RON PAUL



That's all. Carry on.

Absolutely nothing has changed in my life. I'm sitting here at 3:30 in the morning, stuck on (yet another) paper on property rights--this time under John Locke's theory--which I could've finished hours ago if I could actually focus on it for more than ten minutes at a time. Fortunately, I don't have class until noon.

That, and my life is as boring and uneventful as it has always been, and likely always will be. YESSSS

Current Mood: quixotic

WAR AND PEACE IS THE GREATEST NOVEL EVER WRITTEN.



Prove me wrong. $10 says you can't.

Current Mood: In awe of Tolstoy

Resulting from Omar's comment on my last posting, I have decided to host a beard competition, between two candidates* whose beards are, indeed, EPIC.

There were other possibilities, to be sure, but I believe these two stand out above all others. Were mutton chops to be included, I would have added my good Norwegian friend Henrik Ibsen, but I do not currently include mutton chops in my list of beard styles.

The first,

WALT WHITMAN:



The second:

Ле́в Никола́евич Толсто́й (COUNT LEO TOLSTOY)




Cast your votes NOW!



*If anybody has any other candidates he or she wishes to suggest, please inform me and I may add them, if the beard is deemed epic enough!

Soooo, after a long hiatus I at last have returned to my obsessive reading, and have upon this day completed Dostoevsky's magnum opus, The Brothers Karamazov. What a book! I have not fully digested that piece, but I will say that overall, though occasionally a bit tedious, it is brilliant. Certain episodes, especially Ivan Fyodorovich Karamazov's tale "The Grand Inquisitor" and his subsequent conversations with the devil, are possibly the highlights of my literary experience thus far. Apropos of Ivan, I feel more than any other character in literature an identity with him. Surely, there are many differences (I, for one, am not a murderer ;)), but something about the character struck me in a way all too familiar, unlike any other I have encountered. What this says about me, I am not sure...

Having so completed one long work, I move on to another: Tolstoy's War and Peace. I began it this morning, and, despite this being the first day of school, I managed to read about 120 pages already, and have become totally engrossed in it. Tolstoy is a better stylist than Dostoevsky, that is sure, but Dostoevsky has some of the most moving and provocative passages I have read: I can see already why my grandfather told me that Tolstoy addresses (to put it in Freudian terms) the ego and superego, while Dostoevsky addresses the id and ego. Who is ultimately more valuable--if one wishes to single out one of the two masters, which seems somewhat superfluous, though common--I cannot yet say. I love Dostoevsky, and his darker tendencies entice me, but I am really, really, enjoying that bit of Tolstoy I have read thus far. Hopefully, I can finish War and Peace within a week or so, at which time I may proceed on to Tolstoy's other masterwork, Anna Karenina.

"Why this is hell, nor am I out of it.
Think'st thou that I, who saw the face of God,
And tasted the eternal joys of heaven,
Am not tormented with ten thousand hells
In being deprived of everlasting bliss?"

Duplicity should be a cardinal sin.

Current Mood: Cynical

 People don't change. Speak as they will, try as they might, shift appearances as they do, it is almost impossible for a man to change. Save the most drastic, life-altering circumstances, well outside the range of normal human experience, we are always one and the same; we do not move with our changing faces, we do not metamorphose with our bodies growing crippled. We fall into the same sins and salvations as we have before, and it takes a Herculean effort beyond the strength of most mens' wills to truly alter the course of our orbit. One could, in the language of the Scholastics and of Spinoza, say that each of us passes his life as a different mode of the same substance; we are (as individuals and as a collective!) Proteus, changing appearance but never the form beneath.

Thou art what thou art, what thou were, and what thou shall ever be.








"Speak not of thy changes and metamorphoses! Thou art as though set in stone!"

Current Mood: cynical

Bloom, frail flower! (or, La Danse Macabre)

Bloom, frail flower! and

Wither with the dying day.

Go deeply into the thought-less night

That spirits you away.

 

See—transcend to the realm profound—

The truth hidden by Mephistopheles,

The realization masked by the ground:

(Were it known the blood of all would freeze!)

   Dead are the dead, dead are the living, dead are all between.

   All are living a dying death, all a dying dream.

"Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a corn of wheat
    fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if
    it die, it bringeth forth much fruit."
                                                                     --John 12:24


I command each and every one of you, as your teacher and bringer of wisdom (LOL), to read Dostoevsky's "The Grand Inquisitor"! It is a beautifully written meditation on man's distaste for freedom, and surely one of the greatest pieces of literature (being only part of an even greater work, The Brothers Karamazov) even written. (I feel that, in so many ways, I am Ivan Fyodorovich Karamazov... no, perhaps I am Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky himself!)




Life is strange, and most of us pass our lives quite without living. Someday, I should like very much to break out of my cloister of books and thoughts, and thrust myself with as much vigor into the world at large. I am not entirely sure this day will ever come; so ensconced have I been my whole life in my very mind, it would be incredibly difficult for me to free myself. I suspect I shall pass my days in this same trance, reading and writing and thinking incessantly, without ever actually doing. Perhaps that is why I write: I have never experienced anything, so I must imagine the things I would like to do, and this fantasy manifests itself in the living word.

Ah well, so it shall be, and so it shall be, and so it shall continue to be.

[I recall, with great empathy, Schopenhauer's words of sad joy toward the end of his life, when he found out he was, at last, being read:
"I am read, and I will continue to be read!"]


On other matters:
Some of my thoughts on moral philosophy are coming along quite nicely. I am trying to break down, descriptively, the "moral sense" (as Hume called it), and analyze every aspect of it. Currently, I am dwelling in the realm of the skeptics, disbelieving every "truth" I have hitherto held dear and unshakable. From here, I seek to build a normative moral theory, and, from this theory, a political philosophy. How successful I shall be, and how long this process shall take me should I ever be successful, remains to be seen, but the chase is interesting and enlightening nonetheless.


And now I must depart as I came into the world and as I shall soon enough leave it: alone.