Cormac, I think I am starting to understand how fundamental these two forces are. The movie clip helped me grasp a lot of the ideas you have been discussing. I really see this push and pull in the context of my own mairrage how often I am unconsciously caught up in this whirlpool of passions. In the light of your "meet help" article, I have an inuition of a way out of this dialectic into a unity where the pushing and pulling compliment each other.
Thanks so much for your work! I try to share it with as many people as I can, and it is always well received.
Grateful for these Substack contemplations. Have no doubt that souls are inspired. Always had trouble myself with anthropomorphizing nations by their political actions, but it is true in your sense that we all participate in the culture/what-have-you that brings them about. But I figure there's also that best-versions-of-ourselves sense that we ought to cling to and not forsake even at the level of the nation, which isn't necessarily political. The "true" versions of the West and of Russia in that differentiated unity: the city of God living on as the city of man burns away?
I just reread Orwell’s 1984 and it hit me that the society of Oceania almost perfectly describes a society on the opposite side of the spectrum (epithymia and thymos) to us.
If the western world today as you point out is obsessed with lust and we are trying to find meaning by fulfilling our every desire. Oceania is devoid of lust instead the party encourages anger. Meaning comes from anger directed toward the enemy’s of Oceania, both internal and external.
Cormac, I think I am starting to understand how fundamental these two forces are. The movie clip helped me grasp a lot of the ideas you have been discussing. I really see this push and pull in the context of my own mairrage how often I am unconsciously caught up in this whirlpool of passions. In the light of your "meet help" article, I have an inuition of a way out of this dialectic into a unity where the pushing and pulling compliment each other.
Thanks so much for your work! I try to share it with as many people as I can, and it is always well received.
Grateful for these Substack contemplations. Have no doubt that souls are inspired. Always had trouble myself with anthropomorphizing nations by their political actions, but it is true in your sense that we all participate in the culture/what-have-you that brings them about. But I figure there's also that best-versions-of-ourselves sense that we ought to cling to and not forsake even at the level of the nation, which isn't necessarily political. The "true" versions of the West and of Russia in that differentiated unity: the city of God living on as the city of man burns away?
Powerful. Depressing, but powerful.
Got me thinking how many of my own problems are a symptom of unbalanced epithymia.
Tank you.
I just reread Orwell’s 1984 and it hit me that the society of Oceania almost perfectly describes a society on the opposite side of the spectrum (epithymia and thymos) to us.
If the western world today as you point out is obsessed with lust and we are trying to find meaning by fulfilling our every desire. Oceania is devoid of lust instead the party encourages anger. Meaning comes from anger directed toward the enemy’s of Oceania, both internal and external.