the term metaxy, which is a term meaning a sort of ‘in-between’ state, and referrs to the way that concept and speech can only point to the greater whole but never describe it. This idea plays a significant role in the writings of Eric Voegelin.

My opinion is that you should go with what you feel, so if you find that you don’t like Strauss and your time would be better placed somewhere else, then that will probably serve you best.

If you’re interested in trying him out, you might consider reading some of his essays available free online first and seeing if you are interested in reading more.

Essays I found of particular interest are Existentialism, found here:

https://archive.org/details/StraussOnHeidegger

You will find it in one of the pdf links, the essay from that page relativism is also interesting but there is a degree of overlap between it and the Existentialism essay.

The Three waves of Modernity, here:

https://archive.org/details/HeideggerAndStraussOnNietzscheAndModernity

again, one of the pdf links.

If you’re interested, these are also good essays

https://archive.org/details/LeoStraussOnLiberalEducation

and

https://archive.org/details/LeoStraussOnEsotericismExotericism

The latter are about esotericism/exotericism, which are helpful if you feel you’d like to explore his writing more.

I became interested in Leo Strauss from reading a critique of him in the work of Sheldon Wolin, who follows Shadia Drury (who I have not read) in his criticism. They see Strauss as elitist and as a figure behind the inspiration for the Bush administration, an administration I am not personally fond of, not that I am fond of any modern politics. There may be some truth to that claim, but there is much to gain from reading reading Strauss, and I now find Wolin’s criticism a little naiive.

About the moralizing in Leo Strauss, I always took that to be his exotericism, but that might just have been a personal quirk of mine which influenced how I read him.

If you feel you would like to explore more of Strauss and his school, you could consider looking into the books Natural Right and History, or On Tyranny, both by Strauss himself. By his student Stanley Rosen, the book Plato’s Statesman: The Web of Politics is worthwhile, also Joseph Cropsey’s Plato’s World, and Nietzsche and Modern Times, by Laurence Lampert.

Lampert is more of a Nietzsche scholar than a Straussian, but he has written a couple of books about Strauss and there is a strong influence of Strauss in all of his work. The way he portrays it, Strauss is actually following Nietzsche, though returning to Plato rather than following him strictly. I think Lampert criticizes Strauss’s methods of using esotericism (not that he does it, but the way he does it). I actually incline more towards Plato now, though I find Lampert very illuminating. Lampert also points out how it was Nietzsche who first brought up the way that philosophers used to write esoterically in his book Beyond Good and Evil.

It was actually from searching the net to see if anyone was discussing Lampert that I found this forum, because I found posts where Sauwelios was discussing him. I have never actually conversed with Sauwelios here though.

In Strauss’s essay The Three Waves of Modernity (linked above) he talks about something like those ages, except he begins at Machiavelli and includes Rouseeau as the second between Machiavelli and Nietzsche, which I think makes sense considering Rousseau’s impact on the French Revolution.

But in The History of Political Philosophy Strauss wrote how he believes that writers had included political philosophy in their texts as early as Homer, and Strauss’s student Seth Benardete later did a study of The Odyssey which sought to uncover just that, together with Lampert’s writing on Plato, I see exactly what is meant by the ages of Homer, Plato, Machiavelli, and Nietzsche. I’m not sure if it was the intention in that expression, but I wouldn’t personally see those ages as mutually exclusive.


I could probably write a whole second reply to your post, and I think I did least justice to your poetry, but I think that much of it stands on its own, and besides I fear you might take my responses as unduly vulgar and politic, so I suppose it is my political maneuver here to dodge it entirely.

Yes, it is a most satisfying response in fact, rarely do you hear the truth spoken. The reason has to do with the general preference the poet philosopher expresses for hell. In a sense it is a better reflection of how we perceive our own nature. To have a nature at all, for a man in this day and age is to have a bad nature. But not to pretend that I have a faint clue of the quality or degree of your badness. But you have understood my point about politics, that much is abundantly clear. So what rests; what else might we say? In case of truth, speak in universals. That has been the devils defense since he invented himself out of mans reflection.

Then Plato is deeper than I had thought. This impacts the view on his forms. For metaxy is the imperfect and time-bound expression of principle; so also in value ontology, the self-valuing is the transcendent principle and the valuing, the skewed reflection upon reflection (of which the devil is a most subtly askew one) ; and this is why we brea idols; to break mirrors. To stand once more alone like the lone fire in the field under the stars. Metaxy may arise from us - but fire is no such thing. Fire is not self-valuing like humans are or even like atoms; it is pure usurping; in the sense that all exothermic chemical reaction is such an usurping. We must count with it always, also in human affairs; wherever there is the condition for things to burn up, any small spark can set it off, and wait long enough and there is always a spark, that is the nature of atmosphere, of metaxy. Thunder is another release of metaxy, clouds are it building up. Violence is often the attempt at breaking mirrors; eros is wholly mirror. Sex is the collision of the two. I think science is a form of sex.

Much appreciated. The first pages of what I read made me laugh out loud. He goes straight to a very tight grip. It appears that what I held for knowledge of him was irrelevant.

Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz, I think he largely influenced these two. And a lot of Israeli politicians, I am sure. I’d suspect he has access to, or has at least been given a tour of the grand library of their supreme court. I applaud the existence of such a secret library, accessible only to the utter most elite of power - I find it speaks of profundity to keep certain sources a secret until the end of an education in the human world. It provides depth - a dimension for wisdom to fall in its place; which is always gratitude.

What little I read of him compelled me to read the Protagoras, after which I forgot that I read it to read on in Lampert. I’ll get back to him, I trust. But these things have their time and must fall in their place.

Interesting. I know that Sauwelios has correspondend with Lampert, I think he disagreed with him on an issue related to Nietzsche. The fineries of these things are not beyond me but I do not go as deep into each thought as to flesh out each of its consequences in contact with other , often hypothetical thoughts – but this web, mnemosynid tunnel network of philosophers through time amongst each other, this is a ‘place’ without which the world would be quite hollow in its mechanisms.

I recognize some of that, Sauwelios used to quote from this book by Bernadete - It is fascinating, but I am very much questioning it; is not the true merit of Homer that he inspired the Athenians with his Gods, and his heroes? I have a certain reluctancy to treating the raw epic forms of Europe in a way in which one would treat a Torah. As cryptic, encoded. I do paint a crude picture here, but it is the approach that I am least given to by my own devices -what I take from the Odyssey is the absurdly beautiful conceptions of the natural world and mans paths and the perspectives that are revealed along those paths by encounters; but it is on the other hand absolutely given that many hidden meanings do reside in Homer; but it is always so with the writings of great poetry; no good poet ever understands his own work; he must restrict the approach at marveling, as soon as he breaks through that to reason his art is lost to him. Logic is like graverobbing in this sense; a ring here, a skull there, and I heard you can get 30 quid one that in England - good thing people don’t know about that here. But reason is wandering the shadow realm, and politics is never reasonable. It is always opportune. The only reason is contingency, and its ground is will to power, which is eros. To draw everything to oneself; this means to create the path of least resistance for things to flow towards you. Truth suffers heavily; it is either heavy or combusting, it is not ‘gliding’. Every ‘gliding’ rhetoric is politics; rhetoric of truth is full of vigorous and proud self-confrontation.

As long as the philosopher has any subject he will speak his truths. To be explicit is never necessary when one can be pattern-weaving; this fascinates me on the internet, where thinking is truly building, and dwelling. It is evident to me more and more that this phenomenon belongs to us, thinkers. We have most benefit of it of all. Most people are simply entrapped and impoverished by it, using it for convenience, entertainment and worst, education. Only the finest discipline of taste can justify the internet in terms of entertainment, and the whole point of a good education is a wise preselection of sources. To educate oneself on the internet is only given to children of extraordinary moral genius. One would already have to know everything one needs to learn, in seed, to engage without running into the most grotesque falsifications. Information itself is almost the opposite of direction, and truth always has direction, always has ‘spin’ - as does all substance. Thus the individual without forewarning gives off his spin to all facts by his reason for choosing them - the relation of the things that he knows are even before they are established speaking his souls urge. But is this bad? It is in that it precludes leaning of what one does not want to know, but what one may need to know before one can now what one wants to know. “Free-will” in education limits the degree of objectivity one may attain and thus the power one may feel, and thus the joy one may embody. Some of the great states of bliss require years of formalized rigor. To get the taste for education, the habit for trusting the far and deep to reveal things in time, this is to be given the world, piece by piece, before one starts to walk it like Cain, in Kung Fu.

My view on education interests me here. I notice my own preference for a suspension of valuing in ones own terms;
it is evident that one must value each thing in ones own terms wherever this is possible, and otherwise resist them;
but to be inflicted with facts, theories, languages, stories and weird seeming morals at a young age is to be drawn out of ones self-valuing, to be forced to become greater, at least if the presented teachings are indeed of great things; astronomy and mathematics, Greek and Latin - these things are important - I could not imagine what I had become had I not learned a bit of Greek. Not that I say I would have become far less, but less certainly. I know it instinctively, this is one of the few truly good things I learned; to know how these people spoke, before I came to realize what they represented. The rough beauty in the Greek words speaks quite literally of the ocean; I a inclined to say that they were born from the blood of Kronos and the foaming sea; that their goddess of lust and beauty is their truest reflection - for what Nietzsche says is true but what is it that withstands Dionysos in truth? It is she who evokes him. The priestess, this is what a people embodies for great men to arise; all masculine priests are superfluous; a masculine priests immediately gives way to the priestess, yields to her, as only in the female gender does human become God - only in woman does the flesh rule the spirit, is the spirit servilely occupied with the body; laughter of women is for their health, for their red cheeks; men laugh in health to break painful and imprisoning thoughts, girls laugh because they find - know themselves funny, their activities absurd and superfluous, and if there is beauty in it and its pursuit, delightfully so.

In this sense Nietzsche taught some positively feminine virtues; but he taught them to our ‘subconscious’ - he taught it to cohere, the body - cohere by laughter, to be priestess to the mind, muse to it as well as guide, and folly - “chaos in oneself” - “if truth is a woman” - but if not? What is she then? And what is truth to a man, if there is woman? Is truth not the replacement of woman? But I go too far. This is no longer poetic liberty but the beginning of a lie.

Unbearable ambition, eh?

When I was younger - before I learned psychology, philosophy and ontology, I would go outside every chance I got; I would carry cinder blocks blocks upon blocks away from my house and back. I used to free run at a park where I took the cinder block with me. I would go there many days, in steel toe boots, purposely to give myself every physical challenge I could to test my limits. Later on, I discover the mental power of the mind and start testing my body mentally. When our A/C broke down in the summer, it was 100F in our house; stepping into here would cause you to be drenched in sweat in 20 seconds flat. However, being the passionate individual I was, I not only looked inhuman when I didn’t sweat, but to turn up the heat, I would sleep in the back room with no fan, window shut and a blanket over me despite the air being absolutely heavy. My father slept in the van, and my family slept at their friend’s house. Then that same year, a winter storm struck us knocking out electricity for more than a week - again, I showed my potential as a being by telling my family no when they asked me if I wanted to go to their friend’s house because they had a gas-operated heater. I slept in this house, with no heat, under a blanket that never managed to gain the slightest bit of heat. I was showing incredible mind over matter willpower which turned me into something beyond average human beings. I’m fearless. I’m patient. I can see things happen before they do because of my analytic prowess. This unbearable ambition was used to surrogate the unbearable trials I put myself through. Now, I can’t peak - I just cannot feel tension anymore. I feel like a diamond that is beautiful yet very cold and rough. I can love, as per usual, but my mental capacity is simply off the charts. There’s simply no build up to me. I am grounded, yet at the same time I am piercing the heavens. It’s an incredible juxtaposition between holism and nihilism. I suspect that Fixed Cross hasn’t learned how to master everything and nothing. I highly advise them to understand the principles of a full & empty glass. A full glass has no room for anything; an empty glass has room for everything. Learn how to gain, without containing that gain. When you master this principle, you can experience the apex of your potential while your body does not experience the slightest change in physiology. It’s the secret to turning your brain into a god, while respecting your body’s physiological limits.

The possibilities of a holistic man are limited by their inability to fall back. The possibilities of a nihilistic man are limited by their inability to come back. The possibilities of a nihilistic & holistic man are endless.

My badness is many faceted :icon-mrgreen: , but I think it would suffice to say that I am prone to clumsiness and incaution.

I belive it is in the book Exterminator! by William S Burroughs, he talks about something he calls “Do easy”, where first you do things slowly and cautiously until you’ve got the hang of it and know what you’re doing, then when it becomes like second nature you can drop your caution. I think that indicates well my reasoning behind not embracing thumos… though adversely I am prone to lose inspiration — but whoever said living wasn’t a risky game?

I have always been fond of funhouses, perhaps with having so many mirrors reflecting distorting images back on me I’ve learned to take them less seriously and even find them good for a laugh and for pulling faces.

Likewise I have never felt a need to make my way out of the labyrinth, it is agreeable to me aesthetically. I think it would make a good home, with many trap doors and sliding walls… but perhaps I haven’t yet seen the true reason which warrants my escape. So we move on to education…

I hope you can gain something from him. I take all philosophers with a grain of salt, sometimes they go down nicely that way. If nothing else, Leo Strauss should provide a thoughtful journey through the history of philosophy.

Such a library would be of much interest. I suspect there may be many such libraries around the world, in part I am engaging in conjecture and perhaps a little fantasy… but I would like to break into many such establishments and scour their texts, perhaps with a team of others… again just a fantasy, but a view of the world I would like to inhabit.

I’m not sure if I’m on the right track here. I believe Homer’s contribution to Greek culture would be (along with Hesoid and other poets of the time) a certain valuing of the gods, and Homer’s warrior heroes. Plato would have learned from studying Homer, and his work is discussed a few times in some of the dialogues, Republic and I believe Ion for sure…

The Torah has also had an enormous influence in the cultural history of the west. It’s most prominent influence, Christianity, I believe, did owe something to the Greeks and Romans, as St. Augustine read Cicero, who has much Plato in his work, while contributing to the construction of the church.

This is a very interesting point and I think it warrants further inquiry, especially in light of philosophy’s relation to poetry. There are many ideas in this short snippet — about the poet’s relation to life through the experience of wonder (or marvelling). Can that pure experience of engagement in life be had when all is put to the test of reason?

I think that at the bottom of even our reason and lies instinct and desire — even the desire for knowledge, and usually this is irrational or serves the irrational.

In the Protagoras, the character of Protagoras says that Homer, Hesiod and Simonides were part of an ancient esoteric order of Sophists:

You have also made an interesting point here, and to my mind a very good one. When one is young, before having obtained understanding, it would be impossible to know where to apply one’s mind successfully to any purpose. We learn by imitating those around us, even animals do this to an extent… and to be taught to read, for example, helps us to determine our own path in a way that avoiding learning to read would never allow us to. So there is truth to this.

Is this to be extended univerally? To what extent should it be extended? You gave the example of your learning Greek, I am wondering, was learning Greek a choice you made or some part of a mandatory curriculum? What I wonder is to what extent the value we hold of a thing is influenced by our inclinations which draw us towards them. Education, I believe, is one of the most important issues, it is the foundation on which all society is built. To my mind, for that reason, it is something well worth devoting deep inquiry to.

Ah yes - but do you know how to fall?

Seriously, learning Aikido rolls was one of the most important things in my mental development; learning to stand on my head an added luxury. Walking on hands is healthy. Distribute thymos in all the eight directions! And you will find the balance of the flame.

Let me spin on that:
“Do easy but sometimes try the impossible.
You may surprise yourself!”

That is a great idea. The bathroom must be kind of central and easy to find or you need several of them, But otherwise to live in a place where you don’t know the way is brilliant, if it has a roof and decent flooring. It reminds me of the oldest video game I ever played, “castle”. You are a H as I remember or perhaps even a small graphic, and you wander through endless empty halls. It felt immensely cozy, all that loneliness on that grey and black screen.

I was also thinking of a palace of mirrors - I was wondering how I could use the metaphor of walking around in it with a sledgehammer; but then I thought of riding through it on a skippyball - somehow I found little subtle ways of breaking mirrors.

What I read of him today is even better than what I read yesterday. Already I find I must read on quietly and not speak much of what enters my mind.

That would be very nice. It would be very spooky to break into the Israeli one, due to its occult design it would be confronting, entering a true forbidden kingdom. But this is what we do in the best dreams; enter forbidden kingdoms. Most pregnantly perhaps the dream of flying, sometimes even figuring out how to do it.

Its influence is far too great and yet far too shallow, as its most useful meanings are totally unknown to the poor devils who followed those poetic lines to the word; forgetting that they were Hebrew words which mean very different sort of things than composite Indo European words. All words in the Torah are like runes-spells. It is an active magic, you need to chant it for it to ‘make sense’ - it only vitalizes, it does not explain. Illumination by fire; speaking in tongues.

No, reason is indeed indirect. It is an attempt to address the directness of life by statements like “A”=“A” but obviously these do nothing to push the sap up the tree and form it into leaves.

Indeed art does not suffice to do politics. Camus said something to this extent in fewer words and better ones; alas I have turned out only an artist; If I had not settled for this I might perhaps have changed something. He does not mean to have become a baker, but rather a butcher - he was wondering if we need violence to do good.

It was part of the curriculum. My mother insisted I go to this elite type school we have here called gymnasium, it’s the only school that is never part of a school-community, which is what most schools are; an aggregate of many levels in which students can ascend and descend. My mother suspected that if I be left to my own resources I would never stick to my potential. The gymnasium is the only school that teaches besides Latin also Greek. Greek is the most alien language to us (modern students), and yet our deepest cultural root. It is much like Hebrew in this sense: invoking, next to the more common and functional evoking.

Fixed Cross wrote:

It has been a few years since you wrote this, have any of your ambitions come to fruition?

That is a nuanced question. I might assume you mean can I fall with grace by your following reference to aikido, in which case, since we’re speaking figuratively, it would depend through which mirror I view my fall. If we are talking about whether I know how to let myself fall, as the second quote (about trying the impossible) could imply, I suppose the answer would be, I fall all the time, and sometimes on my face, but if the risk is a fall from a steep precipice where falling means sudden death then, I have attempted that too and not always thoughtfully, but I am not always sure what would be worth that kind of risk.

Well played, the lower bodily needs often have a way of catching up on idealism. I think there is already a recycling toilet, we’ll just have to make it portable… or scatter them along the paths like Hansel and Gretel did breadcrumbs.

Actually this might be something worth taking the risk of the precipice for. There is much life in historical relics, and it seems we are often positioned at least ten meters back from them or behind two meters of glass. If there was more of substance being produced today I suppose I wouldn’t take it so sorely, do you know of anything contemporary worth looking into? I suppose until I own an old manor with wings filled with artifacts, or attempt mission impossible, I may have to resign myself to the back of a line…

Since you evidently know more about the Torah and its secrets I must defer to you on the subject.

Your experience was evidently much different than mine, which is a good thing and a surely a good counterweight to my preconceptions. I attended a public school where the curriculum was not well composed, most of our days were spent copying overheads with minimal instruction from our teachers. Some useful tidbits I picked up in school was that in the trenches soldiers called canned meat “bully beef”… I ended up dropping out of school and most of what I know (beyond basic things like reading and writing) is self taught. I am sure I would have benefitted from a better school environment, I just don’t think it could have come from the schools I attended.

I wonder what criteria could we propose to meet so as to judge something worth compelling another to learn? Business reports, for example, can be useful. Is usefulness the gauge, or something more? Or would it less be a matter of compelling than exposing the pupil to it and letting their inclination guide them, but I’m sure even for that we might desire a limit, because a stubborn will might refuse to learn anything at all, or is this how one would best approach the subject?

It’s in between – to be able to fall gracefully lessens the fear and the actual danger involved with falling. So the better you learn to fall and ‘roll with it’ the narrower and steeper the ridges you can climb.

To make it truly a free-roaming experience we could simly have rastered holes in the corner of each room. I think that is how reality often finds its way; there is no hall of exaltation that does not have a hole for excrement.

Interesting metaphor indeed - I might write something later on what I heard about ‘spiritual shitting’… but perhaps that is better saved for another place. No decision has been made yet on the desired dgeree of ubiquitousness of toilets.

This is why I travel whenever I get the chance. However shallow and pointless our global contemporary culture is, nations still have their depths of which the modern inhabitants are unaware, largely and often, unaware also that they still represent it. Learning to speak proper French was I think the most satisfying discovery of cultural worth in my adult life. Despite the obvious charm of French, it could be any language, whatever you instinctively find fitting to a repressed part of the psyche. That is what new languages do to me, they open up space for parts of my psyche that had been repressed to flourish. I only need rocky hills and a deserted dust track to be perfectly happy in these periods of learning, changing.

Surely I am not a recognized authority in this, modern believers will claim that the explanations are substantial of themselves – as metaphors. But if you ever heard someone recite the Torah in Hebrew and heard a priest reciting from the old testament in a modern language, the difference is quite clear.

The same sort of thing goes for the Koran. It is primarily an Arab work of art or revelation. It’s beauty is perceptible only in Arab. Many non Arab muslims account of this. This is the way it was ‘revealed’, inspired - a language is more (and less) than a set of universal symbols.

It sounds indeed as if I had a more substantial education… but truly it was mainly these two languages that made the difference. The rigor of Latin, unknown to us now, and the strange splendidness of Greek - yes, precisely what is for a ‘successful modern’ a non-functional world of immense dignity, this is what taught me or planted to seed for me to rise above modernity, functionality, for that is indeed a crux.

The qestion is: Useful for what?
Useful is never a standard. It needs a standard. Useful for cleaning toilets? No, Greek is not. Useful for buying stocks? It might be, depending. But probably not. Useful for experiencing joy? Most definitely. Useful as an introcuction top philosophy? Most useful.

But I am radically against use value as a philosophical or even psychological standard. What is the use of joy? What is the use of philosophy? What is the use of life?

What you describe is pure will. I am not denying ambition in it, but it is more universal than an ambition, which is specific beyond proving and increasing strength, which is the basis for life. Ambition in this case is the imagination of a transformed world. This is why it is unbearable, or was; because of the vast distance between the present of the OP and the present of the OP’s mind. But I have been progressing rapidly with MM, and now these two past weeks he has produced with your help a quantum leap in scientific understanding that realizes perhaps the most difficult part of this ambition. I know my part in it, and I have always known that my ambition requires a number of unlikely geniuses who I just figured would exist because I exist.

Dangerous perhaps so much praise but we must recognize the worth of a good work. We have no institutions that back us and publish our discoveries so that thousands of students can put their teeth in it. It is necessary to be definite about the severity of the work, otherwise there is no hope for propagation. Frivolity and the internet belong together, and this is why philosophy must fundamentally transform the internet - it must transform itself into a foundation of a new internet structure; the consistency and core of which is not the rhizome, but it’s cause; the self-valuing of the concept of self valuing - the primordial vortex of the logos.

Indeed.

The internet’s inter-design is in the same pattern as our brain’s neurons and the way stars and matter emerge from space outside of this very planet.

When you think about it, we’re within the Universe’s matrix, within our matrix, within the computer’s matrix - it’s matrix-ception, yet this is how you argue against matrix theories - despite that, everything comes together as “one”. What does this mean? It means that a matrix cannot exist in a Universe that is fundamentally relative.

The matrix is the reality - a relative one.

That said, I cannot wait to make that breakthrough with M&M’s. We’re both on a very hot trail and my magic number “144” is going to help him get there faster. That number 144 is incredible. You will see in due time, friend.

You said you had a part in this. What did you mean by that?

Yes, it’s transient, conditional to the actuality of each individual self-valuing. Even humans are transient like that and can become aware of it if the mind attains to a deep subtlety of self-valuing, which results in powers extending to dispersing clouds or evoking lightning.

144 is also 2 times 72, two fifths of 360, one of the ways the golden ratio appears in the pentad.

I invented this self-valuing logic, and drew up that 9 matrix, though of course that’s not my contribution to life in any sense but I pointed MM to it. The idea of putting it together came to me in my sleep once.

If humans weren’t transient - … Do you have any idea what life would be like?

Indeed.

Well aren’t we all just a lovely bunch of geniuses!

And Fixed Cross is…?

Sorry -I was wondering how confusing it was, but I never feel the tendency to clear it up. I am Fixed Cross.

“No, not.” “No, not really.” “Not, no.”
these are phrases that come to mind.

Hitler had 5 of those in his natal chart, neatly arranged.

Yes. I think we should have a tree house.

Now the question of navigating this transient web as humans both inward and outward. As MM has shown elsewhere these scales mirror in consciousness, and can in a subtle consciousness mirror in such a way that they connect more directly through their actual spin logic, hook into the absolute future and come to resonate and produce what has hitherto been known as states of divine consciousness.

To share fully what I have learned as being tradition but do not understand -
11, 22, 33 are counted as semi-irreducible - as exalted versions of 2, 4 and 6; this would have to account for the justification of the decimal system. That this system is not completely arbitrary can be grasped from the magic number of five in two: 144.

What comes to mind for me is “MACHINES”.

Are you saying what I think you’re saying?

Let’s call it the “Big O’ Tree” house. That’s a double entendre. It will be home for us and ironic hell for bigots.