Tag: ways of life
Maybe [doing X] really is the answer to it.
There is no answer. We just struggle along.
Civilization has no appeal to me. The Eastern Peoples seem to live their lives more sensibly. Because they donāt have such distant goals as us, the white brotherhood. The East isā¦ Ā«If you are moving, then you are on the right path.Ā» While for us, the path doesnāt matter ā only reaching the goal. I want to go to the East, because there I will feel well. Iāll be able to enter the Present time.
The point is ā to stop thinking. These days, we have too much information about everything. Internet, TV, radioā¦ You can find out what goes on in the States at any given point.
For me drugs arenāt a specific substance: theyāre anything that youāre addicted to. When you lose what youāve been addicted to, you have to accept something different. Iāve accepted that all these āgodsā we have, theyāre all teachers. There is one god ā they all serve him! Like in Hinduism: Vishnu, Brahma and Shiva ā they are one god, who creates in three different ways.
I think we are on this planet for too short a time to waste it. And so, I live every day. From beginning to end, I experience it. I try to do everything I possibly can, take every kind of drug I could, toā¦
WIth opiates you have the sense that you are wasting your life. Sleeping. Then you say to yourself: Ā«Iām sleeping!Ā» So you get up, and try to do other things, other drugs; I do all sort of drugs, but I remain active. Thatās why I wonāt quit until I find a steady girlfriend: otherwise Iāll die of boredom. But I donāt have a sense of security, stability, that I could have a lasting relationship, with a future. A junkie pays more attention to himself. All of us are little āNarcissiā, blooming here in this canal. Everything is always uncertain, you are always alone, so you say to yourself: Ā«Whatās the point?!Ā» If you had a wife, kids, TV, a newspaperā¦ Itās kind of idyllic. Thatās why there are movies to experience another life. More or less, thatās why there is art.
Kamen Petrov in āInvisibleā
Fishermans Horizon ā A tribute
Music and pictures for the nostalgia of that place. Read the full page
Horror and mortal terror are your friends. If they are not, then they are enemies to be feared.
[ā¦]
Colonel Kurtz, Apocalypse Now
Hospitals and jails and whores: these are the universities of life. Iāve got several degrees. Call me Mr.
Charles Bukowski ā South of No North
weāve all heard the old women who say, āoh, I think itās just AWFUL what these young people do to themselves, all that dope and stuff! I think itās terrible!ā and then you look at the old gal: no eyes, no teeth, no brain, no soul, no ass, no mouth, no color, no flux, no humor, nothing, just a stick, and you wonder what her tea and cookies and church and home on the corner have done for HER. and the old men sometimes get quite violent about what some of the young are doing ā āhell, I worked HARD all my life!ā (they think this is a virtue, but it only proves a man is a damn fool.)
Charles Bukowski ā Tales of Ordinary Madness
Do normies suffer?
In other words, you might say that I still have no understanding of what makes human beings tick. My apprehension on discovering that my concept of happiness seemed to be completely at variance with that of everyone else was so great as to make me toss sleeplessly and groan night after night in my bed. It drove me indeed to the brink of lunacy. I wonder if I have actually been happy. People have told me, really more times than I can remember, ever since I was a small boy, how lucky I was, but I have always felt as if I were suffering in hell. It has seemed to me in fact that those who called me lucky were incomparably more fortunate than I. I have sometimes thought that I have been burdened with a pack of ten misfortunes, any one of which if borne by my neighbor would be enough to make a murderer of him.
I simply donāt understand. I have not the remotest clue what the nature or extent of my neighborās woes can be. Practical troubles, griefs that can be assuaged if only there is enough to eatāthese may be the most intense of all burning hells, horrible enough to blast to smithereens my ten misfortunes, but that is precisely what I donāt understand: if my neighbors manage to survive without killing themselves, without going mad, maintaining an interest in political parties, not yielding to despair, resolutely pursuing the fight for existence, can their griefs really be genuine? Am I wrong in thinking that these people have become such complete egoists and are so convinced of the normality of their way of life that they have never once doubted themselves? If that is the case, their sufferings should be easy to bear: they are the common lot of human beings and perhaps the best one can hope for. I donāt knowā¦ If youāve slept soundly at night the morning is exhilarating, I suppose. What kind of dreams do they have? What do they think about when they walk along the street? Money? Hardlyāit couldnāt only be that. I seem to have heard the theory advanced that human beings live in order to eat, but Iāve never heard anyone say that they lived in order to make money. No. And yet, in some instancesā¦ No, I donāt even know thatā¦ The more I think of it, the less I understand. All I feel are the assaults of apprehension and terror at the thought that I am the only one who is entirely unlike the rest. It is almost impossible for me to converse with other people. What should I talk about, how should I say it?āI donāt know.
No Longer Human / A Shameful Life ā Osamu Dazai
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 thingsā¦
Henry David Thoreau ā Walden
In medio stat virtus.
Virtue lies in the middle.
The truth lies somewhere in between.
Moderation is key.
Balance is the key to everything.
The concept of limit, of the right measure, in Plato.
Wikipedia:
The expression goes back to the medieval scholastic philosophers, although already Aristotle in the Nicomachean Ethics (āĪĪĻĪæĪ½ ĻĪµ ĪŗĪ±į½¶ į¼ĻĪ¹ĻĻĪæĪ½ā ā The mean is the best thing), Horace in the Satires (āEst modus in rebusā ā There is a measure in things), and Ovid in the Metamorphoses (āMedio tutissimus ibis ā by following the middle way, you will walk most safely) had expressed a similar concept.
A comparable idea is also found in Buddhism: The path that leads to the cessation of suffering is called the Middle Way, because it avoids the two extremes of self-indulgence and self-mortification, excessive behaviors that do not lead to mental peace. This path, developed in the Noble Eightfold Path, consists in cultivating virtue, meditative serenity, and wisdom.