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| Is any human being unworthy of love? This is a trick question. The politically correct answer seems to be to justify why every human deserves love. The critical mind will try to create categories of persons who are not worthy of love, particularly to label infamous tyrants and terrorists. But the focus should be taken off of human being and on the notion of worth. What is the worth of love? What does it mean to be worthy of love? I'm not sure anyone is worthy of love--in fact, I'm pretty sure that no one is. If love is deserved, if to be loved is a right some (or all) people have, then what does it mean to love? Can love be intentional, risky, sacrificial, and meaningful if it is owed, if one is obligated to love? What does it mean to love because one has to? This disrupts our very notion of love. It seems more likely that love is given charitably, in spite of or because of our unworthiness. In spite of because we overlook one's lack of worth and find something special to value in them. Because of because without this unworthiness it would not be love, but rather admiration, respect, or some other relational activity that is due someone and which is given in appropriate measure. But love is inappropriate. It is over the top. It overcomes. Love overwhelms our lack of worth and creates something worthwhile. We love because no one is loveable, because we are not loveable. Because we love, we become loveable. | | |
| The two reasons for my maintaining a xanga have fizzled. It has not been a successful few months for maintaining contacts in Maryland nor has there been much activity from the Socrates Cafe. I will maintain this site long enough to get the stuff I posted here and all the comments printed into a notebook, and then I will more than likely be shutting this site down to reduce my "obligations" and sources of anxiety. Those of you who read my other blog will probably find similar rants there as to what I was trying to do here. Those of you who absolutely object to my closing this site will need to do a good job convincing me not to. This is not a plea for attention, because it really is easier if I shut this site down. I just need to know if the extra work and low activity is worth it... | | |
| What is the ultimate philosophy... This is going to be difficult...ridiculously difficult... for the individual? Act to understand and understand to act. for society? Seek wholeness in proper relations according to the context of each situation. Vague enough? Good. | | |
| Jack Kerouac: "Once I was young and had so much more orientation and could talk with nervous intelligence about everything and with clarity and without as much literary preambling as this is; in other words this is the story of an unself-confident man, at the same time of an egomaniac, naturally, facetious won’t do" "the greatest key to courage is shame" "art is short, life is long" "the whole host and foolish illusion and entire rigamarole and madness that we erect in the place of one love, in our sadness" "I am going to sleep to dream, to wake" | | |
| Why do we create? In order for the word create to be more than just an euphemism, one must reject the assumption of determinism. In a determined system, it would be inappropriate to call any part of the system a creation. Once we permit the assumption of freedom, we have assumed some things about the nature of the universe and of the free agent. Freedom is only meaningful in a limited context, and is co-conditional with responsibility. It involves choice in the midst of options. Interestingly, each choice should result in some sort of development. And if it is not determined, limited but not prescribed, then each development is a creation. Thus, a free agent, by exercising his or her nature, can do no other than create. We fail to create when we fail to choose, fail to be who and what we are. But by being truly human, a human must create. The origin and the motive are the same, the very nature of the free agent. | | |
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