Allen Roberts > Recent Status Updates

“In order to keep the state out of the hands of the people,” wrote the French monarchist Louis de Bonald, “it is necessary to keep the family out of the hands of women and children.” p. 15

“I had driven a great distance that day, traveling through interstellar space, or so I thought, passing bright galaxies and burning nebulas and black holes that swallowed time and space and I marveled at the great size of it all and felt my own insignificance deeply.” p. 224

“To be sane in an insane world is to feel insane every day.” p. 200

“It may be, he had proposed, that to be ‘good’ one had to abandon the idea of being ‘free’.” p. 157

“To recognize a paradox is not to resolve it.” p. 123

“If this was death, then it was something he could live with.” p.121

“…[I]n the new online forums where anonymous individuals with anonymous lives insulted one another and denigrated people they did not know but disagreed with or envied or misunderstood or knew nothing about or were prejudiced against or looked down on or hated for reasons they themselves did not properly understand and could not have explained.” p. 78

“One can say of religion what Karl Kraus famously said of psychoanalysis: it is the disease that believes itself to be the cure.” p.90

“There is no country in the civilized world,” Tocqueville declares, “where they are less occupied with philosophy than in the United States.” p.80

Still 100% true today…

“One of the few privileges of very old age was that you were allowed to say exactly what you thought, even to strangers. Nobody told you to keep your mouth shut, and few people had the guts to answer back.” p.14

“For the world is Hell, and men are on one hand the tormented souls and on the other the devils in it.” p.48

Enjoying this immensely so far… it examines Pericles, Xerxes, Octavian, Augustine, Machiavelli, Elizabeth I, and more.

“Love is nothing but Joy with the accompanying idea of an external cause, and Hate is nothing but Sadness with the accompanying idea of an external cause.” p. 65-66.

So, the Socratic Method is bad?? Oh boy. (Deep breath… rolling up sleeves in preparation.)

“ For strife will never arise on account of what is not loved…” Spinoza (p. 40)

“Perhaps saying that wills are unequally demanding suffices to explain the differences in attention that would perhaps suffice to explain the inequality of intellectual performances.” p. 52

Amazing so far!! 🤯

“Coltrane’s study of African and other non-Western music was a mainstay in bolstering his belief that the purpose of music transcends that of mere entertainment, and can actually socially transform its listeners.” p. 112

“…[C]lassical political science depended on the primacy of domestic policy over foreign policy and of public justice over private interests.” p.30

“…Coltrane’s goal was to discover the music that was most ‘essential’ (in his term), pure sound without those intrinsic aspects that tie it to one time or culture; universal music, the song of God.” p.52

Schopenhauer WAS a grumpy fucker, but that doesn’t mean his analysis of human nature was wrong… 😉

“Religion and nationalism, as well as any custom and any belief however absurd and degrading, if it only connects the individual with others, are refuges from what man most dreads: isolation.” p. 26

“Is there not also, perhaps, besides an innate desire for freedom, an instinctive wish for submission? If there is not, how can we account for the attraction which submission to a leader has for so many today?” p. 17

”[T]his isn’t merely the age of the abusive outsized platform; it’s the age of the sick, collapsing abusive outsized platform.
It’s the Enshittocene.” p. 10

Some interesting literary discussion of Tolkien so far.