A Jam Session

HORKHEIMER: The regression of mankind is always a possibility.

ARDORNO: Barbarism always an option.

ME: Especially after a revolution.

NIETZSCHE: One herd. Everyone wants the same thing.

ME (interrupting): And things.

NIETZSCHE (continuing): Whoever thinks otherwise is ostracised.

ADORNO: State or government control grows in tandem with a growth in irrationality.

HORKHEIMER: The world is mad and will remain so. It is no longer possible to distinguish between good and bad.

HORKHEIMER: All hope lies in thought.

ADORNO: True thought is thought that does not insist on being right.

HORKHEIMER: But theory is theory; often bad theory, when what the world needs is fundamental change in both thought and action.

ADORNO: A happiness brought about by practice.

HORKHEIMER: Like eating roast goose. To not just think but to do. All our thoughts and actions must fit together.

ADORNO: The ideal, the next step, but not grasped directly, only indirectly.

HORKHEIMER: What is Marx's view?

MARX: The time is ripe for it.

HORKHEIMER: Or we take the fatalistic view and declare we cannot bring about change.

ADORNO: A message in a bottle, expressed as bluntly as possible, to change consciousness.

Picture credit: The Marx Lounge, Alfredo Jaar (source: WikiArt).

See Towards a New Manifesto by Theodor Adorno & Max Horkheimer (A Verso publication, translated by Rodney Livingstone). 

This twisted version written October 2022.

The Eight-in-One Sermon

A “must” is something required by necessity and must never be compromised … But “free” is that in which I have choice, and may use or not … do not make a “must” out of what is “free”. This is a misuse of liberty.

We have the “right to speak”, but not the “right to enforce”. We should preach the Word, but the results must be solely left to God … Faith must come freely without coercion. No way!

… we have no greater enemy than our own heart. God's reign is not in physical or outward objects, those things we are able to touch or sense, but in faith … [we all must have] a firm trust that Christ, the Son of God … has taken all our sins upon his shoulders … [however] we are not all the same and we do not all have the same amount of faith. The faith of one may be more robust than another.

… we should treat our neighbour as God has treated us … [I] urge you to faith and love. I commend you to God.

… there are many doubtful matters which we cannot resolve or find the answer to on our own … Confess to another person privately and hear the absolution … [or] confess to God directly. It is a comforting practice.

God bless. Amen.

Picture credit: Martin Luther, c.1532, Lucas Cranach the Elder (source: WikiArt).

See The Ninety-Five Theses and Other Writings (particularly Eight Sermons in Lent, 1522) by Martin Luther, Penguin Classics (translated by William R. Russell).

Written October 2022.

Enemies of Literature

Some people are enemies of literature. Enemies of writers and readers. Afraid of words or the time it occupies.

Some people are afraid of the world, afraid of being out in it.

Some people prefer to theorise from a comfortable spot, all they need is the right materials; materials that supply the information they want or didn't know they wanted, information they can collect facts or phrases from. Their mind more a river than a place, moving and changing all the time, sifting and sorting. These people won't alter, not for anyone or anything. They like the old cotton-wool life: safe, familiar, contained.

These people, though, can still be shocked by the words they read: disturbed, repulsed, revolted, and wish an article hadn't been recommended them and they hadn't subsequently decided: yes, they would read.

Oh it was dark, too dark for them, this boy's, this man's perspective. This mind from 1975 was too depraved. Such darkness should have stayed private, been kept from public gaze.

Picture credit: The Sinner, 1904, John Collier (source: WikiArt).

Some thoughts, some phrase plagiarisms in reading First Love, Last Rites by Ian McEwan. 

Written October 2022.