Those whom we so-called military journalists categorize as poor leaders are not the exception, but the strategy. Truth is, the Marine Corps doesn’t want you to know. All this bullshit about brothers and sisters only really means anything to the younger guys. Once you’re a company man, you’ll sacrifice the memory of a few young lives if it means top billing in the commander’s eyes.
Read more →It’s black outside
pitched against the night
a slow motion city of wandering drunks and me
but I as the safe voyeur of a narrow window
as the safe isolation of a fourth floor
as the safe isolation of a bottle
keeps me from wandering
No one awake at this hour but drunks and me
and I slow stumble to that place
so cold in this hot August humid
and it sits on my shoulders so heavy but
the storm’s coming and I’m ready,
alone and drunk; the lights go out but mine and
my lights won’t go out because I’m ready
bring that goddamn storm to me &
I’ll wrestle it,
alone &
drunk &
safe &
ready for it
& nothing else.
Read more →Weekdays on the R train always offered Daniel hope for humanity.
There he would sit quietly with his knees tucked together in his Sunday best, but it was Wednesday. He cautiously folded his hands over his lap, taking great pains to place them discreetly around the inscription on the Bible he carried around for effect. Catching the train at Forest Hills, he suffered through stops separating him from purgation: a saccharine seraph named Christina who had charity in hazel eyes and bleeding heart.
Read more →Good as a virtue has no intrinsic value, but it is given value in the context of groups. Morality is derivative of collaboration and socialization. The potential for good (and evil) are concomitantly increased as civilization advances. That’s to say, when I’m alone, I can only help or harm myself; but when I’m with two people, three people… the more people I have access to, the greater potential there is for good and evil, and both rise in equivalent proportion.
Read more →Rumi’s Masnavi story of Moses and the shepherd can best be described as an ode to intention. It questions the authenticity of not this or that particular action, but of action itself in relation to God. It is the mystic’s affirmation that there is something that is both responsible for causing action and is simultaneously superior to it, as resonates in the following line from the Qur’an: “There are signs in the earth for those who are firm in their faith, And within yourselves. Can you not perceive?” (51:20-21)
Read more →There’s something about things walking into bars that’s usually cause for raucous hysterics. Whoever it is — a priest, a black guy, a blonde, etc. — the moment that mnemonic quip sounds, face muscles relax in ready anticipation for the punch line. But nobody laughs when a transvestite walks into a bar — not really, anyway. Tense patrons shift troubled in their stools, unsure of what to say or where to look. The punch line could never follow a transvestite; they violate the joke by wearing the punch line. The shock of the façade leaves little room for wit and we sit around the table in silence, smiling uncomfortably at one another under the pretense of tolerance.
Read more →At age 37, Muslim philosopher and jurist Abu Hamid al-Ghazali fell into a heavy spiritual crisis, one that caused him to abruptly abandon his well-respected position as the head of the Nizamayah College in Baghdad and roam the regions of Syria and Palestine seeking revelation. After spending years in Jerusalem and Damascus, as well as making Hajj to Mecca, he returned to his hometown of Tus, where it was discovered that he had disposed his wealth, renounced philosophy, and now totally embraced the humble life of a poor Sufi mystic. Why the sudden change?
Read more →The eristic problem in Plato’s Meno argues that the search for knowledge is precluded before it can even start; either because one does not know what they’re looking for, or because they already know that thing they would look for (80e.2-5). In other words, I cannot search for some knowledge I don’t already know, because I don’t know what that knowledge looks like and if I came across it, I would not understand that it is the thing I sought. Further, if I already had this knowledge then I would have no reason to even begin searching for it.
Read more →The peritropê (“table-turning”) objection in Plato’s Theaetetus is a model in which the Protagorean theory of relativism, which holds that knowledge is equal to perception, is turned against itself. Plato puts forward the peritropê with the ostensible goal of exposing Protagoras’ model as contradicting itself and therefore being self-refuting. I contend that, though the peritropê [...]
Read more →There is an old joke in politics that whoever promises both freedom and equality is either an idiot or a liar. Though both the ideas of liberty and equality appeal to political man, they are ever frustratingly opposed to each other. It is this rule of opposites that resonates in the words of French political [...]
Read more →