How the hell did TS Eliot write that when he was only 21? How can someone at that age understand what it is like to be middle aged and lonely? He wasn't even in England yet when he wrote it... But he was in England when he was my age. I guess I'd better write "The Waste Land". Hey, we both lived in St. Louis too.
He must have gotten housed (a munsonian term of the Indiana dialect of American Standard English meaning roughly: to be rejected or scorned by a woman after delivering either an open or guarded signal of affection) a hell of a lot. Well he couldn't have been lonely once that poem got published.
Though it's probably more famous now for all the odd places it's quoted in Apocalypse Now.
I can't believe that 40,000 people are dead in the subcontinent. Moreover, I can't believe how much less thought I've committed to this as opposed to New Orleans. People are people, and I know about as many in New Orleans as I do in India... but its hard to focus on a place, when one is totally unfamiliar with the context. On the surface, it looks the same... looting, incompetence... but it is interpreted so much differently. Except maybe by Pat Robertson claiming that God is striking down infidels.
It is this sort of thing, not really the supposed "problem of evil", that really convinces me that the Semitic conception of God is false. Are we to believe that essentially simple, God-fearing people are to face His wrath at moment's notice? Are Islam and Christianity both invalidated by this? I mean there are always "outs"... The Muslims worship a false god... New Orleans was Sodom (when in fact, there are probably quite a few Protestants and Catholics there)... God will reward those people in the afterlife who didn't sin in this one. I just don't find those convincing. Not in Akkad, not in Judea, not in Baghdad.
Plato probably would. For him it was inconceivable that good things could happen to bad people. In fact, in the Republic, claims that Homer and the tragedians should be banned because they portray this as the case. Notably, Odysseus' life having a happy ending after causing Ajax to commit suicide and abandoning his men. I think that the book of Job offers a better answer, in so much as it is answers anything (ironic, the Semitic book undercutting my opinion in the Semitic theology).
Also ironic that Platonism informs Christianity's (well some forms of Christianity's) beliefs to the contrary...
I think I'm going to audit the Arabic philosophy course here.. the prof is world renowned and only one person is taking the class... and I'm curious as to how the Muslims interpreted Aristotle and why they burned Plato.
Also, if anyone talks to my dad before I do, tell him to stock up some H5N1 vaccine... because I don't trust the NHS here to have any.. though its nice to think the Turks and Romanians are slaughtering thousands of birds so I won't get the sniffles.
He must have gotten housed (a munsonian term of the Indiana dialect of American Standard English meaning roughly: to be rejected or scorned by a woman after delivering either an open or guarded signal of affection) a hell of a lot. Well he couldn't have been lonely once that poem got published.
Though it's probably more famous now for all the odd places it's quoted in Apocalypse Now.
I can't believe that 40,000 people are dead in the subcontinent. Moreover, I can't believe how much less thought I've committed to this as opposed to New Orleans. People are people, and I know about as many in New Orleans as I do in India... but its hard to focus on a place, when one is totally unfamiliar with the context. On the surface, it looks the same... looting, incompetence... but it is interpreted so much differently. Except maybe by Pat Robertson claiming that God is striking down infidels.
It is this sort of thing, not really the supposed "problem of evil", that really convinces me that the Semitic conception of God is false. Are we to believe that essentially simple, God-fearing people are to face His wrath at moment's notice? Are Islam and Christianity both invalidated by this? I mean there are always "outs"... The Muslims worship a false god... New Orleans was Sodom (when in fact, there are probably quite a few Protestants and Catholics there)... God will reward those people in the afterlife who didn't sin in this one. I just don't find those convincing. Not in Akkad, not in Judea, not in Baghdad.
Plato probably would. For him it was inconceivable that good things could happen to bad people. In fact, in the Republic, claims that Homer and the tragedians should be banned because they portray this as the case. Notably, Odysseus' life having a happy ending after causing Ajax to commit suicide and abandoning his men. I think that the book of Job offers a better answer, in so much as it is answers anything (ironic, the Semitic book undercutting my opinion in the Semitic theology).
Also ironic that Platonism informs Christianity's (well some forms of Christianity's) beliefs to the contrary...
I think I'm going to audit the Arabic philosophy course here.. the prof is world renowned and only one person is taking the class... and I'm curious as to how the Muslims interpreted Aristotle and why they burned Plato.
Also, if anyone talks to my dad before I do, tell him to stock up some H5N1 vaccine... because I don't trust the NHS here to have any.. though its nice to think the Turks and Romanians are slaughtering thousands of birds so I won't get the sniffles.
posted by akrites @ 3:11 AM
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