Introduction and Purpose of the Blog

Introduction and Purpose of the Blog

The thing is, the issues that interest me the most, that trouble me the most, are basic problems that we all experience but that are only too easily evaded by sliding into, hiding within, secondary or even delusional matters.

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There is an impulse that we recognize in ourselves while reading Thoreau to try to be as true as we can and not to waste our lives on things that really don't matter.

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear;

A. J. Muste mentions in one of his essays - I don't know where he learned this fascinating fact, but it fits - that Walden was the book most commonly carried by GI's during World War II.

And I often think of Martin Luther King Jr.'s “The Drum Major Instinct” sermon, given shortly before he was assassinated, foreseeing his own funeral, in which he said:

I'd like somebody to mention that day, that Martin Luther King, Jr., tried to give his life serving others. I'd like for somebody to say that day, that Martin Luther King, Jr., tried to love somebody… And all of the other shallow things will not matter. I won't have any money to leave behind. I won't have the fine and luxurious things of life to leave behind. But I just want to leave a committed life behind. And that's all I want to say.

Another statement of purpose that I like is: “For this reason was I born and for this reason came I into the world, to bear witness to the truth.”

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Language, our most useful and characteristic tool, is social through and through, and I include music as language. Countless others created and sustained it before we were born. We may use it to create and to express our individuality, but we got it from others. The names we give “things” are shared. The word “thing” itself comes from Scandinavia to indicate a social matter.

I mention this now because a large part of our world does still not recognize to this day that the other is essential to the self. What we considered to be “in here” is not separate from what is “out there.” as is still commonly believed.

That discussion of what is self and what is other gets complicated very quickly, as in contemporary particle physics and professional philosophy and depth psychology. But I have seen that it doesn't have to be that way.

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Suicide note left by a boy who attended an upper-middle class high school:

I love you Dad but I just can't stand those bastards.

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