Dec 30, 2009

Great Death

When Zen master Sekiso passed away and the brotherhood asked the head monk to succeed him as abbot, Zen master Kyuho, who had previously served as the master's attendant, came and addressed them. He posed a question to the head monk, "The master often told us to `cease all activity,' to `do nothing whatever,' to `become so cold and lifeless the spirits of the dead will come sighing around you,' to `become a bolt of fine white silk,' to `become the dead ashes in a censer left forgotten in an ancient graveyard,' to `become so that the present instant is ten thousand years.'

"What is the meaning of these instructions? If you show that you grasp them, you are the next abbot. If you show that you do not, you aren't the man for the job."

"His words," said the head monk, "refer to the essential oneness of all things."

"You have failed to understand the master's meaning," said Kyuho.

"Get some incense ready," replied the head monk. "If I have terminated my life by the time that incense burns, it will mean I grasped the master's meaning. If I am still living, it will mean I did not."

Kyuho lit a stick of incense. Before it had burned down the head monk had ceased breathing. Kyuho patted the dead man on the back, and said, "Others have died while seated; some have died while standing. But you have just succeeded in proving that you could not have even seen the master's meaning in your dreams."

— Hakuin

The deep-loving beast-form of Sunyata barrelling towards nonduality

I love those that know not how to live except as down-goers, for they are the over-goers.

I love the great despisers, because they are the great adorers, and arrows of longing for the other shore.

I love those who do not first seek a reason beyond the stars for going down and being sacrifices, but sacrifice themselves to the earth, that the earth of the Superman may hereafter arrive.

I love him who liveth in order to know, and seeketh to know in order that the Superman may hereafter live. Thus seeketh he his own down-going.

I love him who laboureth and inventeth, that he may build the house for the Superman, and prepare for him earth, animal, and plant: for thus seeketh he his own down-going.

I love him who loveth his virtue: for virtue is the will to down-going, and an arrow of longing.

I love him who reserveth no share of spirit for himself, but wanteth to be wholly the spirit of his virtue: thus walketh he as spirit over the bridge.


...

I love him who chasteneth his God, because he loveth his God: for he must succumb through the wrath of his God.

I love him whose soul is deep even in the wounding, and may succumb through a small matter: thus goeth he willingly over the bridge.

I love him whose soul is so overfull that he forgetteth himself, and all things are in him: thus all things become his down-going.

I love him who is of a free spirit and a free heart: thus is his head only the bowels of his heart; his heart, however, causeth his down-going.


— Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra

Dec 24, 2009

How idiocy is perpetuated through generations

From the first catch-phrases flung at a child to the last, it is like a series of shocks to freeze his motor, to undercut the power of his consciousness. "Don't ask so many questions, children should be seen and not heard!" — "Who are you to think? It's so, because I say so!" — "Don't argue, obey!" — "Don't try to understand, believe!" — "Don't rebel, adjust!" — "Don't stand out, belong!" — "Don't struggle, compromise" — "Your heart is more important than your mind!" — "Who are you to know? Your parents know best!" — "Who are you to know? Society knows best!" — "Who are you to know? The bureaucrats know best!" — "Who are you to object? All values are relative!" — "Who are you to want to escape a thug's bullet? That's only a personal prejudice!"


— Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

Dec 19, 2009

Waking

Wake to the day with the joy and zest of having arrived in Heaven. All will be well for you. Sit back and enjoy! What can possibly touch you, who are beyond space and time? Be as a dead man, the dead man you are, untouched by the worries and concerns of this world.

— Kevin Solway, Poison for the Heart

Dec 12, 2009

Misuse of mass media, and immediacy

With the press as degenerate as it is, human beings eventually will surely be transformed into clods. A newspaper's first concern has to be circulation; from then on the rule for what it publishes can be: the wittiness and entertainment of printing something that has no relation to communication through the press. How significant! How easy to be witty when misuse of the press has become the newly invented kind of witticism.


For example, they write that a certain well-known person (mentioned by name) wears an embroidered shirt. This is written and then read by the whole market town where the lunatic press thrives. The man is cartooned with an embroidered shirt and this treatment goes on for half a year — and naturally is the most widely read of everything read in the market town. If this is not either lunacy or idiocy, then I know of no other alternative. People are simply too immediate and momentary, but on this scale it is a non plus ultra — to use the circulation of the press to discuss for half a year something which, after all, the most addle-brained person ought to be sufficiently human not to talk about for more than five minutes — it can only lead to idiocy.


— Søren Kierkegaard, 1847

Dec 5, 2009

A strong mind

A strong mind

The written word of a thinker is structured by the organisation of logic, rather than by the standards of conventional communication in language which have come to show no sign of this; even more, the thinker – the true thinker who lives in thought – has his very being in thought, and the meaning conveyed in his thought has a far different meaning to the standards conveyed in conventional language. To state this simply, reality is truly understood, and only understood, with thought, and this thought has rejected the form and convention of animal culture.

There is no salvation through reading the written word expressed by a thinker, since the desire to lay hold of the truth engineered through another is not the key to truth, but a distancing from it. Even the act of turning to one's own writings with this desire for an outward form, for an outward encapsulation, distances one from the truth that is only actualised with one's own thought.

Thought is the only arena for understanding. It is not reading, it is not writing, it is not speaking, and it is not listening. Thought is the only arena, the only workshop, the only engine, powerful enough to create understanding. All words must come from meanings manipulated by one's own mind, and even more, one must actually construct and invent the meanings wholly within one's own finely-scrutinising intellect, for there to be any real and lasting understanding.

The written word, or any meanings conveyed by another, are nothing but a tossed-away cocoon, a hardened residue of the arrival of understanding. These are relics of something already past, not the source of, nor the crystallised agent of salvation. They can do no more than stimulate one who has lost inwardness, whose mind is weak, to seek again that inwardness for himself. They cannot substitute.

The written word is no achievement.

Aphorisms

The mind has no dust needing to be swept away, or dirt collected on a window-glass obscuring some bright scene. There is always the ever-pure without any inherent form or shape to clasp to; everything is the glory of the empty void which has no inherent form but presents as all that is and can be.

There is no equanimity when there is equanimity: the balance between happiness and sadness is a false equanimity which needs to stay between somethings. But as there is nothing, therefore there is no equanimity – that is equanimity.

It is not „who is it that is being angry or upset?“ but rather, „how is it possible to become upset when the beginning or ending of what is imagined to be a bad thing is actually only imaginary?“

It is not „when did that thing really occur which is imagined to be hurtful?“ but rather „did something really come into existence at all?“

It is not „has something come into existence?“ but „why this sudden need to grasp onto something?“

Why lose the ungraspable and try to grasp it? Know that one has everything already.

Indeed: Awake in the morning with the joy of having arrived in heaven. All will be well. It is true: one is already in heaven – or rather, there is neither heaven or hell. There is nothing but everything already. There is nothing attained, nothing lost.

Know the eternal. Meditate on the ever-present if you ever feel inclined to think it could change from one minute to the next. Just sit with what is, then you may dance and float and always be motionless.

Truthless spontaneity

The tragedy of our time is that it is altogether momentary. If a man gets an idea, he wants to have it promptly accepted. Yeah, Great, Do It! If someone else had gotten the idea of individuality, he would immediately have supplied it with so many adherents that the whole thing would have fizzled out since the manifestation would have become the mob of followers and the idea of individuality would have been disregarded.


— Kierkegaard, 1847

Nov 30, 2009

The Crowd - The Individual

"The crowd" is really what I have aimed at polemically, and that I have learned from Socrates. I want to make men aware so that they do not waste and squander their lives. The aristocrats take for granted that there is always a whole mass of men who go to waste. But they remain silent about it, live secluded, and act as if these many, many human beings did not exist at all. This is the wickedness of the aristocrats' exclusiveness — that in order to have an easy life themselves they do not even make people aware.


That is not what I want. I want to make the crowd aware of their own ruin, and if they are unwilling to respond to the good, then I will constrain them with evil. Understand me — or do not misunderstand me. I do not intend to strike them (alas, one cannot strike the crowd) — no, I will constrain them to strike me. Thus I will still be constraining them with evil. For if they strike me first — they will surely become aware — and if they kill me — then they will become unconditionally aware, and I will have won absolute victory. In that respect my constitution is thoroughly dialectical. Already there are many who say, "What does anyone care about Magister Kierkegaard? I'll show him." Ah, but showing me that they do not care about me or taking the trouble to get me to realise that they do not care about me is still dependence. It will work out just that way if one simply has enough ataraxy. They show me respect precisely by showing me that they do not respect me.


Men are not so corrupt that they actually desire evil, but they are blind and really do not know what they are doing. Everything centers on drawing them out into the area of decision. A child can be somewhat unruly toward his father for a long time, but if the father can only get the child to make a real attack, the child is far closer to being saved. The revolt of the "masses" is victorious if we step aside for it so that it never comes to know what it is doing. The crowd is not essentially reflective; therefore, if it puts a man to death, it is eo ipso brought to a stop, becomes aware, and deliberates.


The reformer who, as they say, fights a power (a pope, an emperor, in short, an individual man) has to bring about the downfall of the mighty one; but he who with justice alone confronts "the crowd", from which comes all corruption, must see to it that he himself falls.


— Kierkegaard, 1847

Oct 15, 2009

Running out of ideas

If one lacks the faith to dissolve oneself in a sea of wisdom, one can still occupy oneself in a relatively noble fashion with ideas of truth. The problem is, ideas run out. It is not long before you ahve thought all thoughts, and perhaps written all ideas, and they cease to thrill. One's ink runs dry.

The temptation is now to fall back into the immediacy of common worldliness, where there is at least some pleasure, some colour, however shallow.

The wise never run short of ideas, because they seek no joy in them, and thus find no pain. Their strength arises from their having sacrificed knowledge, and having become all-knowledge.

— Kevin Solway

Oct 10, 2009

Kierkegaard and epilepsy

Kierkegaard probably did suffer from epileptic fits, as described by Heidi and Leif Bork Hansen in their essay "Kirkegaard's Epilepsy: The Intriguing Secret of the Machinery". It is not altogether true, however, that Kirkegaard's conception of the Infinite was influenced by his epileptic experiences. Kirkegaard noted many times in his Journals that his "thorn in the flesh" was something he strove not to give into, and was aware that it was a untruth.

It was not, as the Hansens surmise, a direct result of his God-relationship, as a sort of divinely raised whip of discipline. Rather, Kierkegaard knew his illness as a psychosomatic combination of melancholy, and the psychological strain of his penitentiary education, under the ideals of reverence for his father and respect for his beloved:

At one time my condition was such that I had the burden of anguish which I may call my thorn in the flesh: a sorrow, a mental anguish related to my late father, a deep grief related to that beloved girl and everything that was involved. Thus I believed that, compared to the ordinary man, I mgiht be said to be carrying a heavy burden.


Kierkegaard was always sickly, and knew it. From childhood, his illness forced him to concentrate on the intellectual. He could not be one of the "universals" - a physically sound, robust, worldly fellow. His epilepsy was an important cause in his development as an extraordinary genius. In the same vein, it would have caused him to become acutely self-aware, to watch out for signs of approaching fits, so as to manage his neurological states better. But it is important to make a clear distinction between this kind of self-monitoring and the other kind of spiritual monitoring which makes up the body of his journal entries entitled, "About myself". Occasionally, he uses such entries to control any hypochondriac or depressive moods, but he is largely writing about how to adjust his moods and thoughts to a higher psychology, in the wake of various stressful events.

The Hansens imply that the temporal lobe seizure ("God-experience") that epileptics often use to justify belief in God was relevant to Kierkegaard's case. However, Kierkegaard did not identify the God-relationship as an altered state of consciousness, for, he did not value the idea of drawing close to God on Sundays, "quiet hours", or in special moments. The God-relationship was a 24/7/365 thing for Kierkegaard. Also, anyone who would argue that Kierkegaard's religiousness was entwined with his epileptic fits would have to argue that Kierkegaard thought Jesus, or the God-man prototype, should have similar fits in order to be religious. It is the kind of argument one would make who had no knowledge of Kierkegaard's emphasis on the education. If Kierkegaard indeed thought that epileptics were the true apostles, he would have been outright interested in finding epileptics and would have preached people into trances, rather than discoursing on purely intellectual ideas.

Similarly, the Hansens imply that Kierkegaard broke his engagement with Regina Olsen because of the epilepsy, but this is false. Kierkegaard's melancholy was something more closely aligned with his reverence for his father, having been made aware at an early age that the most noble man is rejected by society, and it was this characteristic melancholy, combined with his sickliness (creating a penchant for the otherworldly, the intellectual, the idea), which he knew would make the marriage a lie. He was unable to share candidly this inner life with Regina, and knew that any such marriage would be a farce.

Kierkegaard did indeed write compulsively, but this cannot be entirely put down to epileptic hypergraphia. Any genius wishes to control and restrain thought, to find and iterate the idea. Writing one's ideas profusely, as well as speaking or reading, are means to do this. In addition, Kierkegaard regarded his writings as to be read aloud, and mentions that he often speaks what he is to write, before he writes, to ensure the idea is expressed well. It is not entirely out of the question that a bachelor living alone, who has no object in life but his authorship (which was his penitentiary education), no past-times like watching television or gallivanting around the countryside, and whose daily life mostly included hours of thinking and writing, would write a lot.

The Hansens, who have never entered into the life of genius, have made inferences about Kierkegaard's life based on their ignorance. It would seem that their intention is to help publicise their own services as "humanitarian therapists" and to help again to destroy human consciousness of the spiritual man.

Aug 11, 2009

Verses on Wisdom

That which I am, if I am finite,
is a part of the Infinite,
  And since all parts of the Infinite are the body of the Infinite,
    therefore I am the Infinite.

I am the Infinite.
Everything I do is the Infinite.
The Infinite is me.
There is no separation between us.
I am the Infinite.

The barrier that separates me from attaining wisdom
is a real barrier,
  But I cross it in an instant
     when the Infinite has blown away the smoke.

I seek truth,
but in what?
If I want truth that is utterly reliable,
then only the Infinite can supply.
I, a finite thing, am different every moment,
and satisfying ideas shift and swirl.
But what is still here, amidst the chaos?
Even when I am gone, what remains?
The Infinite.

My past habits constrain,
dreams echo in new circumstances;
so I experience repetition.
But let me remember my true identity,
and I experience freedom from karma.
The repetition ends.
Then I find circumstances are what they are,
instead of vehicles to relive the past.

Death no longer signifies loss or change;
   I grieve no more, because the Infinite is real to me.
Illness or the strains of poverty become sweet,
though it seems insane to think so.
   Even the slander of fools becomes sweet,
     though I wish they could taste this sweetness,
     and not the bitterness of cyclical existence.

One needs no longer to reach for heavens,
or be demoralised by the hells of human society.
But live moment by moment,
seeing the Infinite in everything.
  The burden of human suffering lifts,
     and one can function as Nature permits.

Aug 5, 2009

The Significance of the Pseudonyms

All communication of truth has become abstract: the public has become the authority; the newspapers call themselves the editorial staff; the professor calls himself speculation; the pastor is meditation; no man, none, dares to say I.

But since without qualification the first prerequisite for the communication of truth is personality, since "truth" cannot possibly be served by ventriloquism, personality has to come to the fore again.

But in these circumstances, since the world was so corrupted by never hearing an I, it was impossible to begin at once with one's own I. So it became my task to create author-personalities and let them enter in the actuality of life in order to get men a bit accustomed to hearing discourse in the first person.

Thus my task is no doubt only that of a forerunner until he comes who in the strictest sense says: I.

But to make a turn away from this inhuman abstraction to personality — that is my work.

— Kierkegaard, mid-1849

Away with revolutions, and "we, the avant-garde"

The wrong way is much too close, wanting to reform, to arouse the whole world — instead of oneself, and this certainly is the wrong way for hotheads with a lot of imagination.

Jul 7, 2009

Mediocrity

This is mediocrity: to want to be along a little bit in those certain things requiring complete capability.

- Kierkegaard, mid-1849

Jul 3, 2009

The test of an individual

A person says, it is impossible to be certain of the truth in their own opinions. This person is genuinely uncertain when speaking this, because of saying exactly what represents them only. But immediately thereafter, they remember that another person has also said that it is impossible to be certain of the truth of their own opinions, with the same genuine uncertainty and humble quiet countenance, and that remembrance gives them assurance. So they reassert with confidence that it is not possible to be certain of the truth of their own opinions.... only the truth of someone else's.

This is a very common phenomenon, which means, most everyone has an opinion - and it is someone else's.

Oh, how relieved we are to find that our troubled uncertainties are reaffirmed by another person. Now the troubled uncertainty dissipates, for we are safe in the crowd.

Jun 18, 2009

Another kind of memento mori

The fashion designer (in Stages) gets the idea of starting a fashionable boutique, one section devoted entirely to dressing corpses; thus for the corpse to be dressed in vogue is equivalent to being buried in Christian ground, that is, the latest interpretation.

Jun 5, 2009

Human sympathy — Enlightened understanding

Life prompts one to become aware of the many, many less endowed, weak, simple men, women, and children, the sick and the sorrowful, etc., who live among us. Life says to the religious: Confronted by all these people, can you have the heart to jack up the price of the religious, of salvation, as high as you are doing, you cruel person. And if the religious person is truly religious and consequently has love in his heart, this objection will make a deep impression on him, one who wants so much to be with those who suffer, whose only joy and consolation, after all, is to comfort those who suffer.

But the objection is the spiritual trial of "human sympathy." ....

The point is that the religious person unconditionally shall and must have sympathy for all the weak; he wants to be with them, comfort them, and all that, but he does not dare do it — that is, he does not dare center his life in this sympathy so that instead of remaining true to God he scales down and remains in the religiosity of sympathy.

As soon as a religious person ceases to comprehend it this way: I dare not, I cannot do otherwise (that is, he is in the power of the absolute, absolute obedience is demanded of him), he will be side-tracked and will remain in the religiosity of sympathy.

The danger for the religious person who is in the religiousness of the absolute is, of course, self-righteousness, that he becomes arrogant instead of pious, that he wants to be better than other men or puts God, as it were, in his debt, or at least has a self-satisfied consciousness of having done his part.

For this reason such a religious person will usually have a secret strain, comparable to Paul's "thorn in the flesh," which gives him the bold confidence to go on, because it teaches him that he is nothing and truly makes this truth in him. No one can venture out into absolute religiousness on his own; he must begin in an altogether singular understanding with God. Under other circumstance, that which in absolute religiousness is dialectically cruel becomes outright cruelty, sin, guilt.


— Kierkegaard, 1849

May 31, 2009

The importance of venturing even just a little

To me he is an example and proof that a man does not understand more than his life expresses. This explains his opinion that the opposition I have had of late is nemesis or God's punishment.

— Kierkegaard, (1849)

May 17, 2009

What is it to be a poet?

What is it to be a poet? It is to have one's own personal life, one's actuality, in categories completely different from those of one's poetical production, to be related to the ideal only in imagination, so that one's personal life is more or less a satire on the poetry and on oneself. In this sense all modern thinkers, even the outstanding ones (I mean the Germans, for there simply are no Danish thinkers), are poets. And on the whole this is the maximum to be seen in life. Most men live utterly destitute of ideas; some few relate poetically to the ideal but deny it in their personal lives. Pastors likewise are poets, and since they are pastors they are "deceivers," as Socrates once called poets, in a much deeper way than poets are.



But here as everywhere demoralization has come about through the disappearance of position no. 1 and the assumption of position no. 1 by no. 2. Relating oneself to the ideal in one's personal life is never seen. Such a life is the life of the witness to the truth. This rubric disappeared long ago, and preachers, philosophy professors, and poets have taken over the place of servants to the truth, whereby they no doubt are served very well — but they do not serve the truth.



— Kierkegaard, 1849

May 16, 2009

Epigram — Aphorism

Definition of epigram:

An epigram is a succinct statement of great wit. It is not a definition, because it is not didactic. It is prose, not poetry, in the sense that the idea (encapsulated in the statement) is not presented as a lyrical speculation but as a direct and living expression of its own meaning. It is monadic, being a complete idea, that conveys its meaning in the very structure of how it is expressed.



For example, Kierkegaard, a master of the epigram, often referred to his own life as an epigram on his contemporaries. This indicates the nature of the epigram, that its meaning points to the truth of things, but in a deeply personal way. In the following paragraph, the last sentence is a double epigram.



'I could be tempted to say that I have taken one examination more than most people, although it is true enough that this examination is of such a nature that one or another has submitted to it who otherwise is not an examinee — I allowed the ardor of my feelings to be examined by a woman. Whatever I have suffered because I staked everything on that desire and once again staked everything on it since she asked for it, and yet once again staked everything on it, I who must bear the responsibility and be the agent — I still had strength enough, in order to mitigate the affair for her, to give the impression that I was a villain, a deceiver. Thus a murder was placed upon my conscience; it was said and repeated as solemnly as possible, that this would be her death. Therefore this girl was the examiner. One and a half years later she was engaged again — since that time I have scarcely spoken to a young girl, and no thought has been more alien to my soul than to want to fall in love again or even to think about it.



If at times it has satisfied my anger to be like an epigram over my contemporaries, here I have learned how woeful it is to be an epigram in that way.'






Definition of aphorism:

An aphorism is a succinct statement, that presents a principle, or the essence or genius of an idea, and is more didactic in nature than the epigram. However, the vital key to presenting the principle is the same reflective dialectic as found in the epigram. That is, the meaning of an aphorism is also expressed in the actual mechanics of its structure and wording, perhaps more than in the actual words chosen. The aphorism puts Truth before the man and the man expresses Truth, whereas the epigram uses man to see Truth which explains its more lyrical nature.

Kevin Solway is a master of aphoristic writing, having drawn out the nuggets of truth from many scriptures. His "Poison for the Heart" is full of aphorisms.

Jan 18, 2009

Reduplication

What does it mean to work against oneself? It is quite simple. If the established, the traditional, etc., in the context of which a beginning is to be made, is sound, thoroughly sound — well, then apply directly what has to be applied; in any case there can be no talk or thought of reforming, for if the established is sound, then there is nothing, after all, to reform.

Conversely, to the same degree that the established, consequently there where one's striving begins, is corrupt, to the same degree it will become increasingly necessary dialectically to work against oneself, lest the innovation resulting from direct action is itself corrupted the minute it succeeds, and thus is not maintained in its heterogeneity.



— Kierkegaard, 1850

Shaving

A saying often quoted:

"I don't mow lawns for the same reason that I don't shave."

— Kevin Solway

Yet this man both mows lawns and shaves. He does it for exactly the same reason.

Love

God's love is the inescapable effects of living according to the truth: when one sacrifices the ego, life as it truly is is revealed. This sacrifice and the life after sacrificing ego is the love of the Infinite. That is, the Infinite cannot help but be what it is - and accepting this shows oneself in one's true and best light.

God's love is to make a man bored with life itself - since life/death is the duality that engenders and perpetuates the ego - not bored over things but sick to death of things, so that he is willing and wills death - since death is the death of duality. Then he is living without the constant rope-walking uncertainty of a dualistic mind, but, dying, experiences that what is cannot help to be but what is.

From Hakuin Ekaku

Soft-butter duck egg, melts from the top of the head, throughout the body.

-

Let heartfire upper-body descend and intermingle with water lower-body (intellect descends into the elixir field underneath the navel).

-

1000 breaths with motionless feather on the nose; breaths continue until all is breath --- a sea.

From Thomas Merton

It is precisely pride that prevents modern man from achieving depth, even when he most seeks it.

-

The Zen man does not strictly speaking practise meditation at all, in any sense familiar to us in the West. Rather he enters into a purifying struggle against conceptual knowledge, in which he 'sweats out' his attachment to images, ideas, symbols, metaphors, analytic judgments, etc. as means for grasping, appreciating, and understanding reality.

-

There is no self-display, because the 'true self', which functions in Zen experience, is empty, invisible, and incapable of being displayed.

Thinking and the Infinite

There are no problems, really, so intellectualising turns the wheel... if done blindly. Think, knowing it is God .. Nature .. Infinite .. that does all.

Patience - Complacency

In my opinion the tragedy of the world is simply this — human shortsightedness, many times well meaning, has thought somewhat along these lines: if on the whole you want the truth, then if once in a while a little consideration of your own advantage infiltrates, if at times a slightly tainted expedient sneaks in, it is of little consequence, and besides, that is how the world is, every practical man knows that, and I cannot remake the world.

O, you impatient, shortsighted one. No, remake the world, you certainly cannot. Well, then do what you can, live in quiet obscurity, working for your own living. Such a person at least does no harm. But if you want to work for the truth, then ponder before God exactly by what standard you are able to do it. Let it be according to a modest standard, in God's name, but promise God and yourself and hold to it that you will unconditionally use the purest means according to the standard.

The other is nothing but impatience and shortsightedness, and it has done irreparable harm.

Jan 17, 2009

Sheep voting sheep-style

There is something dreadful about seeing individuals rushing into this mutual insuring, which does not, as does other insurance, cover shipwrecks, but which, the mutual insuring itself, is a commune naufragium.

— Søren Kierkegaard