Virtue Signaling in the 19th Century
“Therefore the task for me is not to change my own life, as I thought at first, but as far as I can to aid in improving the position of those unfortunates who have evoked…
Category: Activists
Sharing Her Wealth
[Simone Weil] continued giving her comrades her lucid and sad reflections, completely free of the blur of opinion, clear of the complacency of illusion, and untouched by the concerns of personal ambition. –Gabriella Fiori, Simone Weil:…
Counter-the Culture
The highest way of living for those who take the tonsure is to aim to lack nothing while owning nothing. —Yoshida Kenkô, Essays in Idleness, translated by Meredith McKinney If you wish to possess everythingYou must…
Favorite Simone Weil Passages
It is perhaps even more useful to contemplate our stupidity than our sin. Method of investigation— as soon as one has arrived at any position, try to find in what sense the contrary is true….
Advice for Those Who Say They Want to Save the World
Above all, avoid lies, all lies, especially the lie to yourself. Keep watch on your own lie and examine it every hour, every minute. And avoid contempt, both of others and of yourself: what seems…
Sanctity of Life
[Vladimir] Lenin repeatedly expressed utter contempt for the “moral minimum” idea, and his reasoning became the Soviet position on ethics, taught to generations of schoolchildren. To prefer “the smallest number of victims,” “a minimum of…
Finding Equanimity: Share the Wealth with Andrew Wimmer on Sunday 6 August
At the beginning of this calendar year I undertook to write something more or less daily and to post it to a Substack page. Some political, some personal. I saw it mostly as a way…
In the Old Days
“You see that old man? He’s from my father’s village. I met him years ago, when I was young. I only met him twice. He just told me he was concerned about me, so he…
Books Inspected This Afternoon
Arthur Waley, Confucius: Analects Kenneth Rexroth, Classics Revisited Ezra Pound, New Selected Poems and Translations Ai Weiwei and Hans Ulrich Obrist, Ai Weiwei Speaks David Hinton, The Selected Poems of Tu Fu Ezra Pound, Confucius:…
He Won’t Be Swayed
“And so I am practically compelled to follow that path, and I shall keep to it in spite of all the world. It is useless for you to wear yourselves out trying to persuade me…