The Second

In 1868, in Russia, Dostoyevski published Crime and Punishment , and later in 1880 published The Brothers Karamazov , not long before his death.   In the 1870’s, a continent away in Europe, Nietzsche was developing himself and his philosophy, and it wasn’t until after Dostoyevski’s death that Nietzsche published Thus Spoke Zarathustra , and Beyond Good and Evil .    My experience of these authors, however, was the opposite order.   I first read Thus Spoke Zarathustra in the early 1990’s, and a few years later Crime and Punishment .   There could hardly have been a better parry to “God is Dead” than Dostoyevski’s “If there is no God, everything is permitted,”   and that ended the “debate” for me, for the time.   These many years later I found that both Dostoyevski and Nietzsche were responding to similar philosophies, Dostoyevski to Russian nihilists, Nietzsche to German skeptics.   If you don’t believe in an Evil One who works to deceive th...

Brilliant minds chew on the great human questions: how should we find meaning? How should we order our lives together? What are the essential and real qualities of being human, and what does that imply for what we do?   And, although answers vary, one dominant, modern idea informs most of the modern answers: Human beings emerged through time on a continuum with everything else, from non-life to life, from non-consciousness to consciousness, from practical survival behaviors to morality, from awareness to self-awareness, from awe to religion, from irrational to rational.   In short, to say that man evolved from the lower animals is to say something mundane, like saying the earth is round. This now commonplace theory of origins has found renewed energy in the teachings of Dr. Jordan B. Peterson, whose essential message is that of acquiring virtue.   Unlike traditional treatments—ancient wisdom, religious teaching and practice—Peterson’s is grounded in a remarkably broad...

Age gracefully.   Who values this phrase?   I have no inkling for others’ opinions, but for the span of my 40+ years youth has been more widely valued.   Ignore the perennial pursuit of women both to accentuate and prolong their youthful enticements (fashion, make up, diets, etc).   These things do not reflect how one ages but the years of fertility and heightened femininity, a relatively narrow window in time beyond which the odds decrease for securing a husband and bearing children. Age gracefully.   The hyper intellectual asks in response, “what’s its opposite? What is it to age disgracefully?”   When you follow the themes of pop musicians with the staying power to last many decades, you can see distilled patterns of average people.   For example Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley of Kiss, that vaudevillian rock band from the seventies.   They were as much a raucous storyline as rock 'n’ roll musicians (and they did produce some quality stuff)....

March marched by with corporate and federal homage paid to “Women’s History Month,” during which prominent women were featured in variously publicized ways.   Women’s History Month?   Why do we need this, and why a month?   Normally, annual commemorations of this kind associate with religions.   Lent, the most obvious example, also happens to fall in March, and has for centuries.   This and other observances (Annunciation, Nativity of Jesus, festal days for Saints) teach and reinforce Christianity’s values and beliefs.   What, by contrast, holds the core content of Women’s History Month? The majority of images and stories given during the month follow this syllogism found on the federally sponsored web site, www.womenshistorymonth.gov: Throughout our history women have made valuable contributions during wartime both in the civilian and military realm. No matter what the role—military personnel, pilots, nurses, journalists, or factory workers—women's e...

The standard image of teenagers, or young adults, has been essentially the same since I was a teenager in the 80s.  This image is deeply contradictory, but it persists. First the young person himself is characterized like this:      •  Smart, Bold, Insecure, Hormonal, Irresponsible And expectations of him sound like this:      •  Sex obsessed, Driven by big ideas, High potential In some ways the young person is viewed like an unbroken stallion, wild, strong, and could be amazing of only he could be tamed!  Songs and movies capitalize on the conundrums and emotional confusion that relate to this way of viewing and of being viewed.  A couple dated examples:       I'm in the middle without any plans / I'm a boy and I'm a man          – Alice Cooper, Eighteen      He’s old enough to know what’s right, but young enough not to choose it          –...