Everybody’s staring blankly at the quote thinking ‘wtf is he saying?’ Oh it’s a puzzle alright, but you can bet your ass that when K puts pen to paper, he’s gonna put down some heavy shit. I’ll not yet venture a couple of my own interpretations until others have given it a shot first.
speaking of super-K, check this out. his old man was reported to be quite religious and as obstinate as they come. very strict and demanding of the young lad. well the story goes that one time, K was instructed by his father to place second in some kind of test that was given to his class in school. not first, which he could have easily done, having been the brightest in his class… and not last, which he could have easily done by making no effort at all. no. being the best or the worst was too easy for the young soren, and the old man knew this. the challenge soren faced was to gauge the intelligence of the second brightest and then purposely place himself below him. think about how difficult that must have been.
i think this experience had a lasting impact on K and would eventually become a kind of ingredient to his maieutic method of philosophy. socrates, similarly but perhaps not with the same genuine modesty, played the role of the ignorant in the company of his interlocutors in order to prevent their intimidation… which would make them less trustworthy and willing to be led. it must have dawned on K after discovering this talent - he was quite capable of pretending to be more ignorant than he was - that this deception could actually be very useful in philosophical discourse. thus began his career as a philosophical midwife of sorts who never really asserts anything… but rather assists you in giving birth to your own thoughts.
it is always much easier to simply state and declare what you believe than it is to merely suggest what you believe… because it takes great skill to conceal the fact that you mean it, and instead present it as if you’ve only just considered it without much conviction.
if aristotle never mentioned this insight in his Rhetoric, he shoulda.
so g’head, give it a try. make me believe something you believe without directly insuring me that you believe it. make me believe that we discovered it together… while in fact you were leading me there the whole time.
I’m all in favor of the democratic principle that one idiot is as good as one genius, but I draw the line when someone takes the next step and concludes that two idiots are better than one genius.” …Leo Szilard
I am interested only in “nonsense”; only in that which makes no practical sense. I am interested in life only in its absurd manifestations.
Daniil Kharms
“What a funny girl you are,” he said. “You’ve got a bad case of penis envy.”
“So do most men,” she said sharply and he laughed. [ James Baldwin, Another Country ]
Always meet petulance with gentleness and perverseness with kindness. A gentle hand can lead even en elephant by a hair. Reply to thine enemy with gentleness.
Zoroaster
“Republics decline into democracies and democracies degenerate into despotisms.” -Aristotle
“when the christian crusaders in the orient encountered the invincible order of assassins*, that order of free spirits par excellence, whose lowest ranks followed a rule of obedience the like of which no order of monks ever attained, they obtained in some way or other a hint concerning that symbol and watchword reserved for the highest ranks alone as their secretum: ‘nothing is true, everything is permitted.’ - very well, that was freedom of spirit; in that way the faith in truth was abrogated.” - nietzsche (the genealogy of morals)
an islamic sect, founded in the eleventh century. ‘as for the initiated, they knew the worthlessness of positive religion and morality; they believed in nothing…’ (encyclopedia britannica)
The word assassins has an obscure but significant derivitive:
hashish derived from assassins from factsanddetails.com
Their name comes from the Arabic hashishiyya; the drug’s powers were thought to explain the Assassins’ oblivious bravery. The