Author: Tetman Callis

We call it fictionWe call it fiction

“A lie is a truth struck through with other, further truth.” – Gary Lutz, “This Is Nice of You”

You may rather be in PhiladelphiaYou may rather be in Philadelphia

“I have read descriptions of Paradise which would make any sensible person stop wanting to go there: according to some, the spirits of the blessed spend all their time playing the flute; others sentence them to walk about for ever; others again claim that while up there they dream about their mistresses down here, considering that a hundred million years is not too long for them to lose their taste for being love-sick.” – Montesquieu, “Letter 125,” Persian Letters (trans. Betts)

The unreasoned reasonThe unreasoned reason

“The urge to greet every answer with another question is one we find in children not because it’s childish but because it’s natural.  Once you begin the search for knowledge, there is no obvious place to stop.  The fact that the desire for omniscience cannot be met does not make it either foolish or pathological.  Indeed, it is embodied in the principle of sufficient reason itself.  The principle of sufficient reason expresses the belief that we can find a reason for everything the world presents.  It is not an idea that we derive from the world, but one that we bring to it.” – Susan Neiman, Evil in Modern Thought

Ain’t no cure for heavenAin’t no cure for heaven

“Is the desire for transcendence a matter of psychology—in which case it’s advisable to seek a good cure?  Or is the existence of that desire fundamental to any experience we could recognize as human?” – Susan Neiman, Evil in Modern Thought

Or you could become a political activistOr you could become a political activist

“The wish to undo an evil that was done to you in the past is the very model of senseless obsession.  If you cannot abandon it, you will be trapped in the sterile self-defeat of rage without revenge, pain without relief.” – Susan Neiman, Evil in Modern Thought

The justification of consolationThe justification of consolation

“The difference between invoking collective good as a way of consoling us for individual suffering and invoking it as a way of justifying individual suffering is so fine that it is routinely ignored in political practice.” – Susan Neiman, Evil in Modern Thought (emphasis in original)

Dig deep enough, you might find itDig deep enough, you might find it

“To think that suffering can be redeemed by the demonstration that it’s necessary for future good is not only to be instrumentalist; it shows you know nothing about pain.  Time itself does not heal; it only buries.” — Susan Neiman, Evil in Modern Thought

Among other thingsAmong other things

“If our life were without end and free from pain, it would possibly not occur to anyone to ask why the world exists.” – Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation (trans. Payne)

Careful, you’re gonna wear that thing outCareful, you’re gonna wear that thing out

“Does experience really show that pleasure becomes insipid if it lasts long—or is this just the sort of thing we say for comfort because it usually doesn’t?” – Susan Neiman, Evil in Modern Thought

Is that the rock or the hard place?Is that the rock or the hard place?

“Being human means to strive to realize a world so perfect that its realization would undo us.” – Susan Neiman, Evil in Modern Thought

Hit ’em again! Hit ’em again! Harder! Harder!Hit ’em again! Hit ’em again! Harder! Harder!

“As an educational tool, pain has value nothing else can replace.” – Susan Neiman, Evil in Modern Thought

Put that in your pipe and smoke itPut that in your pipe and smoke it

“Freedom, if it’s universal freedom, must allow for the failure of others.” – Susan Neiman, Evil in Modern Thought

What if I plug this into that…?What if I plug this into that…?

“Recognizing one’s limits seems a form of fair trade: if we withdraw some of our claims on the world, surely those remaining will be met.  Yet the wish to determine the world can’t be coherently limited, for you cannot know which event will turn out to be not just another event, but one that will change your life.” – Susan Neiman, Evil in Modern Thought

Cosmic psychopathy is probably not the solutionCosmic psychopathy is probably not the solution

“To imagine a God who judges many of the forms of life He created to be sinful, then tortures us eternally for our brief participation in them, is hardly to imagine a solution to the problem of evil.” – Susan Neiman, Evil in Modern Thought

Objects of a studyObjects of a study

“What if the world were created by a Being whose whole purpose was to cause us torment and illusion?  God knows it sometimes looks that way.” – Susan Neiman, Evil in Modern Thought

You gotta scream without raising your voiceYou gotta scream without raising your voice

Rarely do I get personal on this website.  Maybe a little in responding to the comments (which are almost exclusively from Averil Dean), but not out here on the main floor.  The past few months have been a time of significant transition for me, which I don’t expect to mean jack to anyone else, but which I will use as an excuse to acknowledge by posting this:

E pluribus unum, peopleE pluribus unum, people

“If Americans seriously want the United States to continue to exist in something like its current form, they had best respect the fundamental tenets of our unlikely union.  It cannot survive if we end the separation of church and state or institute the Baptist equivalent of Sharia law.  We won’t hold together if presidents appoint political ideologues to the Justice Department or the Supreme Court of the United States, or if party loyalists try to win elections by trying to stop people from voting rather than winning them over with their ideas.  The union can’t function if national coalitions continue to use House and Senate rules to prevent important issues from being debated in the open because members know their positions wouldn’t withstand public scrutiny.  Other sovereign democratic states have central governments more corrupted than our own, but most can fall back on unifying elements we lack: common ethnicity, a shared religion, or near-universal consensus on many fundamental political issues.  The United States needs its central government to function cleanly, openly, and efficiently because it’s one of the few things binding us together.” – Colin Woodard, American Nations

Pulling into NazarethPulling into Nazareth

No, he’s not talking about FacebookNo, he’s not talking about Facebook

“Everywhere I see people who talk continually about themselves.  Their conversation is a mirror which always shows their own conceited faces.  They will talk to you about the tiniest events in their lives, which they expect to be magnified in your eyes by the interest that they themselves take in them.” – Montesquieu, “Letter 50,” Persian Letters (trans. Betts)

Busy little bees we beBusy little bees we be

“Those who enjoy learning are never idle.” – Montesquieu, “Letter 48,” Persian Letters (trans. Betts)

Solicit thisSolicit this

“There is nothing that tests your commitment to a goal like getting a few doors closed in your face.” – James Richard Perry (quoted in the Nashville Post, 2009)

It’s a POV issueIt’s a POV issue

“The distant rear of an army engaged in battle is not the best place from which to judge correctly what is going on in front.” – Ulysses S. Grant, Personal Memoirs

Hindbrain to the forefrontHindbrain to the forefront

“Nothing is more depressing than consolations based on the necessity of evil, the uselessness of remedies, the inevitability of fate, the order of Providence, or the misery of the human condition.  It is ridiculous to try to alleviate misfortune by observing that we are born to be miserable.  It is much better to prevent the mind from indulging in such reflections, and to treat men as emotional beings, instead of treating them as rational.” – Montesquieu, “Letter 33,” Persian Letters (trans. Betts)

Let’s get it straight, peopleLet’s get it straight, people

“I would not have the anniversaries of our victories celebrated, nor those of our defeats made fast days and spent in humiliation and prayer; but I would like to see truthful history written.” – Ulysses S. Grant, Personal Memoirs

100 Years Ago100 Years Ago

Running out of GassRunning out of Gass

“A limp that tells the world we are compensating for an injury becomes a habit hard to break even when its cause has healed and there is no longer any ‘reason’ for it.  Except that the limp wishes to remain.  Our stutter wants to stay.  Our fall from a ladder would be forever like a cast-out angel if we didn’t fetch up in a lake of fire or at least on a floor.” — William H. Gass, “Auguste Rodin,” from A Temple of Texts

What the word meansWhat the word means

“All of us have emotions urgently seeking release, and many of us have opinions we think would do the world some good; however, the poet must also be a maker, as the Greeks maintained, and, like the sculptor, like every other artist, should aim at adding real beings to the world, beings fully realized, not just things like tools and haberdashery that nature has neglected to provide, or memos and laws that society produces in abundance.” — William H. Gass, “Auguste Rodin,” from A Temple of Texts

Out here on the perimeterOut here on the perimeter

“The world is not simply good and bad on different weekends like an inconsistent pitcher; we devour what we savor and what sustains us; out of ruins more ruins will after, in their polished towers, rise; lust is the muscle of love: its strength, its coarseness, its brutality; the heart beats and is beaten by its beating; not a shadow falls without the sun’s shine and the sun sears what it saves.  These are not the simplicities my saying has suggested.  In our civilization, the center has not held for a long time; neither the center nor the place where the center was can now be found.  We are disordered, arthritic fingers without palms.  Inside the silence of unmoving things, there are the sounds of repeated explosions.  Perhaps it is catastrophe breathing.” — William H. Gass, “Humors of Blood & Skin,” from A Temple of Texts

What writers can be like to live withWhat writers can be like to live with

“There are those who like to sail alone around the world; they shut themselves up in towers to write or watch for fires; in huts encased in ice, they give up their lives to loneliness; who hunt for pelts in the mountains or are driven with aimless intensity from place to place like sand through a desert; fly solo, take to the woods.  Searching for a second self, they dislike distraction.  They want something to pit their strength against: angel or shade or element of nature that will assume the shape, and become the substance, of their enemy within.” — William H. Gass, “On Heroes and Tombs,” from A Temple of Texts

Tea, anyone?Tea, anyone?

“Through the tax code, there has been class warfare waged, and my class has won.  It’s been a rout.  You have seen a period where American workers generally have gone no place, and where the really super rich as a group increased their incomes five for one in this rarefied atmosphere.” — Warren Buffet, quoted in “Returns ‘Terrific’ as U.S. Workers Suffer,” Bloomberg News, 11.15.11