A description of Vaclav Havel: “His politics were restrained: He was neither a die-hard anti-Communist nor a socialist (except for a brief revolt against his mother).”
Daily ritual. I have to overcome my disgust and repugnance at writing. It’s an unpleasant feeling—that I will fuck it up and get it all wrong, that I will fail to write anything interesting and therefore useful.
Remembering is more important (now) than imagining. The move towards modernity was away from the Medieval emphasis on the palace of memory—of which Thomas Aquinas was paradigmatic—towards invention (Shakespeare, Einstein—take your pick), but it has gone too far. Now everything is invention (generative AI representing an ideal of the human mind)—and almost nothing is memory. Endless iteration is not only exhausting, but
A good life is produced by the right ecology of Pragmata—not by adherence to a singular idea.
Scientism enforces a false choice between transcending or breaking—and tells us its wrong to bend. Scientism straightens all our circles into lines.
Heidegger: “consuming technology, using it is not enough; we have to question it and teach others to question it.”
It’s interesting to see plays influenced by my own—and there are more than a few now