WNCAY Network

17/04/2021

The WNCAY Network presents:

For a Day:

Series: Simulation II

Title: Arrivals/Departures

“We are living in a culture entirely hypnotized by the illusion of time, in which the so-called present moment is felt as nothing but an infinitesimal hairline between an all-powerfully causative past and an absorbingly important future. We have no present. Our consciousness is almost completely preoccupied with memory and expectation. We do not realize that there never was, is, nor will be any other experience than present experience. We are therefore out of touch with reality. We confuse the world as talked about, described, and measured with the world which actually is. We are sick with a fascination for the useful tools of names and numbers, of symbols, signs, conceptions and ideas.”
― Alan Watts

Mid-calamity.

15/04/2021

The WNCAY Network presents:

For a Day:

Series: Simulation II

Title: Extensions and Concentrations

"She lived inside a pause."
- Don Delillo, The Ivory Acrobat

"As the ancient said, the world is a plenum or solid; and if we saw all things that really surround us we should be imprisoned and unable to move."
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Mid-calamity.

14/04/2021

The WNCAY Network presents:

For a Day:

Series: Simulation II

Title: A Study in Eternity

"“And there is no question that we are preoccupied by dying. But why? It is because when we die, we leave behind not only the world but also death. That is the paradox of the last hour. Death works with us in the world; it is a power that humanizes nature, that raises existence to being, and it is within each one of us as our most human quality; it is death only in the world - man only knows death because he is man, and he is only man because he is death in the process of becoming. But to die is to shatter the world; it is the loss of person, the annihilation of the being; and so it is also the loss of death, the loss of what in it and for me made it death. As long as I live, I am a mortal man, but when I die, by ceasing to be man I also cease to be mortal, I am no longer capable of dying, and my impending death horrifies me because I see it as it is: no longer death, but the impossibility of dying.”
- Maurice Blanchot

Mid-calamity.

13/04/2021

The WNCAY Network presents:

For a Day:

Series: Simulation II

Title: Control Requests Permission to Execute

1 The world is all that is the case.
1.1 The world is the totality of facts, not of things.
1.11 The world is determined by the facts, and by their being all the facts.
1.12 For the totality of facts determines what is the case, and also whatever is not the case.
1.13 The facts in logical space are the world.
1.2 The world divides into facts.
1.21 Each item can be the case or not the case while everything else remains the same.

- Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus

Mid-calamity.

09/04/2021

The WNCAY Network presents:

For a Day:

Series: Simulation II

Title: A Quintessence of Dust

"Death, be not proud, though some have called thee
Mighty and dreadful, for thou art not so;
For those whom thou think'st thou dost overthrow
Die not, poor Death, nor yet canst thou kill me.
From rest and sleep, which but thy pictures be,
Much pleasure; then from thee much more must flow,
And soonest our best men with thee do go,
Rest of their bones, and soul's delivery.
Thou art slave to fate, chance, kings, and desperate men,
And dost with poison, war, and sickness dwell,
And poppy or charms can make us sleep as well
And better than thy stroke; why swell'st thou then?
One short sleep past, we wake eternally
And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die."
- John Donne

Mid-calamity.

25/03/2021

The WNCAY Network presents:

For a Day:

Series: Cosmopolis

Title: Heartbreak Hotel

“What strange phenomena we find in a great city, all we need do is stroll about with our eyes open. Life swarms with innocent monsters.”
― Charles Baudelaire

Mid-calamity.

24/03/2021

The WNCAY Network presents:

For a Day:

Series: Normalization

Title: The Conservation of Angular Momentum

"In a liquid modern life there are no permanent bonds, and any that we take up for a time must be tied loosely so that they can be untied again, as quickly and as effortlessly as possible, when circumstances change - as they surely will in our liquid modern society, over and over again."
- Zygmunt Bauman

Mid-calamity.

23/03/2021

The WNCAY Network presents:

For a Day:

Series: Normalization

Title: A Streetcar Named Desire

“Our growing dependence on technologies no one seems to understand or control has given rise to feelings of powerlessness and victimization. We find it more and more difficult to achieve a sense of continuity, permanence, or connection with the world around us. Relationships with others are notably fragile; goods are made to be used up and discarded; reality is experienced as an unstable environment of flickering images. Everything conspires to encourage escapist solutions to the psychological problems of dependence, separation, and individuation, and to discourage the moral realism that makes it possible for human beings to come to terms with existential constraints on their power and freedom.”
- Christopher Lasch

Mid-calamity.

22/03/2021

The WNCAY Network presents:

For a Day:

Series: On Revolution

Title: Inland Empire

“Whatever we may do, excess will always keep its place in the heart of man, in the place where solitude is found. We all carry within us our places of exile, our crimes and our ravages. But our task is not to unleash them on the world; it is to fight them in ourselves and in others.”
- Albert Camus

"All revolutions are inherently an attempt to restore our innocence."
- B. E. Beebe

Mid-calamity.

18/03/2021

The WNCAY Network presents:

For a Day:

Series: Normalization

Title: The Looking Glass

"Where people wish to attach, they should always be ignorant. To come with a well−informed mind is to come with an inability of administering to the vanity of others, which a sensible person would always wish to avoid."
- Jane Austen

“But then one regrets the loss even of one's worst habits. Perhaps one regrets them the most. They are such an essential part of one's personality.”
- Oscar Wilde

Mid-calamity.

17/03/2021

The WNCAY Network presents:

For a Day:

Series: The Life Atomic

Title: Ghosts of Communisms Past

“Technological progress has merely provided us with more efficient means for going backwards.”
― Aldous Huxley, Ends and Means

Mid-calamity.

15/03/2021

The WNCAY Network presents:

For a Day:

Series: Simulation II

Title: A Violence Postponed

"If anyone attempted to rule the world by the gospel and to abolish all temporal law and sword on the plea that all are baptized and Christian, and that, according to the gospel, there shall be among them no law or sword - or need for either - pray tell me, friend, what would he be doing? He would be loosing the ropes and chains of the savage wild beasts and letting them bite and mangle everyone, meanwhile insisting that they were harmless, tame, and gentle creatures; but I would have the proof in my wounds. Just so would the wicked under the name of Christian abuse evangelical freedom, carry on their rascality, and insist that they were Christians subject neither to law nor sword, as some are already raving and ranting."
- Martin Luther, On Secular Authority

Mid-calamity.

12/03/2021

The WNCAY Network presents:

For a Day:

Series: Enlightenment

Title: Paradise Lost

Now the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?

And the woman said unto the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden:

But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die.

And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die:

For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.

- Genesis 3:1-5, KJV

Mid-calamity.

11/03/2021

The WNCAY Network presents:

For a Day:

Series: Simulation II

Title: The Institute for Humane Studies

“Sometimes it was hard to say things. Things were so complicated. People might resent what you said. They might use your remarks against you. They might take you seriously and act upon your words, actually do something. They might not even hear you, which perhaps was the only thing worth hoping for. But it was more complicated than that. The sheer effort of speaking. Easier to stay apart, leave things as they are, avoid responsibility for reflecting the world and all its grave weight. Things that should be simple are always hard. But hard things are never easy.”
- Don DeLillo, Ratner's Star

Mid-calamity.

10/03/2021

The WNCAY Network presents:

Series: Enlightenment

Title: Socialism, for Beginners

"The Great Society is a place where every child can find knowledge to enrich his mind and to enlarge his talents. It is a place where the city of man serves not only the needs of the body and the demands of commerce but the desire for beauty and the hunger for community. It is a place where men are more concerned with the quality of their goals than the quantity of their goods."

- Lyndon Johnson

Mid-calamity.

09/03/2021

The WNCAY Network presents:

For a Day:

Series: Simulation II

Title: The Spell Fails at Midnight

"Shine out, fair sun, till I have bought a glass,
That I may see my shadow as I pass."
- Richard III, Act 1 Scene 2, Shakespeare

Mid-calamity.

05/03/2021

The WNCAY Network presents:

For a Day:

Series: A Study in Eternity

Title: The Mind-Body Problem

“I is another. If the brass wakes the trumpet, it’s not its fault. That’s obvious to me: I witness the unfolding of my own thought: I watch it, I hear it: I make a stroke with the bow: the symphony begins in the depths, or springs with a bound onto the stage.

If the old imbeciles hadn’t discovered only the false significance of Self, we wouldn’t have to now sweep away those millions of skeletons which have been piling up the products of their one-eyed intellect since time immemorial, and claiming themselves to be their authors!”

― Arthur Rimbaud

Mid-calamity.

04/03/2021

The WNCAY Network presents:

For a Day:

Series: Simulation II

Title: She Had a Face Like Boredom

“Nowadays what isn't worth saying is sung.”
- Beaumarchais, The Barber of Seville

Mid-calamity.

03/03/2021

The WNCAY Network presents:

For a Day:

Series: Normalization

Title: Once Upon a Time ... The Future

“And, indeed, this is the odd thing that is continually happening: there are continually turning up in life moral and rational persons, sages and lovers of humanity who make it their object to live all their lives as morally and rationally as possible, to be, so to speak, a light to their neighbors simply in order to show them that it is possible to live morally and rationally in this world. And yet we all know that those very people sooner or later have been false to themselves, playing some q***r trick, often a most unseemly one. Now I ask you: what can be expected of man since he is a being endowed with strange qualities? Shower upon him every earthly blessing, drown him in a sea of happiness, so that nothing but bubbles of bliss can be seen on the surface; give him economic prosperity, such that he should have nothing else to do but sleep, eat cakes and busy himself with the continuation of his species, and even then out of sheer ingratitude, sheer spite, man would play you some nasty trick. He would even risk his cakes and would deliberately desire the most fatal rubbish, the most uneconomical absurdity, simply to introduce into all this positive good sense his fatal fantastic element. It is just his fantastic dreams, his vulgar folly that he will desire to retain, simply in order to prove to himself--as though that were so necessary-- that men still are men and not the keys of a piano, which the laws of nature threaten to control so completely that soon one will be able to desire nothing but by the calendar. And that is not all: even if man really were nothing but a piano-key, even if this were proved to him by natural science and mathematics, even then he would not become reasonable, but would purposely do something perverse out of simple ingratitude, simply to gain his point. And if he does not find means he will contrive destruction and chaos, will contrive sufferings of all sorts, only to prove his point!”

― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Notes from Underground

Mid-calmaity.

02/03/2021

The WNCAY Network presents:

For a Day:

Series: Simulation II

Title: Read All About It

“For the most part we do not first see, and then define, we define first and then see. In the great blooming, buzzing confusion of the outer world we pick out what our culture has already defined for us, and we tend to perceive that which we have picked out in the form stereotyped for us by our culture.”
― Walter Lippmann, Public Opinion

Mid-calamity.

01/03/2021

The WNCAY Network presents:

For a Day:

Series: Enlightenment

Title: Shooting and Fu***ng Are the Same Thing

"Mission accomplished."
- George W. Bush, 2003

"He loved the sea for deep-seated reasons: the hardworking artist's need for repose, the desire to take shelter from the demanding diversity of phenomena in the bosom of boundless simplicity, a propensity—proscribed and diametrically opposed to his mission in life and for that very reason seductive—a propensity for the unarticulated, the immoderate, the eternal, for nothingness. To repose in perfection is the desire of all those who strive for excellence, and is not nothingness a form of perfection?”
- Thomas Mann, Death in Venice

Mid-calamity.

26/02/2021

The WNCAY Network presents:

For a Day:

Series: Cosmic Backgrounds

Title: The Library of Babylon

“We have no need of other worlds. We need mirrors. We don't know what to do with other worlds. A single world, our own, suffices us; but we can't accept it for what it is.”
― Stanisław Lem, Solaris

"The human mind, no matter how highly trained, cannot grasp the universe. We are in the position of a little child, entering a huge library whose walls are covered to the ceiling with books in many different tongues. The child knows that someone must have written those books. It does not know who or how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written."
- Albert Einstein

Mid-calamity.

25/02/2021

The WNCAY network presents:

For a Day:

Series: Simulation II

Title: A Suburb Called Loneliness

“Two possibilities exist: either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying.”

- Arthur C. Clarke

Mid-calamity, essentially expendable, presently absent.

24/02/2021

The WNCAY Network presents:

For a Day:

Series: A Study in Eternity

Title: You Too Will Die One Day

“A thing is not necessarily true because a man dies for it.”

- Oscar Wilde

"You become hard when you carry out such orders."

- Rudolf Hoss, Commandant of Auschwitz (executed 1947)

"When he shall die,
Take him and cut him out in little stars,
And he will make the face of heaven so fine
That all the world will be in love with night
And pay no worship to the garish sun.”

- William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet

Mid-calamity, essentially expendable, presently absent.

23/02/2021

The WNCAY Network presents:

For a Day:

Series: Gravity Falls

Title: The Proud Boys

"The rocket worked perfectly except for landing on the wrong planet."
- Wernher Von Braun

Mid-calamity, essentially expendable, presently absent.

15/02/2021

The WNCAY Network presents:

For a Day:

Series: The Future is an Illusion

Title: A Conspiracy Against the Human Race

The video below is the Soviet cover version of the Beatles' tune "Let it Be", a segment of which can be found in Adam Curtis's new documentary series "Can't Get You Out of My Head".

Where the Beatles sing:

"Speaking words of wisdom, let it be"

The Soviet version as sung below can be translated as:

"It has always been so, and so it will always be."

"Bude tak ... it will be so ... it will always be so."

This was broadcast during the period of the 1970's known as 'normalization' and 'detente'.

A suitably horrifying presentation of our current predicament.

Submitted for your consideration.

Mid-calamity, essentially expendable, presently absent.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1LrUTzijqz8

The Soviet version of the song by the Beatles.I did not make or record this video, this video is simply the same as another YouTube video which is under a Ru...

14/02/2021

The WNCAY Network presents:

Series: Democracy in America / Impeachment: Part Deux

Title: A Jury of One's Peers

"57-43"
- Vote tally of the second Senate trial on the second impeachment of the former President D. Trump on the charge of inciting an insurrection at the capitol on Jan. 6th, 2021, held February 13th, 2021, and resulting in the acquittal of the former President on said charge having failed to obtain a 2/3 majority for conviction.

"When you're a star, they let you do it."
- Twice-impeached and twice-acquitted former President D. Trump

"You know what ... I could shoot someone on 5th Avenue and not lose any supporters."
- Twice-impeached and twice-acquitted former President D. Trump

"You've got to fight like hell, or you're not going to have a country anymore."
- Twice-impeached and twice-acquitted former President D. Trump on January 6th, 2021 at the "Stop the Steal" rally that preceded the insurrection.

"Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
All the king's horses and all the king's men
Couldn't put Humpty together again."
- Children's nursery rhyme

"The difficulty, my friends, is not in avoiding death, but in avoiding unrighteousness; for that runs faster than death."
- Plato, Apology

Mid-calamity, essentially expendable, presently absent.

12/02/2021

The WNCAY Network presents:

For a Day:

Series: In the Spirit of Unity

Title: Bipartisanship II: Or, The Art of Persuasion

“People almost invariably arrive at their beliefs not on the basis of proof but on the basis of what they find attractive.”
- Blaise Pascal, De l'art de persuader

"Either we shall find what it is we are seeking or at least we shall free ourselves from the persuasion that we know what we do not know.”
- Plato, The Republic

"People are generally better persuaded by the reasons which they have themselves discovered than by those which have come into the mind of others.”
- Blaise Pascal, Pensées

Mid-calamity, essentially expendable, presently absent.

10/02/2021

WNCAY Network presents:

For a Day:

Series: Impeachment: Part Deux

Title: Constitutional Infidelities

"I wanted to hear nothing more of this lying and libelous world, but in the course of the next few days, during the second week [after my arrest], as the campaign of lies which was being waged against us continued, and as one after another was arrested and brought to Landsberg prison, honest men whom I knew to be absolutely innocent, but whose sole crime was that they belonged to our Movement, men who knew nothing whatsoever about the events, but who were arrested because they shared our philosophy and the government was afraid that they would speak up in public, I came to a decision. I would defend myself before this court and fight to my last breath. Thus I have come into this room, not in order to explain things away, or lie about my responsibility; no indeed! ... I alone bear the responsibility. I alone, when all is said and done, wanted to carry out the deed. The other gentlemen on trial here only negotiated with me at the end. I am convinced that I sought nothing bad. I bear the responsibility, and I will shoulder all the consequences. But one thing I must say: I am not a crook, and I do not feel like a criminal. On the contrary!"
- Adolf Hi**er, in his opening statement at his trial in 1926 for attempting to overthrow the duly elected government, also known as the Beer Hall Putsch

"When you're a star, they let you do it."
- Twice-impeached former President Donald Trump

Mid-calamity, essentially expendable, presently absent; on the day following the opening statements by the House Impeachment Managers and lawyers for the former President, during the second Senate trial following his second impeachment on the charge of inciting an insurrection on January 6, 2021, in which the lawyer for the defense openly admitted that the evidence establishes unassailably that the President is guilty, but that this fact does not warrant conviction.

09/02/2021

WNCAY Network presents:

For a Day:

Series: Impeachment: Part Deux

Title: Pay No Attention ...

"Listen—I say that justice is nothing other than the advantage of the stronger."
- Thrasymachus in Plato's Republic, 338c

"Democracy is beautiful in theory; in practice it is a fallacy. You in America will see that some day ... The truth is that men are tired of liberty."
- Benito Mussolini

"Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me."
- Playground saying

"Sovereign is he who decides on the exception.”
- Carl Schmitt

"'No,' said the priest, 'it is not necessary to accept everything as true, one must only accept it as necessary.' 'A melancholy conclusion,' said K. 'It turns lying into a universal principle.'”
- Franz Kafka, The Trial

"The strong do what they can, and the weak suffer what they must."
- Thucydides

"Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain."
- The Wizard of Oz, 1939

Mid-calamity, essentially expendable, presently absent; as the second Senate trial of the twice-impeached former President commences on the charge of inciting an insurrection on January 6, 2021, following months of attempted election sabotage, conspiracy to overturn an election, and a media and political campaign of discrediting any and all possible election results
as fraudulent.

08/02/2021

WNCAY Network presents:

For a Day:

Series: Impeachment: Part Deux

Title: The Plot Against America

"Hypocrisy is known far and wide; practiced by all high and low. A bit can sweeten, a lump can instruct. But when one makes a profession of it, that's just bad business."
- B. E. Beebe, Divigations

"I utter this deadly truth with regret, but Louis must die, so that the country may live. Among a peaceable, free people, respected at home and abroad, you might listen to the advice being given you to be generous; but a people whose liberty is still being disputed after so many sacrifices and battles, a people in whose country the laws are still only inexorable towards the unfortunate, a people in whose country the crimes of tyranny are still subjects of dispute, such a people must want to be avenged; and the generosity for which you are being praised would resemble too much that of a society of bandits sharing out spoils."
- Maximillian Robespierre, 1792

"All good things must come to an end."
- Proverb

"I am settled and bend up
Each corporal agent to this terrible feat.
Away, and mock the time with fairest show.
False face must hide what the false heart doth
know."
- Macbeth, Act 1 Scene 7

"Today, armed men who have come unbeknownst to you and in violation of the laws, have made the streets of this city echo with seditious cries demanding impunity for Louis XVI."
- Maximillian Robespierre, 1792

Mid-calamity, essentially expendable, presently absent. On the day before the opening of the twice-impeached former President's Senate trial for inciting an insurrection at the Capitol on Jan.6th, 2021, as Republicans contrive, fabricate, accuse, and obstruct, as a way to not having to say what they in fact mean - which is that they (at least 45 out of 50 in the Senate) support the actions, intentions and hoped-for outcome of the former and impeached President.

05/02/2021

WNCAY Network presents:

For a Day:

Series: The Future is an Illusion

Title: A Distant Mirror

"For the narcissist, the past holds no real value as the dead cannot acclaim the living. The future, too, is inconceivable, at least as anything distinct from a possible future that resembles their current present. A future understood as something different from the present, one in which continuity with any future generation would require the handing down and over of the wisdom and responsibilities painfully accumulated and preserved during their lifetime is impossible. The narcissist never learns anything. His only responsibility is to assiduously see to the gratification of his own desires. An entire culture of narcissism is therefore a society that is already dead; severed from its past and incapable of imagining a future that is anything but an eternal present. In short: the past isn't; the future cannot be."
- B. E. Beebe, Monads and Madness

"It is easier to imagine an end to the world than an end to capitalism."
- Mark Fisher, Frederic Jameson, Slavoj Zizek et al.

"At this stage, the question is no longer: how can the individual satisfy his own needs without hurting others, but rather: how can he satisfy his needs without hurting himself ..."
- Herbert Marcuse

"In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread, till thou return unto the ground; for out of it wast thou taken: for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return."
- Genesis 3:19, KJV

“I don't care what you think unless it is about me.”
- Kurt Cobain

"In the myth of Narcissus it is often imagined that the boy was staring into a cool, fresh spring when he became infatuated with his own reflection. Would it make any difference if, instead of a pure spring, he were peering into a puddle of sewage?"
- B. E. Beebe, Early Manuscripts

"Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who is the fairest of them all?"
- Evil Queen from Walt Disney's Snow White, 1937

"And, you know, there is no such thing as society."
- Margaret Thatcher, 1987

"The so-called 'end of history' is not what it is understood to be - the end of struggle, the highest achievement of human reason, 'the best a man can get' - it is cowardice, it is surrender, it is the collective su***de of the human imagination, the end of art and all knowledge. When the question 'what does this mean?' is replaced with the question 'how do I feel?' everything - art, science, politics - everything human and humanistic becomes entertainment, becomes show-business."
- B. E. Beebe, Essays on Last Men

Mid-calamity, essentially expendable, presently absent.

04/02/2021

WNCAY Network presents:

For a Day:

Series: E Pluribus Unum

Title: Why We're Polarized (a response to Ezra Klein)

"It is a great and dangerous error to suppose that all people are equally entitled to liberty. It is a reward to be earned, not a blessing to be gratuitously lavished on all alike—a reward reserved for the intelligent, the patriotic, the virtuous and deserving—and not a boon to be bestowed on a people too ignorant, degraded and vicious, to be capable either of appreciating or of enjoying it."
- John C. Calhoun, Senator from South Carolina, in his A Disquisition on Government (1851)

"In the name of the greatest people that have ever trod this earth, I draw the line in the dust and toss the gauntlet before the feet of tyranny, and I say segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever."
- George Wallace, 1963

“If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you.”
- Lyndon B. Johnson

"I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic, for which it stands, one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all."
- Revised and current version of the Pledge of Allegiance as based on the original by Francis Bellamy

Mid-calamity, essentially expendable, presently absent.

Pictured: Anti school integration/busing protest, Boston 1973, whose policy demands were supported, at that time, by the newly elected Senator from the formerly pro-Union yet slave-holding state of Delaware and current President J. Biden.

04/02/2021

WNCAY Network presents:

For a Day:

Series: Normalization - On the Spirit of the Present Age

Title: A Sense of Direction

"Whatever you do, don't look down."
- Common admonition

"Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom."
- Kierkegaard

"There seems to be an inborn drive in all human beings not to live in a steady emotional state, which would suggest that such a state is not tolerable to most people. Why else would someone succumb to the attractions of romantic love more than once? Didn’t they learn their lesson the first time or the tenth time or the twentieth time? And it’s the same old lesson: everything in this life—I repeat, everything—is more trouble than it’s worth. And simply being alive is the basic trouble. This is something that is more recognized in Eastern societies than in the West. There’s a minor tradition in Greek philosophy that instructs us to seek a state of equanimity rather than one of ecstasy, but it never really caught on for obvious reasons. Buddhism advises its practitioners not to seek highs or lows but to follow a middle path to personal salvation from the painful cravings of the average sensual life, which is why it was pretty much reviled by the masses and mutated into forms more suited to human drives and desires. It seems evident that very few people can simply sit still. Children spin in circles until they collapse with dizziness.”
― Thomas Ligotti

"Look, the desiring-machine at the core of the human being is so powerful, so all-consuming, that even in the absence of any or all particular objects to glut itself upon, the self will continue to desire. What then will it want? It will begin to desire its own annihilation, just for the sake of desiring something. Hence, the hero complex, the fascist, the Christian and the su***de."
- B. E. Beebe, Early Manuscripts

Mid-calamity, essentially expendable, presently absent

04/02/2021

WNCAY Network presents:

For a Day:

Series: Normalization

Title: The Year Before the War Began

"If we want things to stay as they are, everything will have to change."
- Tomaso de Lampedusa, The Leopard

"The rich … consume little more than the poor, and in spite of their natural selfishness and rapacity, though they mean only their own conveniency, though the sole end which they propose from the labours of all the thousands whom they employ, be the gratification of their own vain and insatiable desires, they divide with the poor the produce of all their improvements. They are led by an invisible hand [emphasis added] to make nearly the same distribution of the necessaries of life, which would have been made, had the earth been divided into equal portions among all its inhabitants, and thus without intending it, without knowing it, advance the interest of the society, and afford means to the multiplication of the species. When Providence divided the earth among a few lordly masters, it neither forgot nor abandoned those who seemed to have been left out in the partition. These last too enjoy their share of all that it produces. In what constitutes the real happiness of human life, they are in no respect inferior to those who would seem so much above them. In ease of body and peace of mind, all the different ranks of life are nearly upon a level, and the beggar, who suns himself by the side of the highway, possesses that security which kings are fighting for."
- Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments

Mid-calamity, essentially expendable, as the janitor-in-chief, after cleaning out the Augean stables, sets us all up for another fall.