John Myles White: Die Sudelbücher

It would make an interesting statistic: how often the existence of commandments is the cause of their being broken. How many offenses are consequences of their penalties. It would be interesting to find out whether more children are defiled because of the age of consent or in spite of it.¹

Thus far, this is my favorite piece by Karl Kraus. I think it is precisely a scientific study of the results of our moral prejudices that would most benefit humanity. Sadly, performing the study is easy relative to the difficulty of acquiring the will to perform such a study and to make morality subservient to science.

1. Karl Kraus : Dicta And Contradicta : Morality, Christianity 222↩

Life’s not been good to you. It’s just not fair. You did nothing to deserve it, you did nothing at all. Sit back and watch: it turns from bad to worse. No matter how loud you cry, it always hurts.

Boy, I’m glad I’m not in your shoes.

How could things get any worse for you? You’re so fucking alone. How could things get any worse for you? I don’t blame you when you piss and moan.

Everybody gets what you should’ve got. Everybody takes your opportunities. Everybody gets the breaks that belonged to you. Everbody takes your just deserts.

Boy, I’m glad I’m not in your shoes.

How could things get any worse for you? You’re so fucking alone. How could things get any worse for you? I don’t blame you when you piss and moan.

“Again. It’s always me. I always get the short end of the stick. Man, fuck it, it’s not fair, man — just not fair. Fuck.”

I’ve got some news for you: nothing is fair. I wish there was a way to make it all better. I pray for a way to make you happy ’cause I’m sick and I’m tired of your whining, complaining and pissing and moaning.

Boo fucking hoo.¹

Sometimes it takes Slayer to serve as a reminder to look back again at what you’ve loved for so long and appreciate it as much as you did the first time. Being a alienated, embittered teenager who thought everyone around him was a lazy whiner worked out surprisingly well for me. No matter how long you’ve fought, you can always afford to be less like the person addressed above.

This one’s for Harek, whose birthday deserves some note and whose hero wrote those lyrics.

1. Minor Threat : Complete Discography : Sob Story↩

To rage against the universe is madness, though most of those who have not experienced this madness again and again lack depth.¹

Some of the wisest words I have ever read, words which show that the author appreciates the deep tension omnipresent in human existence, the knowledge of the necessity of what is not best in the process of creating what is best, the pragmatism of the idealist.

1. Walter Kaufmann : Without Guilt And Justice : Against Guilt↩

Needs are not fixed data but can be created, cultivated, and – though this is much more difficult – diminished and even eliminated.¹

Such an incredibly rarely recognized fact about humans. You meet in America perhaps one in a hundred thousand who has ever decided to rid himself of a need. Yet it is this sort of psychological sculpting of oneself that seems most essential to all development.

1. Walter Kaufmann : Without Guilt And Justice : An Attack On Distributive Justice↩

Antinomian, n. One who obeys no laws, save his own — which he forces upon others with the same brutal intensity with which he breaks through the nets of those rules they seek to throw upon him.

I suspect that almost no one realizes how radical the ideas put forth in my book are going to be. That this suspicion is likely well-founded says a great deal about my character — and about my disposition to politely put my full character out of sight in public, a habit acquired through many years spent in polite society, a habit exactly like the tucking of one’s shirt in before leaving home. I am very practiced in avoiding controversy where I feel it would serve no purpose.

But there comes a time when controversy is required as a tool in encouraging thought. And there are a few other benefits of making oneself controversial as well that interest me, which I leave as an exercise to guess at.

Passions are only natural. It is the lack of repentance that corrupts.¹

The best piece I have found in Joubert thus far, as I make my way through the works of the French aphorists.

1. Joseph Joubert : Notebooks : 1799↩

Last day in this hell. I lay here in mourning. I guess a deathbed’s not so bad when it’s the only bed you’ve had. Well I’ve grown tired of choking sick while you whore around the city. I’m heading back to the city whoreless and happy.¹

How little I require for happiness: a quiet day alone, spent without having to endure anyone’s nonsense; the feeling of efficacy as I write my book and finish my taxes; dancy, upbeat music to bounce to while I wander the city streets in sandals and a jacket, enjoying the chilly weather’s ability to wake me up and thinking fondly of the people I’ve met who’ve also preferred to give winter her chance to be felt fully — even if only for a moment.

Every time I am in such a good mood I find myself wishing we had a godless hymn of praise for life in English as simple and beautiful as the Muslim chant: “God is great”.

And, as of reminder why I prefer to avoid people, consider that searching Google for the phrase “God is great” returns as the first result,

Muslims rape children crying, “god is Great!”

Before beginning with the raping they always said “Allahu Akbar” (an islamic phrase in arabic meaning “God is great”. They were ferocious and brutal. …

www.jesus-is-lord.com/barbaric.htm

1. The Sleeping : Questions And Answers : The Big Breakdown, Part 3 (The Escape)↩

One of the things I find remarkable about the literate Greeks and Romans is how much less imagination they had than we do. They are always so quick to return to practical reality. One cannot imagine surrealism arising among them: immediately upon being told of it, one imagines a Roman replying, “but who has time for fantasies like that? There is so much worth doing in the real world already!” And this is the great difference between our age and theirs, between our mindset and theirs: the Greeks and Romans knew how to love the world — as a whole, at once with everything bad and contempible still inside of it. They despised many things, but knew they were inevitable — and worked around them! We, in contrast, after our Christian teachings, seek to deny reality, to pretend it does not exist, to live in fantasy.

Loyalty, n. The dearest virtue to those who have trouble making friends.