My father had an unusual philosophy. It was oblique,
pessimistic, fatalistic. Judge its tenor by the fact that he read
Ecclesiastes every day.
He believed all existence was a rigged game. Good strove with
Evil in vain. Good could achieve occasional localized tactical
victories, but only because Evil was toying with it, certain of
final victory. Evil knew no limits. In the end, when the scores
were tallied, Evil would be the big winner. All a man could do was
face it with courage, fight though defeat was inevitable, and delay
the hour of defeat as long as possible.
He did not see Good and Evil in standard terms. The Good and
Evil most of us see he simply considered matters of viewpoint. The
“I” is always on the side of the angels. The
“They” are always wicked. He thought an absolute
Islamic-Judeo-Christian Evil a weak, irrational joke.
Entropy is an approximate cognate for what Gneaus Julius Storm
called Evil. An anthropomorphic, diabolic sort of entropy with a
malign lust for devouring love and creativity, which, I think, he
considered to be the main constituents of Good.
It was an unusual outlook, but you have to accept that it was
valid for him before you can follow him through the maze called the
Shadowline.
My father had an unusual philosophy. It was oblique,
pessimistic, fatalistic. Judge its tenor by the fact that he read
Ecclesiastes every day.
He believed all existence was a rigged game. Good strove with
Evil in vain. Good could achieve occasional localized tactical
victories, but only because Evil was toying with it, certain of
final victory. Evil knew no limits. In the end, when the scores
were tallied, Evil would be the big winner. All a man could do was
face it with courage, fight though defeat was inevitable, and delay
the hour of defeat as long as possible.
He did not see Good and Evil in standard terms. The Good and
Evil most of us see he simply considered matters of viewpoint. The
“I” is always on the side of the angels. The
“They” are always wicked. He thought an absolute
Islamic-Judeo-Christian Evil a weak, irrational joke.
Entropy is an approximate cognate for what Gneaus Julius Storm
called Evil. An anthropomorphic, diabolic sort of entropy with a
malign lust for devouring love and creativity, which, I think, he
considered to be the main constituents of Good.
It was an unusual outlook, but you have to accept that it was
valid for him before you can follow him through the maze called the
Shadowline.