Author Archive

From Kafka in �Parables and Paradoxes�:

Since the Fall we have been essentially equal in our capacity to recognize good and evil; nonetheless it is just here that we seek to show our individual superiority. But the real differences begin beyond that knowledge. The opposite illusion may be explained thus: nobody can be content with the mere knowledge of good and evil in itself, but must endeavor as well to act in accordance with it. The strength to do so, however, is not likewise given him, consequently he must destroy himself trying to do so, at the risk of not achieving the necessary strength even then; yet there remains nothing for him but this final attempt. (That is moreover the meaning of the threat of death attached to eating the Tree of Knowledge; perhaps too it was the original meaning of natural death.) Now, faced with this attempt, man is filled with fear; he prefers to annul his knowledge of good and evil (the term, �the fall of man,��may be traced back to that fear); yet the accomplished cannot be annulled, but only confused. It was for this purpose that our rationalizations were created. The whole world is full of them, indeed the whole visible world is perhaps nothing more than the rationalization of a man who wants to find peace for a moment. An attempt to falsify the actuality of knowledge, to regard knowledge as a goal still to be reached.

Martijn�s post reminded me of a parable from Kierkegaard, which is not about journalism per se but use your analogical mind, please.

From The Present Age:
�If I tried to imagine the public as a particular person� I should perhaps think of one of the Roman emperors, a large well-fed figure, suffering from boredom, looking only for the sensual intoxication of laughter, since the divine gift of wit is not earthly enough. And so for a change he wanders about, indolent rather than bad, but with a negative desire to dominate. Every one who has read the classical authors knows how many things a Caesar could try out in order to kill time. In the same way the public keeps a dog to amuse it. That dog is the sum of the literary world. If there is someone superior to the rest, perhaps even a great man, the dog is set on him and the fun begins. The dog goes for him, snapping and tearing at his coattails, allowing itself every possible ill-mannered familiarity�until the public tires, and says it may stop. That is an example of how the public levels. Their betters and superiors in strength are mishandled�and the dog remains a dog which even the public despises. The levelling is therefore done by a third party; a non-existent public leveling with the help of a third party which in its insignificance is less than nothing, being already more than leveled…. The public is unrepentant, for it is not they who own the dog�they only subscribe. They neither set the dog on any one, nor whistle it off�directly. If asked they would answer: the dog is not mine, it has no master. And if the dog had to be killed they would say: it was a really good thing that bad-tempered dog was put down, every one wanted it killed�even the subscribers.�

This kind of brilliance in performance is rarely glimpsed in America. Long live Ernie Kovacs:    

I am getting married in August. Considering we are planning a big celebration I found this quote from Goethe particularly apt, and suitably ironic:

“One should only celebrate a happy ending; celebrations at the outset exhaust the joy and energy needed to urge us forward and sustain us in the long struggle. And of all celebrations a wedding is the worst; no day should be kept more quietly and humbly.”—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Click to see the full drawing