Fragmenti

[transcending]

The Vision and the Riddle1.When it got abroad among the sailors that Zarathustra was on board the ship- for a man who came from the Blessed isles had gone on board along with him,- there was great curiosity and expectation. But Zarathustra kept silent for two days, and was cold and deaf with sadness; so that he neither answered looks nor questions. On the evening of the second day, however, he again opened his ears, though he still kept silent: for there were many curious and dangerous things to be heard on board the ship, which came from afar, and was to go still further. Zarathustra, however, was fond of all those who make distant voyages, and dislike to live without danger. And behold! when listening, his own tongue was at last loosened, and the ice of his heart broke. Then did he begin to speak thus:To you, the daring venturers and adventurers, and whoever has embarked with cunning sails upon frightful seas,-To you the enigma-intoxicated, the twilight-enjoyers, whose souls are allured by flutes to every treacherous gulf:-For you dislike to grope at a thread with cowardly hand; and where you can divine, there do you hate to calculate-To you only do I tell the enigma that I saw- the vision of the most lonesome one.-Gloomily walked I lately in corpse-colored twilight- gloomily and sternly, with compressed lips. Not only one sun had set for me.A path which ascended daringly among boulders, an evil, lonesome path, which neither herb nor shrub any longer cheered, a mountain-path, crunched under the daring of my foot.Mutely marching over the scornful clinking of pebbles, trampling the stone that let it slip: thus did my foot force its way upwards.Upwards:- in spite of the spirit that drew it downwards, towards the abyss, the spirit of gravity, my devil and archenemy.Upwards:- although it sat upon me, half-dwarf, half-mole; paralysed, paralysing; dripping lead in my ear, and thoughts like drops of lead into my brain."O Zarathustra," it whispered scornfully, syllable by syllable, "you stone of wisdom! you threw yourself high, but every thrown stone must- fall!O Zarathustra, you stone of wisdom, you sling-stone, you star-destroyer! Yourself threw you so high,- but every thrown stone- must fall!Condemned of yourself, and to your own stoning: O Zarathustra, far indeed threw you your stone- but upon yourself will it recoil!"Then was the dwarf silent; and it lasted long. The silence, however, oppressed me; and to be thus in pairs, one is verily lonesomer than when alone!I ascended, I ascended, I dreamt, I thought,- but everything oppressed me. A sick one did I resemble, whom bad torture wearies, and a worse dream reawakens out of his first sleep.-But there is something in me which I call courage: it has hitherto slain for me every dejection. This courage at last bade me stand still and say: "Dwarf! Thou! Or I!"-For courage is the best killer,- courage which attacks: for in every attack there is sound of triumph. Man, however, is the most courageous animal: thereby has he overcome every animal. With sound of triumph has he overcome every pain; human pain, however, is the sorest pain.Courage kills also giddiness at abysses: and where does man not stand at abysses! Is not seeing itself- seeing abysses?Courage is the best killer: courage kills also fellow-suffering. Fellow-suffering, however, is the deepest abyss: as deeply as man looks into life, so deeply also does he look into suffering.Courage, however, is the best killer, courage which attacks: it kills even death itself; for it says: "Was that life? Well! Once more!"In such speech, however, there is much sound of triumph. He who has ears to hear, let him hear.-2."Halt, dwarf!" said I. "Either I- or you! I, however, am the stronger of the two:- you knowest not my abysmal thought! It- could you not endure!"Then happened that which made me lighter: for the dwarf sprang from my shoulder, the prying sprite! And it squatted on a stone in front of me. There was however a gateway just where we halted."Look at this gateway! Dwarf!" I continued, "it has two faces. Two roads come together here: these has no one yet gone to the end of.This long lane backwards: it continues for an eternity. And that long lane forward- that is another eternity.They are antithetical to one another, these roads; they directly abut on one another:- and it is here, at this gateway that they come together. The name of the gateway is inscribed above: 'This Moment.'But should one follow them further- and ever further and further on, think you, dwarf, that these roads would be eternally antithetical?"-"Everything straight lies," murmured the dwarf, contemptuously. "All truth is crooked; time itself is a circle.""You spirit of gravity!" said I wrathfully, "do not take it too lightly! Or I shall let you squat where you squat, Haltfoot,- and I carried you high!""Observe," continued I, "This Moment! From the gateway, This Moment, there runs a long eternal lane backwards: behind us lies an eternity.Must not whatever can run its course of all things, have already run along that lane? Must not whatever can happen of all things have already happened, resulted, and gone by?And if everything has already existed, what think you, dwarf, of This Moment? Must not this gateway also- have already existed?And are not all things closely bound together in such wise that This Moment draws all coming things after it? Consequently- itself also?For whatever can run its course of all things, also in this long lane outward- must it once more run!-And this slow spider which creeps in the moonlight, and this moonlight itself, and you and I in this gateway whispering together, whispering of eternal things- must we not all have already existed?-And must we not return and run in that other lane out before us, that long weird lane- must we not eternally return?"-Thus did I speak, and always more softly: for I was afraid of my own thoughts, and arrear-thoughts. Then, suddenly did I hear a dog howl near me.Had I ever heard a dog howl thus? My thoughts ran back. Yes! When I was a child, in my most distant childhood:-Then did I hear a dog howl thus. And saw it also, with hair bristling, its head upwards, trembling in the still midnight, when even dogs believe in ghosts:-So that it excited my commiseration. For just then went the full moon, silent as death, over the house; just then did it stand still, a glowing globe- at rest on the flat roof, as if on some one's property:-Thereby had the dog been terrified: for dogs believe in thieves and ghosts. And when I again heard such howling, then did it excite my commiseration once more.Where was now the dwarf? And the gateway? And the spider? And all the whispering? Had I dreamt? Had I awakened? 'Twixt rugged rocks did I suddenly stand alone, dreary in the dreariest moonlight.But there lay a man! And there! The dog leaping, bristling, whining- now did it see me coming- then did it howl again, then did it cry:- had I ever heard a dog cry so for help?And verily, what I saw, the like had I never seen. A young shepherd did I see, writhing, choking, quivering, with distorted countenance, and with a heavy black serpent hanging out of his mouth.Had I ever seen so much loathing and pale horror on one countenance? He had perhaps gone to sleep? Then had the serpent crawled into his throat- there had it bitten itself fast.My hand pulled at the serpent, and pulled:- in vain! I failed to pull the serpent out of his throat. Then there cried out of me: "Bite! Bite!Its head off! Bite!"- so cried it out of me; my horror, my my hatred, my loathing, my pity, all my good and my bad cried with one voice out of me.-You daring ones around me! You venturers and adventurers, and whoever of you have embarked with cunning sails on unexplored seas! You enigma-enjoyers!Solve to me the enigma that I then beheld, interpret to me the vision of the most lonesome one!For it was a vision and a foresight:- what did I then behold in parable? And who is it that must come some day?Who is the shepherd into whose throat the serpent thus crawled? Who is the man into whose throat all the heaviest and blackest will thus crawl?-The shepherd however bit as my cry had admonished him; he bit with a strong bite! Far away did he spit the head of the serpent:- and sprang up.-No longer shepherd, no longer man- a transfigured being, a light-surrounded being, that laughed! Never on earth laughed a man as he laughed!O my brothers, I heard a laughter which was no human laughter,- and now gnaws a thirst at me, a longing that is never allayed.My longing for that laughter gnaws at me: oh, how can I still endure to live! And how could I endure to die at present!-Thus spoke Zarathustra.

[Prospero]

The Rise of the Nazis, and Other Absurdities in PoliticsJerome Braun is an independent interdisciplinary scholar. He is co-editor of the anthology "Alienation and the Carnivalization of Society" (Routledge, 2011).Sometimes the historical question comes up, why does America so often win the war and lose the peace? ( bauk dobrice ćosića se širi amerikom) This is not to say that other countries don’t suffer from similar problems , but still, we can start with by asking why was Abraham Lincoln -- perhaps our greatest president, and a war president to boot -- followed by Andrew Johnson, our worst president who sabotaged the integration of the ex-slaves into society? Why was Woodrow Wilson, who led America successfully into World War I, not supported by his fellow Democrats let alone by Republicans in Congress into working for a lasting peace? As far as I know Woodrow Wilson didn’t even try --since he had no political backing for it -- to come up with his own Versailles Treaty and threaten to conclude a separate peace with Germany unless the Allies came up with treaty provisions less vindictive and ultimately less stupid.Wilson had little support in Congress for a comprehensive peace at the end of World War I in order to support an orderly transition to democracy in Europe because so many legislators concerned themselves not with nation-building, but with greasing the schemes of ethnic lobbyists. Combine this with the schemes of the arms merchants after World War II to keep America on a permanent war footing, and it is no surprise that our Congress has flubbed many of the opportunities to maintain the peace after so many of our wars to end all wars.For example, Wilson could have told his British and French allies that they should get ten-year mandates for their newly acquired territories in the Middle East, and then they should leave. That way they would have less of an opportunity to leave behind economic imperialism in place of political imperialism, and they would have less of an opportunity to create colonies in everything but name. But members of the Congress -- with a few exceptions -- would never have backed him up, and he knew it.The end result, of course, of the Versailles Treaty was a vindictive Germany and eventually another war. For that matter, why were the policies of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who led us through both the Great Depression and World War II, not followed by a continuation of the same reform spirit after the war ended? Instead the U.S. got suckered into the arms race and the Cold War, to an extent that even our European allies who were on the front lines with the Soviet Union did not support to the extent we did, though they did not complain as long as we paid for it. Our European allies faced an expansionist Soviet Union who nevertheless did agree to remove Soviet troops from Finland and Austria, and who did accept a communist but neutral Yugoslavia. The U.S., in our Asian sphere of influence, hardly tried to reach a similar accomodation with the Soviet Union concerning the reunification of Korea and Vietnam, and so there was little opportunity there to try to achieve political solutions short of war.Partly such situations arise because so often our greatest presidents are true statesmen, but a great deal of their party, and of course the opposition party, are hacks for whom their political service is not a calling but just a way to make a living. Even as legislators they are often mere conduits for the ideas of lobbyists because they don’t particularly investigate policy issues, but support whichever lobbyists will support them in their effort to feed at the public trough. The reality of our politics is that many of our greatest presidents, like Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, were pushed into running for higher office by the leaders of their local party machines, because they added prestige to the party and this kept them out of the hair of the same local party leaders. After all, these presidents were less the true party leaders, than the patronage hacks who chose them to run for president. A classic book on this subject is E.E. Schattschneider, Party Government: American Government in Action (originally published in 1943).But if you think that’s bad, think of a much more absurd scenario, the rise of the Nazis. There was increasing mendacity in politics for a period of time in Germany, starting with Chancellor Otto von Bismarck, who encouraged a politics of territorial expansion and ethnic chauvinism that nevertheless, by their later standards, was the height of rationality. Though he tended to emasculate the German parliament and ruled by decree when necessary through the support of the Kaiser, the wars he instigated were ones he knew that he could win. And especially in the Franco-Prussian War the war was rational in the sense that he made sure that France did not have any allies. Kaiser Wilhelm II, who thought he knew better, ended up emphasizing military expansion ultimately at the expense of economic growth, for he produced circumstances where Germany and its allies were surrounded by France and its allies, and Germany wound up in World War I with the two-front war that it dreaded. Of course Hitler, fool that he was, created an even stronger alliance against Germany, and World War II ended up being the two-front war to end all two-front wars.This brings us to the rise of the Nazis. Their grab for power came with the enabling legislation passed by the Reichstag after the Dutch nitwit Marinus van der Lubbe set a fire on February 27, 1933 in the Reichstag building, which both caused major damage to the building itself and which became a rallying cry for Nazis with the made-up charge that the Communists were trying to overthrow the government. Hitler got the enabling legislation he wanted to override personal liberties, and eventually he got further enabling legislation that allowed him to rule by decree. The absurdity, of course, was that many nations deal with crises by resorting to martial law, but ordinarily no one there believes that pure dictatorship is a solution for anything.In a sense the Nazis got away with this because they created a cultural climate of irrationality, where the entertainment value of their cause was in some ways their predominant appeal to large sectors of the population -- that, and ending unemployment by putting the nation on a war footing. Their entertainment value came from their appealing to paranoid tendencies in the German population, but also by a certain tolerance for brutality in that population (no doubt coarsened by their experiences in World War I) which had evolved, partly because of political spectacle, into tolerance for sadism against political enemies and social outcasts, and of course a pomp-and-circumstance approach to political spectacle taken to extremes of utter absurdity.The rise of the Nazis in Germany reflected an irrational longing for hierarchy and military glory that had no hope for restoring “traditional” German virtues; rather, they reflected the fantasies of modern pseudo-intellectuals who got the support of a large portion of the population behind them partly because they offered through politics mass entertainment, admittedly of a rather sadistic sort, and by reinforcing social hierarchy rewards to the elite and to those who wished to enter the elite. These rewards of social status, and sometimes of reinforcing feelings that can only be described as being sadistic, were directly advantageous to this small elite, but also served their purpose in entertaining the mass of population who lived vicariously through identifying with this elite.All these tendencies do not exist in pure form in modern America, but bits and pieces do. It is against our political tradition to live degraded personal lives while living vicariously through political elites, but nevertheless an increasingly bureaucratized society is developing in America where the mass of the working class do not enjoy their working lives -- which is increasingly unstable anyway -- but increasingly seek escapist relief through entertainment. Much of this entertainment, such as violent video games, seems to be increasingly sadistic, as if extreme sensuality in entertainment and extreme sadism in entertainment compete to fill the gap left by the weakening of the cultural value of the golden mean.For now, sadism and racism as unifying forces seem more prevalent in street gangs and prisons than in society at large. The excesses of Germany’s Weimar Republic do not threaten America -- again, for now. And if the increasing bread-and-circuses quality to American popular culture will eventually have political ramifications, that, too, time will tell.

[Prospero]

jebem ti život

Giles Edmund Newsom's Tragic Fate Uncovered By Historian, 11-Year-Old Boy Was Face Of Child LaborThe image is heartbreaking: An 11-year-old boy, his right arm in a sling and a look of surprised sadness on his face. The 1912 photograph of a boy who injured his hand working in a textile factory by social reformer Lewis Hine made the boy, Giles Edmund Newsom, the face of child labor in the U.S. Sympathy for his circumstances spurred efforts to safeguard children from such work.But what happened to Newsom later in life has remained a mystery until now, reports the Daily Mail. Through his research into child labor, historian Joe Manning uncovered the boy's tragic fate - he died of Spanish Flu in 1918 at the age of 18. Newsom is buried at Hollywood Cemetery in Gastonia, N.C., perhaps in an unmarked grave near his parents, Manning tells the Gaston Gazette. At the time of his death, Giles was working at Modena Cotton Mills, despite his missing fingers, writes Manning.“I just think that this is an important history,” Manning told the Gazette. “It exemplifies a lot of North Carolina and American history in the story of this boy. It’s negative in a sense but it’s not really negative a 100 years later. This boy represented child labor."

Edited July 17, 2012 by buffalo bill

[kim_philby]

"Why the American Right Never Liked V.S. Naipaul""I've often wondered why the American Right has been so quiet about V.S. Naipaul. He's easily the most talented reactionary writer in the English language- maybe the only living talent in the right-wing zombiesphere. The American Right devotes an insane amount of resources into manufacturing hagiographies on anyone whom they believe makes them look good- even the Soviets couldn't compete with today's American Right when it comes to glorifying their pantheon of degenerate cretins like Ayn Rand, Phyllis Schafly, Friedrich von Hayek...Basically it comes down to this: The American Right only needs "team players"- shameless, cynical hacks who can be counted on to churn out whatever rank propaganda is ordered up by the Heritage Foundation. For that, you need a Rotary Club nihilist like Dinesh D'Souza, someone totally devoid of a literary ego, intellectual curiousity or a gag reflex...All of the young reactionary intellectuals I knew when I was younger eventually came around to a similar epiphany. At some point, it just couldn't be ignored: These people were scum; mean, sleazy, boring scum. It became impossible to be near them. They- we- dropped out of the Right, and wanted nothing more to do with it all. But by ruining everything in this country- economically, culturally, intellectually, militarily- the Right essentially chased us wherever we went, poisoning everything they could get their hands on...Naipaul's career developed at a time when Western reactionary intellectuals could still be formidable, dynamic and unpredictable; there was space carved out on the Right for reactionary talent like Naipaul...They've replaced the Naipauls with libertarians, the fake, predictable, genetically-modified version of reactionary intellectualism- so insanely corrupt and so profoundly retarded that, like a skunk spraying foul stupidity whenever threatened, libertarianism has successfully scared away anyone with brains and dignity from bothering them while they feed...What's left today, three decades after Reagan's victory, is a ruling class of Rotary Club nihilists. Right-wing degenerates. And they're not even interesting degenerates anymore, the way some Right-wingers used to be. They just scream a lot. Scream and bang a stick on the ground- and at the end of the stick-banging, they go to pick up their checks from their billionaire sponsors."

mark_ames@eXiled Edited July 24, 2012 by kim_philby

[Dr Arslanagić]

[kim_philby]

[Jolly Roger]

Ovih dana se navršava 50 godina od smrti velikog Hesea...

Rat i mirHermann HesseZacijelo su u pravu oni koji rat nazivaju pravim prirodnim stanjem. Ako je čovjek životinja, on živi kroz borbu, živi na račun drugih, boji se i mrzi druge. Život je dakle rat. Što je pak "mir", puno je teže definirati. Mir nije niti rajsko prastanje niti forma uređenog života sporazumno postignuta. Mir je nešto što mi ne poznajemo, nešto što samo tražimo i naslućujemo. Mir je jedan ideal. Mir je nešto neizrecivo komplicirano, labilno, ugroženo – dovoljan je dah pa da se razori. Da makar i samo dva čovjeka, koja su upućena jedan na drugog, mogu živjeti jedan s drugim u istinitom miru, to je rjeđe i teže ostvariti nego bilo koji drugi etički ili intelektualni podvig.Pa ipak je mir, kao i misao i kao želja, kao cilj i kao ideal, već vrlo star. Hiljadama godinama već postoji moćna, za hiljade godina temeljna riječ: "Ne ubij". Da je čovjek kadar za takve riječi, za takve goleme zahtjeve, to ga obilježava više no i jedna druga osobina, to ga odvaja od životinje, uočljivo ga odvaja od "prirode".Čovjek, tako osjećamo pri izgovoru tih moćnih riječi, nije životinja, čovjek uopće nije ništa čvrsto, ništa što je postalo i što je završeno (gotovo), ništa što se može dogoditi samo jedanput i što je jednoznačno, nego nešto što je stalno u postajanju, jedan pokušaj, jedno naslućivanje i budućnost, hitac i čežnja prirode prema novim oblicima i mogućnostima."Ne ubij!" nije kruta zapovijest jednog poučnog "altruizma". Altruizam je nešto što se ne javlja u prirodi. A "ne ubij!" ne znači: nemoj drugome nanijeti bol! Nego znači: nemoj samome sebi oteti drugoga, nemoj samome sebi nanijeti štetu! Pa taj drugi i nije nikakav stranac, ništa što bi ti bilo daleko, što bi bilo lišeno svih odnosa, nešto što bi živjelo samo za sebe. Sve što postoji na svijetu, ta sve te hiljade "drugih" za mene postoje samo ukoliko ih ja vidim, ukoliko ih osjećam, ukoliko se nahodim u nekom odnosu s njima. Iz tih odnosa između mene i ostalog svijeta, "drugih", jedino se i sastoji moj život.U svakom slučaju bilo je sasma lažno mišljenje, koje se za vrijeme rata čulo: da je ovaj rat već samim svojim razmjerama, već svojom užasavajućom džinovskom mehanikom primjeren da zastrašivanjem odvrati buduća pokoljenja od rata. Zastrašivanje nije nikakvo odgojno sredstvo. Ko ubija šale radi, tome nikakav rat neće ogaditi ubijanje. Ni uvid u materijalnu štetu, koju rat izaziva, ni najmanje neće pomoći. Jedva svakim stotim svojim dijelom proishode ljudski postupci iz racionalnog prosuđivanja. Čovjek može biti sasma uvjeren u besmislenost onoga što čini pa da to ipak svesrdno čini. Svaki razjareni usplamtjeli čovjek tako i čini.I baš zato nisam pacifista, kako misle mnogi moji prijatelji i neprijatelji. Ja isto tako malo vjerujem da se svjetski mir može uspostaviti racionalnim putem, putem propovijedi, organizacije i propagande, kao što vjerujem da se kamen mudrosti može otkriti sazivom kongresa kemičara.Pa odakle će onda jednom možda doći na zemlju istinska miroljubivost? Niti preko zapovijesti ni preko materijalnih iskustava. Ona dolazi, kao i svaki ljudski napredak, preko saznanja. No svako saznanje, ako se pod tim podrazumijeva nešto živo a ne nešto akademsko, ima samo jedan predmet. Njega hiljade hiljadostruko saznaju i na hiljade različitih načina izražavaju, ali on je stalno samo jedna istina. To je saznanje života u nama, u svakome od nas, u meni i tebi, to je saznanje tajne čarolije, skrovitog božanstva koje svako od nas u sebi nosi. To je saznanje naše sposobnosti da se s te najunutarnjije tačke svi parovi suprotnosti svakog časa mogu ukinuti, da se svako bijelo preobrati u crno, da se svako zlo preobrati u – dobro, svaka noć u – dan. Hindus kaže Atman, Kinez kaže Tao, Krist kaže milost.Gdje je prisutno ovo uzvišeno saznanje (kao kod Krista, kod Bude, kod Platona, kod Lao-cea), prekoračuje se jedna stepenica, iza koje počinju čuda. Tu prestaje svaki rat i svako neprijateljstvo. O tome se može pročitati u Novom zavjetu i u Budinim besjedama, i ko hoće, može se tome podsmjehnuti nazivajući ga baljezganjem, trtljanjem oko "pounutranjivanja". Ko to doživi, tome neprijatelj postaje brat, smrt postaje rođenje, poniženje postaje čast, a nesreća postaje usud. Svaka stvar na zemlji pokazuje se kao dvostruka, jednom kao da je od "od ovoga svijeta" i drugi put kao da "nije od ovoga svijeta". "Ovaj svijet" pak znači ono što je "izvan nas". Sve što je izvan nas, može nam postati neprijatelj, opasnost, strah, smrt. S iskustvom da je sve to "izvanjsko" ne samo predmet našeg opažanja i promatranja, nego istovremeno i tvorevina naše duše, s preobražajem "izvanjskog" u "unutrašnje", "Svijeta" u "Ja", započinje svitanje.Govorim samorazumljivosti. No kao što je svaki usmrćeni vojnik vječno ponavljanje jedne te iste zablude, to se mora i istina, u hiljadama oblika, vječno i vazda iznova ponavljati.(1918), Herman Hesse, Krieg und Frieden. Betrachungen zu Krieg und Politik seit dem Jahre 1914. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp 1962.Preveo s njemačkog Mario KopićPeščanik.net, 10.08.2012.

[Dr Arslanagić]

saznadoh danas da je jedan moj daleki predak izgleda izdao Eugena Kvaternika Ćesarevoj vojsci za vreme Rakovičke bune...(pošto nema kordunaški smiley)EDITa izgleda i da sam rod sa Nikolom Teslom :0.6:

Edited August 12, 2012 by Arbeitmann

[vesela vinzdorka]

ti li si onaj sto mi donese Dinamov upaljac i okaci Rotten Sausage na YT???

[Dr Arslanagić]

?

[vesela vinzdorka]

ah nista, puka koincindencija u nickovima, izvinjavam se na pometnji...

[Dr Arslanagić]

pazi, donosio sam davno Dinamov upaljač jednom drugaru iz Kragujevca...

[vesela vinzdorka]

ja nisam drug iz Kragujevcada li si kacio Rottene po youtubu?

[Dr Arslanagić]

ne

[vesela vinzdorka]

kao sto rekoh, zabuna je u pitanju...