“In such a world of conflict, a world of victims and executioners, it is the job of thinking people, not to be on the side of the executioners.”- Camus
I’m thinner than I have been since I was in my early 20’s and the shade, even in early September, carries a breath of cold, but the sun on my back feels hot. The pollinators think so. They are swarming the tall coreopsis and the goldenrod in the hundreds, maybe thousands. Somewhere in the span of years, I’ve lost my childhood fear of them. I’ll stand in their midst, close […]
read more
At 72, a daily accounting of my life runs through my head often these days. It is hard to be honest about one’s own life, hard to bear too much reality, as Mr. Eliot said. Still, it is a useful exercise to at least try to be ruthless in making judgments, if for no other reason than to see clearly in the time remaining. I sat outside with a legal […]
read more
IX Ultimately, one will not be able to ignore plain, obvious cruelty that shows itself in one’s immediate presence. A person makes a psychic accommodation to it, walks away, averts his or her eyes … or a person ‘gets up’. No one can predict which one he or she will be. Circumstances show us what we are. Those who ‘get up’ respond to a kind of moral emergency. Something inside […]
read more
VI Cruelty may begin with submission freely given because a person wants to belong to a group because that group represents an idea he supports or an identity he wishes to take on or because doing so will provide him with advancement in the world. A Nazi does not have to be a fanatic. He can do his or her work in a desultory fashion, buried within a bureaucracy, while […]
read more
