Author: Tetman Callis

What it isWhat it is

“Love’s service is without eyes, and love is without fear.” – Gottfried von Strassburg, Tristan und Isold

Rutting of a sortRutting of a sort

“The experiences and illuminations of childhood and early youth become in later life the types, standards and patterns of all subsequent knowledge and experience, or as it were, the categories according to which all later things are classified—not always consciously, however. And so it is that in our childhood years the foundation is laid of our later view of the world, and therewith as well of its superficiality or depth: it will be in later years unfolded and fulfilled, not essentially changed.” – Arthur Schopenhauer, Aphorismen zur Lebensweisheit

We, the peopleWe, the people

“Every child is born with a certain balance of faculties, aptitudes, inclinations, and instinctive leanings. In no two is the balance alike, and each different brain has to deal with a different tide of experience. I marvel, then, not that one man should disagree with another concerning the ultimate realities of life, but that so many, in spite of the diversity of their inborn natures, should reach so large a measure of agreement.” – Sir Arthur Keith, Living Philosophies

Getting thereGetting there

“In the recent past it may have been possible for intelligent men of good will honestly to believe that their own society (whatever it happened to be) was the only good, that beyond its bounds were the enemies of God, and that they were called upon, consequently, to project the principle of hatred outward on the world, while cultivating love within, toward those whose ‘system of sentiments’ was of God. Today, however, there is no such outward. Enclaves of national, racial, religious, and class provincialism persist, but the physical facts have made closed horizons illusory. The old god is dead, with his little world and his little, closed society. The new focal center of belief and trust is mankind. And if the principle of love cannot be wakened actually within each—as it was mythologically in God—to master the principle of hate, the Waste Land alone can be our destiny and the masters of the world its fiends.” – Joseph Campbell, The Masks of God: Occidental Mythology

We make ’em up as we go alongWe make ’em up as we go along

“The older mythic orders gave authority to their symbols by attributing them to gods, to culture heroes, or to some such high impersonal force as the order of the universe; and the image of society itself, thus linked to the greater image of nature, became a vessel of religious awe. Today we know, for the most part, that our laws are not from God or from the universe, but from ourselves; are conventional, not absolute; and that in breaking them we offend not God but man. Neither animals nor plants, not the zodiac or its supposed maker, but our fellows have now become the masters of our fate and we of theirs.” – Joseph Campbell, The Masks of God: Occidental Mythology

Some doSome do

“No one of adult mind today would turn to the Book of Genesis to learn of the origins of the earth, the plants, the beasts, and man. There was no flood, no tower of Babel, no first couple in paradise, and between the first known appearance of men on earth and the first buildings of cities, not one generation (Adam to Cain) but a good two million must have come into this world and passed along. Today we turn to science for our imagery of the past and of the structure of the world, and what the spinning demons of the atom and the galaxies of the telescope’s eye reveal is a wonder that makes the city of Babel of the Bible seem a toyland dream of the dear childhood of our brain.” – Joseph Campbell, The Masks of God: Occidental Mythology

You would thinkYou would think

“The ultimate success of all government is dependent upon the proper management of human susceptibilities rather than upon the faithful obeisance to preconceived theories and images.” – Adda B. Bozeman, Politics and Culture in International History

So be carefulSo be careful

“A master is not justified in putting his tow to every test which she will survive, if she be fit. There is a zone in which proper caution will avoid putting her capacity to the proof; a coefficient of prudence that he should not disregard.” – Judge Learned Hand, The T. J. Hooper, Circuit Court of Appeals, Second Circuit, 1932

And then it starts all over againAnd then it starts all over again

“Without arguing the point as to whether a state can survive without compelling its subjects to accept as Absolute Truth whatever system of belief the dominant elite may have decided to put forth as divine revelation, we shall observe . . . that gods suppressed become demons; which is to say, that psychological and sociological factors neither assimilated nor recognized by the consciously controlled system become autonomous and must ultimately break the approved system apart.” – Joseph Campbell, The Masks of God: Occidental Mythology

So much for your freedoms and all thatSo much for your freedoms and all that

“Staggering under his crushing burden of taxes, in a State which was practically bankrupt, the citizen of every class had now become a mere cog in the vast machinery of the government. He had no other function than to toil for the State, which exacted so much of the fruit of his labor he was fortunate if it proved barely possible for him to survive on what was left. As a mere toiler for the State, he was finally where the peasant on the Nile had been for thousands of years.” – James Henry Breasted, The Conquest of Civilization

Discourse deployed along networks of powerDiscourse deployed along networks of power

“The paramount concern of a popular religion cannot be, and never has been, ‘Truth,’ but the maintenance of a certain type of society, the inculcation in the young and refreshment in the old of an approved ‘system of sentiments’ upon which the local institutions and government depend.” – Joseph Campbell, The Masks of God: Occidental Mythology

The crown jewelsThe crown jewels

Stars, darkness, a lamp, a phantom, a dew, a bubble;
A dream, a flash of lightning, and a cloud:
Thus should we look upon the world.

– from The Diamond Sutra

What a piece of workWhat a piece of work

“How small a part of the boundless and unfathomable time is assigned to every man? for it is very soon swallowed up in the eternal. And how small a part of the whole substance? and how small a part of the universal soul? and on what a small clod of the whole earth you creep? Reflecting on all this consider nothing to be great, except to act as your nature leads you, and to endure what the common nature brings.” – Marcus Aurelius, The Thoughts of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (trans. George Long)

Neither responsibility nor rightNeither responsibility nor right

“No one achieves excellence in his life task without love for it, in himself without love for himself, or in his family without love for his home. Love brings everything to flower, each in terms of its own potential, and so is the true pedagogue of the open, free society.” – Joseph Campbell, The Masks of God: Occidental Mythology

Not exactly propagandaNot exactly propaganda

“The world is full of origin myths, and all are factually false. The world is full, also, of great traditional books tracing the history of man (but focused narrowly on the local group) from the age of mythological beginnings, through periods of increasing plausibility, to a time almost within memory, when the chronicles begin to carry the record, with a show of rational factuality, to the present. Furthermore, just as all primitive mythologies serve to validate the customs, systems of sentiments, and political aims of their respective local groups, so do these great traditional books. On the surface they may appear to have been composed as conscientious history. In depth they reveal themselves to have been conceived as myths: poetic readings of the mystery of life from a certain interested point of view. But to read a poem as a chronicle of fact is—to say the least—to miss the point. To say a little more, it is to prove oneself a dolt. And to add to this, the men who put these books together were not dolts but knew precisely what they were doing—as the evidence of their manner of work reveals at every turn.” – Joseph Campbell, The Masks of God: Occidental Mythology

Keeping a healthy perspectiveKeeping a healthy perspective

Make merry, day and night;
Make of each day a festival of joy,
Dance and play, day and night!
Let your raiment be kept clean,
Your head washed, body bathed.
Pay heed to the little one, holding onto your hand,
Let your wife delight your heart,
For in this is the portion of man.

– from The Epic of Gilgamesh

The broken circleThe broken circle

“In the older mother myths and rites the light and darker aspects of the mixed thing that is life had been honored equally and together, whereas in the later, male-oriented, patriarchal myths, all that was good and noble was attributed to the new, heroic master gods, leaving to the native nature powers the character only of darkness—to which, also, a negative moral judgment now was added. For, as a great body of evidence shows, the social as well as mythic orders of the two contrasting ways of life were opposed. Where the goddess had been venerated as the giver and supporter of life as well as consumer of the dead, women as her representatives had been accorded a paramount position in society as well as in cult. Such an order of female-dominated social and cultic custom is termed, in a broad and general way, the order of Mother Right. And opposed to such, without quarter, is the order of the Patriarchy, with an ardor of righteous eloquence and a fury of fire and sword.” – Joseph Campbell, The Masks of God: Occidental Mythology

Something durable and modestSomething durable and modest

“Truth is a powerful and a dangerous commodity and needs to be adequately guarded. It should be clothed for the occasion, and not indiscriminately exposed.” – M. Esther Harding, “The Way of All Women”

A new world orderA new world order

“Now: try to imagine real gender equality. Actually, try to imagine an America that is female-dominated, since a true working democracy in this country would reflect our 54-46 voting advantage. Now imagine such a democracy, in which women would be valued so very highly, as a world that is accepting and responsible about human sexuality; in which there is no coerced sex without serious jailtime; in which there are affordable, safe contraceptives available for the taking in every public health building; in which there is economic parity for women—and basic economic subsistence for every baby born: and in which every young American woman knows about and understands her natural desire as a treasure to cherish, and responsibly, when the time is right, on her own terms, to share. In such a world, in which the idea of gender as a barrier has become a dusty artifact, we would probably use a very different language about what would be—then—the rare and doubtless traumatic event of abortion. That language would probably call upon respect and responsibility, grief and mourning. In that world we might well describe the unborn and the never-to-be-born with the honest words of life. And in that world, passionate feminists might well hold candlelight vigils at abortion clinics, standing shoulder to shoulder with doctors who work there, commemorating and saying goodbye to the dead.” – Naomi Wolf, “Our Bodies, Our Souls”

The tautological lawThe tautological law

“Shinto doctrine holds that women should make offerings to aborted foetuses to help them rest in peace. If one believes that abortion is killing and yet is still pro-choice, one could try to use contraception for every single sex act; if one had to undergo an abortion, one could then work to provide contraception, or jobs, or other choices to young girls; one could give money to programmes that provide prenatal care to poor women; if one is a mother or father, one can remember the aborted child every time one is tempted to be less than loving.” – Naomi Wolf, “Our Bodies, Our Souls”

The price of lifeThe price of life

“The pro-life warning about the potential of widespread abortion to degrade reverence for life does have a nugget of truth: a free-market rhetoric about abortion can, indeed, contribute to the eerie situation we are now facing, wherein the culture seems increasingly to see babies not as creatures to whom parents devote their lives but as accoutrements to enhance parental quality of life. Day by day, babies seem to have less value in themselves, in a matrix of the sacred, than they do as products with a value dictated by a market economy. Stories surface regularly about ‘worthless’ babies left naked on gratings or casually dropped out of windows, while ‘valuable’, genetically correct babies are created at vast expense and with intricate medical assistance for infertile couples. If we fail to treat abortion with grief and reverence, we risk forgetting that, when it comes to the children we choose to bear, we are here to serve them—whomever they are: they are not here to serve us.” – Naomi Wolf, “Our Bodies, Our Souls”

Some other timeSome other time

“The morning of the election I thought about what it means to vote for a woman. Voting for a woman felt like voting for respect, for tolerance, for justice, for peace, for empathy, for righteousness, for equality, for color, for movement, for understanding, for listening, for strength, for kindness, for hope, for openness, for braveness, for black lives, for gay rights, for emotion, for feeling, for spirit, for heart, for story, for making, for holding, for inclusivity, for love.” – Anna Dunn, “Lines of Resistance”

A road not takenA road not taken

“By around 1970 Europe and Japan had more or less recovered from the Second World War and were becoming economically competitive with the United States, which had recently wasted enormous resources in Southeast Asia. The US responded by reneging on the Bretton Woods regime: going off the gold standard, establishing the dollar as the world’s reserve currency, and turning the IMF into a global enforcer for Wall Street. Among its other benefits, this move conveniently positioned us to capture the flood of petrodollars that followed the oil price rises soon afterward. The savage Volcker interest rate hikes later in the decade further weakened the US manufacturing sector and strengthened the financial sector. The Reagan years saw American companies flee abroad in droves. The end of the Cold War presented the US with a fateful choice. We could relinquish the artificial financial advantages that kept money flowing into Wall Street even as foreign demand stagnated, American industry declined, and the American trade deficit grew. This would have meant military retrenchment and a period of economic austerity, but it would have restored our competitiveness, allowing for reindustrialization on a solid basis and with a more evenly distributed prosperity. But we didn’t.” – George Scialabba, “Socialist Register 2004″

ProportionalityProportionality

“When a person exercises a common right, without negligence or malice, to render such action a nuisance, and therefore to hold the defendant liable, it must be such an act in itself as to be a nuisance to all or to a majority of the persons living in the neighborhood, and not simply, by exceptional circumstances, to one person.” – Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts, Rogers v. Elliott, 146 Mass. 349 (1888)

Whiskey in your water? Sugar in your tea?Whiskey in your water? Sugar in your tea?

“As technologies become the protagonists of the drama, people become props. The machines do the work — observing us, anticipating our needs or desires, and acting on what they take to be our behalf.” – Geoff Nunberg, “Creepy Futures”

Not to mention the MAD yearsNot to mention the MAD years

“There had been a deep and unsubtle optimism among Americans. The Great Depression and Pearl Harbor created a different sensibility that suspected that prosperity and security were an illusion, with disaster lurking behind them. There was a fear that everything could suddenly go wrong, horribly so, and that people who simply accepted peace and prosperity at face value were naïve. The two shocks created a dark sense of foreboding that undergirds American society to this day.” – George Friedman, “World War II and the Origins of American Unease”

It only costs a nickelIt only costs a nickel

“Step right up; show me your life. I’ll show you the story you’re in. Nothing more important in this world, kid. Figure that out and you’re halfway out of the dark. Call them fairy tales, if that makes you feel good. If you call them fairy tales, then you don’t have to believe you’re in one. It’s all about seeing the pattern—and the pattern is always there. It’s a vicious circle: the story gets told because the pattern repeats, and the pattern repeats because the story gets told.” – Catherynne M. Valente, “The Consultant”

From tiny acorns growFrom tiny acorns grow

“If man is not to live by bread alone, what is better worth doing well than the planting of trees?” – Frederick Law Olmsted, “Trees in Streets and in Parks”

Not so clever by halfNot so clever by half

“If there is a choice in explaining a government action between a Machiavellian, clever, ingenious plot to achieve that result and sort of blind, bumbling, well-meant incompetence, choose number two all the time.” – Admiral Dennis Blair, Director of National Intelligence (interviewed by Kathy Gilsinan in The Atlantic)

SuccinctSuccinct

“The Greek poet Yiannis Ritsos, jailed for political reasons, wrote his poems on cigarette papers while in prison, stuffed them into the lining of his jacket and, when he was released, walked out wearing his collected poems. They were mostly short.” – Daniel Halpern, “A Few Questions for Poetry”