I Cant Stand Being Human

 
                                    
                                    
anymore: so weak, so stupid, so full of false pride.    
Humans are too adept at fashioning idiotologies:  I-  
am-better-than-you-are power fantasies: globalized  
ickonomies / inhumane religions / suicide deceits.   
If I can not be a Gandhi or a Martin Luther King--
who who-a-who who-a-who-a-whooo                    
 who who-a-who a-who-who                           
who who-a-who who-a-who-a-whooo                 
 who who-a-who a-who-who                            
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who who-a-who who-a-who-a-whooo                     
 who who-a-who a-who-who                    
who who-a-who who-a-who-a-whooo                     
 who who-a-who a-who-who                       
                                                   
The rings of my life are riddled with errors.  So     
I surmise I am an average human.  Say ah.  Say oh.  
Giants and Dwarfs is a book of essays (1960-1990)   
by Allan Bloom.  A hardbound copy of it has been         
in my meagre library for some years.  Recently I       
began reading it.  Have so far read the Preface    
and Western Civ.  He is a believer in knowledge  
derived from the greatest thinkers of important   
Western civilizations.  Cultural persuasions are    
passing power-oriented missteps.  Promoters of  
such--let's just say he doesn't trust them.  In
turn, of course, they tend to misunderstand him.
Western Civ was an address Bloom gave at Harvard   
University on December 7, 1988.  On page 18 in the    
book, this sentence from it:                     
                                           
    Pascal's formula about our knowing 
    too little to be dogmatists and too    
    much much to be skeptics perfectly   
    describes our human condition as we
    really experience it, although men       
    have powerful temptations to obscure        
    it and often find it intolerable.              
                                         
From page 23:                                  
                                           
    What we are witnessing is the Quarrel       
    of the Canons, the twentieth century's    
    farcical version of the seventeenth   
    century's Quarrel between the Ancients    
    and the Moderns---. . . .                 
                                             
From page 27, however, this caution:           
                                              
      It is a grave error to accept that         
    the books of the dead white Western       
    male canon are essentially Western---    
    or any of those other things.              
                                             
From page 29:                                 
                                              
      Each must ultimately judge for him-   
    self about the important books, but a     
    good beginning would be to see what    
    other thinkers the thinkers who attract
    him turn to.                             
                                           
Allan Bloom wants us neither to be "culture-bound"  
nor to miss the "great dialogue".                
                                                 
So I should read his essays, though I cannot be sure  
I will.                                           
                                                   
                                                
                                                
                                                   
                                                    
kh00017