On the other hand, the Cynics' view of life agrees in spirit with that of J. J. Rousseau as he expoiunds it in the Discours sur l-origine de l'inegalite; for he too would lead us back to the crude state of nature, and regards the reduction of our needs to the minimum as the surest path to perfect happiness. For the rest, the Cynics were exclusively practical philosophers; at any rate, no account of their theoretical philosophy is known to me.

The Stoics proceeded from them by changing the practical into the the theoretical. They were of the opinion that the actual dispensing of with everything that can be discarded is not required, but that it is sufficient for us constantly to regard possession and enjoyment as dispensible, and as held in the hand of chance; for then the actual privation, should it eventually occur, would not be unexpected, nor would it be a burden. We can in all circumstances possess and enjoy everything, only we must always keep in mind the conviction of the worthlessness and dispensibleness of such good things on the one hand, and their uncertainty and perishableness on the other; consequently, we must entirely underrate them all, and be ready at all thime to give them up.

Arthur Schopenhauer

So it's okay for a Marxist professor to wear Nike tennis shoes.

The real rulers in Washington are invisible, and exercise power from behind the scenes.
Felix Frankfurter

The reformation of consciousness lies solely in the awakening of the world... from its dream about itself.


Oprah was trying to awaken people from their dreams today. She had several women on her show, single and married, who admitted to the lies that they were living in their life. All of the lies were strangely tied to the women's personal dreams for their lives. One woman (single, 24 years old) confessed that she was obsessed with living the celebrity lifestyle. This obsession resulted in massive credit card debt because she doesn't earn enough to purchase the expensive clothes she needs to put on the illusion. (She looked terrible in the clothes and had on a bad shade of lipstick. Oprah's producers should have helped her.) She thought it is easier to live as a character because it is harder to face criticism as a real person. A married woman confessed to faking happiness in her expansive suburban home. Other women confessed to wearing fake jewelry and other such things.) The whole time Oprah admonished the media for its falsity, for supplying people with the mental material for their illusions. It isn't real; it isn't real, she said repeatedly. But she didn't confess to her own involvement in it! She looked kind of strange with her false eyelashes and designer clothes instructing the 24 year girl to give up her illusions.

Pumping Gas

This morning I put $10.00 of gas in my car and I didn't even get a quarter tank of gas. :(

Prefer et obdura: dolor hic tibi proderit olim.

For those who are frustrated in grad school, a short quiz, courtesy of Matt Groening and Lisa Ede:

Should you be going to Grad School?

__ I am a compulsive neurotic.

__ I like my imagination crushed into dust.

__ I enjoy being a professor's slave.

__ My idea of a good time is citing authorities.

__ I feel a deep need to continue the process of avoiding life.

and for those who plan to stay:

The 5 Secrets of Grad School Success

1. Do not annoy the professor.

2. Be consistently mediocre.

3. Avoid anything smacking of originality.

4. Do exactly what you are told.

5. Stop reading this right now and get back to work.

Why Write?


Proust, writes Benjamin, managed to make the pointless story interesting. He says: "Imagine, dear reader, yesterday I was dunking a cookie in my tea when it occurred to me that as a child I had spent some time in the country." For this he uses eighty pages, and it is so fascinating that you think you are no longer the listener but the daydreamer himself.

. . .

To this world belongs what happens in Proust, and the deliberate and fastidious way in which it appears. It is never isolated, rhetorical, or visionary; carefully heralded and securely supported, it bears a fragile, precious reality; the image.

. . .

What was it that Proust sought so frenetically? What was at the bottom of all these infinite efforts? Can we say that all lives, works, and deeds that matter were never anything but the undisturbed unfolding of the most banal, most fleeting, most sentimental, weakest hour in the life of the one to whom they pertain? When Proust in a well-known passage described the hour that was most his own, he did it in such a way that everyone can find in it his own existence.

Proust wrote: "and as soon as I had recognised the taste of madeleine soaked in her decoction of lime-blossom which my aunt used to give me ... immediately the old grey house upon the street, where her room was, rose up like a stage set ... and with the house the town, from morning to night and in all weathers, the Square where I used to be sent before lunch, the streets along which I used to run errands, the country roads we took when it was fine."