George Tanner provides a lucid, comprehensive introduction to stoicism, adapting the history, philosophy and practices of Stoicism from a weighty and distressing academic venture into a manageable and overall pleasant literary experience.
George Tanner provides a lucid, comprehensive introduction to stoicism, adapting the history, philosophy and practices of Stoicism from a weighty and distressing academic venture into a manageable and overall pleasant literary experience.
Literary masochism required.
His penetrating insight that life is in essence a meaningless process of gradual, inexorable death lead him to his degradation. His feelings that he is a disqualified human being, is driven by his sensitivity to the frailty of human bonds in the urban world. Death is the only escape.
Let me just put it this way: The book is magic. The writing is magic. The plot is about magic. When I said modern literature can hardly measure up to the classics, I didn’t expect to run into this sparkling and mesmerizing prose. The descriptions were immersive, atmospheric and pure enchanting that they encapsulate your emotions at the very point of the book they are placed.
Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secretes of the Universe is about two boys, Aristotle Mendoza and Dante Quitana growing up in El Paso, Texas during the 1980s. When Ari, a perpetually annoyed and angry teen met Dante, a sentimental and know-it-all young man, their whole world changed. As readers, we witnessed their lives from age fifteen to seventeen, watching their relationships with oneself, each other, and the world grow, change and strengthen.
The Man Who Laughs is a sad and sordid tale of the protagonist, Gwynplaine in early 18th century England. This poor little boy is deformed as he had his lips cut off and his mouth split open from ear to ear, mimicking a creepy smiley face. His face is frozen in a permanent rictus which makes him the subject of mockery. This tragic destiny echoes that of an entire martyred people, waiting for the coming revolution….
Interesting phenomenon: If you look at the democratic nations today, most of them had raised revolutions, fighting for democracy at some point in history. However, Japan hasn’t. Ironically, Japan’s “democracy” was “imposed” on them during the occupation of the US after WWII…….
“The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation. From the desperate city you go into the desperate country, and have to console yourself with the bravery of minks and muskrats. A stereotyped but unconscious despair is concealed even under what are called the games and amusements of mankind. There is no play in them, for this comes after work. But it is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things.”
—Henry D. Thoreau
There is the past and death. Then there is future and life, served on a silver platter, which one do you take? Seems like a no brainer. But what if the dead carry so much of ourselves that living without them is not quite living anymore? What if the prospect of the future feels like a brutal betrayal of the dead? Norwegian Wood is a sprawling peak into the lives of a group of severely broken youths confronting the realities of emptiness.
So the person screwed up terribly. It may be a racist joke or harebrained comment. And when his transgressions were revealed on social media, strangers all over the world had united to destroy him…….
A kiss that lasts a fraction of a second is a peck; one that lasts a minute is a proposition; and one that lasts five minutes is an act of resuscitation. Similarly, a contact, executed with longer duration is a touch, with shorter duration is a punch. Time, is therefore a constituent of our actions, not a container……
An embellished Torah bag hemmed with the arms of the Holy Roman Emperor, next to a photo of leder-hosened Jewish mountain climbers, reminds us that Germany was not always anti-Semitic……
The author expressed his views on an ancient debate topic: If neither East nor West has had any innate developmental advantage, what then allowed the West to propel itself forward so successfully in the 18th century? He guided us to understand the evolution of mankind’s past development and prognosticating the future of the continuing East-West horse race……
Can you believe that Homo Sapiens, once a species with no significance, skyrocketed to the top of the food chain because of our abilities to imagine fiction, bullshit and gossip?
We are average. This is why statistics work. This is why the most common distribution is Gaussian. This is also why human race can work in harmony, empathy can be developed, patterns can be found, systems can be built, rules can be set, and one-size products can fit most….though jeans are exceptions…….
It is noteworthy that the science of genes has once been the main fuel of Nazism. Lebensunwertes Leben— “lives unworthy of living”, this eerie phrase escalated the logic of eugenics. Nazi’s program of sterilization soon turned into outright murder of the genetic defectives. Euthanasia victims were killed, corpse were dissected and brain tissues were preserved for experiments. Ironically, “lives unworthy of living” were apparently of extreme worth for the advancement of science—genetic studies……
