April 2010
Thu 29th
I am actually serious about “Be Slightly Evil” as a corporate value. I’ve had this theory for a while that allowing a little bit of misanthropy and sociopathy into your soul actually makes for a stronger moral compass than adopting godly values no human being could live up to. Call it inoculation. Or Defense Against the Dark Arts.
Fri 23rd A freed slave replies to his former master:
Mandy says she would be afraid to go back without some proof that you are sincerely disposed to treat us justly and kindly; and we have concluded to test your sincerity by asking you to send us our wages for the time we served you. This will make us forget and forgive old scores, and rely on your justice and friendship in the future.
Kickass.
Wed 14th
You are so young, so much before all beginning, and I would like to beg you, dear Sir, as well as I can, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.
— Ranier Maria Rilke, Letters To A Young Poet
Wed 14th
He appeared and disappeared like a ghost whenever there was fighting, wherever desperate, generous, mad, courageous, despicable Latin Americans were destroying, rebuilding and destroying reality, in a final bid that was doomed to failure.
– Roberto Bolano, Distant Star
Tue 13th
Irony: Don’t let yourself be controlled by it, especially during uncreative moments. When you are fully creative, try to use it, as one more way to take hold of life. Used purely, it too is pure, and one needn’t be ashamed of it; but if you feel yourself becoming too familiar with it, if you are afraid of this growing familiarity, then turn to great and serious objects, in front of which it becomes small and helpless. Search into the depths of Things: there, irony never descends – and when you arrive at the edge of greatness, find out whether this way of perceiving the world arises from a necessity of your being. For under the influence of serious Things it will either fall away from you (if it is something accidental), or else (if it is really innate and belongs to you) it will grow strong, and become a serious tool and take its place among the instruments which you can form your art with.
— Ranier Maria Rilke, Letters To A Young Poet
March 2010
Whoosh
I think a lot about the kind of god I could believe in, and what her characteristics are, and why I’m no longer a Christian.
I come to this:
The god I imagine, the true one, the ‘fount of all being,’ is a wild limitless overflowing thing of life, joy, and love. A thing totally unconstrained and unpredictable. Has to be. Nothing less. As wild as Pan – god of the earth and forest and ocean as much as god of the sky and the stars. A being of sweet, terrible life. Something like the god whose back Moses is shown a glimpse of, up on that mountain.
Unfortunately, YHWH falls a little short of the ideal. He comes close at times, true – and party-Jesus doing wine-tricks is a glimpse of the ultimate truth – but ultimately YHWH is constrained by ‘rules,’ or ‘justice,’ or hand-waving about ‘the way things are.’ C.S. Lewis has Aslan speak of a ‘deep magic’ that cannot be undone or avoided; the penal substitutionists (and the satisfactionists) speak of some code or law that even YHWH must honour – and, therefore, that we also must yield to if YHWH is to save us. (I guess god did manage to create a rock so big even he can’t lift it?)
Even further – YHWH gets upset at the things people do. And not just for their sake, either (which would be permissible.) He gets offended! And jealous! He punishes people for doing obviously good things, because they contravene his arbitrary moral code! He endorses – encourages! – mass slaughter and pillage of people outside the chosen few.
I can imagine a god greater.
Of course, the flaw in the ontological argument is the assumption that imagining something means it must exist. I hold no such assumption. Nonetheless.
Any god who falls short of the best I can imagine is a god not worth worshipping.
February 2010
Thu 25th
The idea of “planning” a career is now garbage. You can only improvise one. Listening dutifully to old-economy career counselor types at ages 18 and 22 and “first layoff” is now the stupidest thing you can do. To a large extent a) your career picks you, not vice-versa, and b) It isn’t about what you want to do, but which one of the things you like doing achieves a “product-market fit” with the labor market.
(Most of the post is about entrepreneur-ing and startups; skip to the bottom for the “Your Life as a Lean Startup” section.) 0 Comments
Thu 25th This seems sensible. Oh, wait, no, it’s batshit fucking insane:
In addition to criminalizing an intentional attempt to induce a miscarriage or abortion, the bill also creates a standard that could make women legally responsible for miscarriages caused by “reckless” behavior.
Using the legal standard of “reckless behavior” all a district attorney needs to show is that a woman behaved in a manner that is thought to cause miscarriage, even if she didn’t intend to lose the pregnancy. Drink too much alcohol and have a miscarriage? Under the new law such actions could be cause for prosecution.
“This creates a law that makes any pregnant woman who has a miscarriage potentially criminally liable for murder.”
Wed 24th
Amelia, a 27-year-old Nicaraguan woman, has a ten-year-old daughter. She also has cancer and desperately needs treatment, but is being denied care because she’s pregnant. Abortion is entirely illegal in Nicaragua, even in a case like Amelia’s where she needs a therapeutic abortion to save her life. In Amelia’s case, it’s not just abortion that is being denied — it’s treatment for the cancer as well, since such treatment could harm the fetus. Amelia might die and her ten-year-old daughter may be left without her mother because of “pro-life” orthodoxy.
— Fetuses First — Feministe (via Shakesville)
This is what “pro-life” really means, and is exactly why women need the right to make their own decisions for their own bodies. 3 Comments
Thu 18th
Dull, dirty and dangerous work is stuff that takes scholars to make interesting, priests to ennoble, and artists to make beautiful. But in general, it is actually done by some mix of the deluded hopeful, the coerced, and the broken and miserable, depending on how far the civilization in question has advanced. You might feel noble about recycling, but somewhere out there, near-destitute people are risking thoroughly stupid deaths (like getting pricked by an infected needle) to sort your recycling. Downcycling really, once you learn about how “recycling” works.
