Wednesday, November 03, 2004
Let the Interesting Times Roll
Suffice it to say this morning's news is not welcome, on my front...but to create a thoughtful, and honest, response to these events will take time. I know it isn't over...but if the numbers I've read are right (Ohio around 140,000 advantage Bush, 250,000 absentee and provisional ballots), the odds are very high that a man I feel is fundamentally unsuited for his job will be allowed to continue in that capacity for another 4 years.
I have a lot to say, but don't know how to say it yet. That is my job, and I hope I am suited for that.
In the meantime, I was planning on posting the following today, no matter what the outcome. Just my real take on the matter, once the partisan shite gets stripped away. Courtesy of Tone, I offer you this, from Section 23 of The Antichrist, by Friedrich Nietzsche:
"But when faith is thus exalted above everything else, it necessarily follows that reason, knowledge and patient inquiry have to be discredited: the road to the truth becomes a forbidden road. — Hope, in its stronger forms, is a great deal more powerful stimulans to life than any sort of realized joy can ever be. Man must be sustained in suffering by a hope so high that no conflict with actuality can dash it — so high, indeed, that no fulfillment can satisfy it: a hope reaching out beyond this world. (Precisely because of this power that hope has of making the suffering hold out, the Greeks regarded it as the evil of evils, as the most malign of evils; it remained behind at the source of all evil.)"
Make of it what you will. I'm not in perfect agreement, though I love the wit: I think hope has a disciplined form, one that I first truly encountered on September 11, 2001, and one that, in the coming days, will require much work on my part in order for it to prove sustainable.
In the meantime, thinking--and a welcoming to all who might read this to share their own thoughts, in the form of comments, here.
I have a lot to say, but don't know how to say it yet. That is my job, and I hope I am suited for that.
In the meantime, I was planning on posting the following today, no matter what the outcome. Just my real take on the matter, once the partisan shite gets stripped away. Courtesy of Tone, I offer you this, from Section 23 of The Antichrist, by Friedrich Nietzsche:
"But when faith is thus exalted above everything else, it necessarily follows that reason, knowledge and patient inquiry have to be discredited: the road to the truth becomes a forbidden road. — Hope, in its stronger forms, is a great deal more powerful stimulans to life than any sort of realized joy can ever be. Man must be sustained in suffering by a hope so high that no conflict with actuality can dash it — so high, indeed, that no fulfillment can satisfy it: a hope reaching out beyond this world. (Precisely because of this power that hope has of making the suffering hold out, the Greeks regarded it as the evil of evils, as the most malign of evils; it remained behind at the source of all evil.)"
Make of it what you will. I'm not in perfect agreement, though I love the wit: I think hope has a disciplined form, one that I first truly encountered on September 11, 2001, and one that, in the coming days, will require much work on my part in order for it to prove sustainable.
In the meantime, thinking--and a welcoming to all who might read this to share their own thoughts, in the form of comments, here.
# posted by Gene Justice @ 9:13 PM 
Comments:
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Context being the issue, really.
Right now, for me, the question of hope is how to best think of a way forward. As far as I'm concerned, this vote is the final nail in the coffin so far as those principles behind enlightenment documents such as the U.S. Constitution are concerned. So. Assuming that I've properly sussed this out, what next? Well, I could opt to party like it's 1999, give in to the apocalyptic thrust of many who support this bastard, accept that even scientifically, we're eventually doomed, and it might as well be sooner rather than later...or I can work toward a more sustainable vision. Thus rational hope is born.
Why do we continue to make efforts toward what we think, individually, are improvements, in the face of such nonsense? Basically, I'm not quite buying that this is entirely 'organic,' or at least no more organic than is reason--and that if hope is sustained through an effort of will, then there is some intellectual aspect of the process, as well as simply emotive.
As regards American Democracy, I'm not sure it's even worth sustaining. In the wider context, I guess I'm trying to make a 'nuanced' argument for believing we will all survive this madness, even if America doesn't, and there will come a time when we can institute some of the more imaginative of our solutions once these particular toxins have worked their way out of the human machine.
Interesting times indeed. Luckily, I'm getting work as a cook, and that should keep me on the outside, even if nothing else does. Not to mention incredibly busy, on the physical side of things, which should stave off depression.
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Right now, for me, the question of hope is how to best think of a way forward. As far as I'm concerned, this vote is the final nail in the coffin so far as those principles behind enlightenment documents such as the U.S. Constitution are concerned. So. Assuming that I've properly sussed this out, what next? Well, I could opt to party like it's 1999, give in to the apocalyptic thrust of many who support this bastard, accept that even scientifically, we're eventually doomed, and it might as well be sooner rather than later...or I can work toward a more sustainable vision. Thus rational hope is born.
Why do we continue to make efforts toward what we think, individually, are improvements, in the face of such nonsense? Basically, I'm not quite buying that this is entirely 'organic,' or at least no more organic than is reason--and that if hope is sustained through an effort of will, then there is some intellectual aspect of the process, as well as simply emotive.
As regards American Democracy, I'm not sure it's even worth sustaining. In the wider context, I guess I'm trying to make a 'nuanced' argument for believing we will all survive this madness, even if America doesn't, and there will come a time when we can institute some of the more imaginative of our solutions once these particular toxins have worked their way out of the human machine.
Interesting times indeed. Luckily, I'm getting work as a cook, and that should keep me on the outside, even if nothing else does. Not to mention incredibly busy, on the physical side of things, which should stave off depression.
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