this is rad. on the current political philosophy of the day:
"It has scarcely a word of reproach for that most ferocious and guilty form of oppression, which exists in this country, whose very existence is transcendental; whose right to be a nation was broadly and unequivocally legitimated upon the intuitive truth of the principle of the equality and brotherhood of universal man. Yet here it sees a system of the most bloody injustice perpetrated; man made a chattel by law, bought and sold like the ox in the market, his body marked with scars, and stripes, and mutilations, a faint, though fearful, image of the deeper wounds, and more horrible mutilations inflicted upon his God-created, and God-imaged soul; a system, which combines and embodies all that is conceivable of mean and despicable in selfishness, of fraud and cruelty in oppression; a system of mingled hypocrisy, treachery, and impiety, defying Heaven, outraging earth, and filling all the echoes of hell with the exulting shouts of demons, at the realized possibilities of man's depravity and guilt. In view of these things, which would seem fit to move the universe with anguish, this philosophy is calm and cold as an iceberg, as unmoved and passionless, as the granite ranges that bind a continent. It has no tears, nor consolation for the soulstricken slave; no groans, that a light from Heaven has been extinguished. But it takes the slave-holder by the hand as a brother; offers him its sympathy, if a light cloud but arise in the horizon, threatening him with danger; and again pledges itself to interpose the whole might of a nation between him and the retributions of omnipotence: aye, soberly thinks to encourage his trembling spirit, by holding up before him a piece of parchment, — a written constitution — the Constitution of the United States — which, it solemnly assures him, guaranties his domestic institutions of oppression and blood. Pitiable philosopher! Grovelling, earth-burrowing mole! to be pitied, and not reproached, that thou shouldst have conceived, that human constitutions could nullify the laws of the universe; that political arrangements could extinguish the eternal instincts of man's soul, through which the Almighty declares him to be free, and impels him, as with the voice of necessity, of destiny, to struggle for his birthright. Hadst thou been aught but a burrowing, purblind mole, thou wouldst have known, that every human being is bound, by the fixed and fateful laws of his being, to opposition to such a constitution; that the universe abhors, and will not endure it. Such a constitution is a lie, earthformed and material; the Spirit of the Universe, which is truth, will not suffer a lie, be it individual, or national. All the powers of nature, unseen but irresistible agents of truth, are at work, and this stupendous imposture must soon explode. The whole moral force of humanity is pledged for its extinction. Come out of the earth then, ye purblind statesmen, and sense-fettered politicians! It is for you to determine, in some measure, whether the explosion shall take place by a silent, scarcely felt transfusion of moral-electrical force, operating by gentle shocks, or whether it shall burst upon the world like "a doom's thunder-peal."
― scott seward, Tuesday, 21 February 2012 05:19 (thirteen years ago)
on greedy motherfuckers:
"The present perfection of machinery has increased wealth, and the means of wealth; but it has increased accumulation, tended to concentrate wealth in few hands, and thus enlarge the inequalities of social conditions, and by the machinery of associations founded on wealth, to give to classes and corporations advantages similar to those possessed by the feudalisms and aristocracies, which our social systems have rejected. Besides, it is asserted by competent observers, that modern machinery has actually increased the daily amount, and diminished the reward of individual human labor. In introducing the labor of children in the operations of machinery, an amount of evil has been inflicted on the world, of which the revelations of eternity alone can disclose the extent. At present, the perfection of machinery has given a new impulse to, if it has not created the inordinate, all-engrossing desire of wealth, so strongly marked in the character of our times."
― scott seward, Tuesday, 21 February 2012 05:22 (thirteen years ago)
cool stoner stuff:
And this is the practical faith, the actual life of all men ; — of all men, at least, who act with a purpose, and for an end; in whom their material environments have not extinguished, if that were possible, the consciousness of a higher life. Every act even of sensible experience is a refutation of the philosophy, which denies the reality and truth of human instincts. How much beyond and above the deductions of logic are the thoughts and emotions excited in the mind by the impressions of external nature through the senses. Whence does the song of the early bird borrow its melody, as it rouses the ear of the sleeper from its morning slumber, and seems like audible tones of a universal harmony, echoing voices from that far land, where he has wandered in his so-called dreams? Whence the eloquent stillness of the evening sky, when man stands reverent beneath it, with uplifted eye? Sense beholds nought there but a misty circle of mountains, surmounted by a blue canopy, studded with shining points. Whence come the tones of its silent harmonies? Whence "that tune, which makes no noise?" How break forth those mute hills into singing? What fills that azure vault with thousand-voiced stars? Whence arises that light, which comes up into the soul from the bosom of that obscurity?
And what does logic report of the birth of the year, — that loosing of the earth from its chains of frost, — that springing forth of the leaf after the death of winter, — that resurrection of insect life from its frozen tomb? Sense reports nothing more, nor even the probability of more. The tree sheds and renews its foliage from year to year, perhaps for ages. But there comes a period even to the rockrooted oak, which has for centuries defied time and the elements. Time's hour of conquest comes at length, and there, too, death at last gathers in his harvest. The report of science is but little more satisfactory. That may inform us with some degree of plausibility, that the material elements, of which those falling and decaying masses are composed, do not perish, but enter into new combinations. But the time-honored monarch of the forest has yielded to the destroyer; its individuality is gone; it is no longer the same; it is no longer.
"Great Cresar's body, dead and turned to clay,
May stop a hole to keep the wind away;"
and that is all that sense and logic can say about it. Beyond that they are deaf, dumb, and blind. Whence, then, comes that voice, which is borne into the inward ear of man on the breezes of spring, whispered by the budding leaf, breathed to his soul by the unfolding flower, and set to music, and repeated in prolonged melodies by the winged minstrels of the year?
And the ocean, boundless and restless, as we stand before it on its everlasting cliffs! The senses discourse to us of its blue waters, its briny taste, its ceaseless ebb and flow, and science discloses to us its secret elements, compels it to yield up its salts, and acids, and alkalies, for man's inspection and use, and publishes the laws of its tides. But they have not, and they cannot, reveal to us its higher mysteries, its loftier symbols. Not their voices bring to us the tidings of the spirit, which are borne upon its murmuring swell. It is not the eye, which reads the revelation of eternity and power, that is written upon its heaving bosom, or in its deep repose. It is not the ear, which hears the unwearied chant, that arises to the Invisible from all its fathomless depths.
The spreading landscape has its mysteries, too. But sense, nor science can read, much less interpret them. They can only tell of the outward, describe in detail the visible features; the sunny slopes, the expanded meads, the wooded steeps, the hanging cliffs, the flowery vales, the falling cascade, the roaring cataract, and all the picturesque groupings. They cannot pluck out the heart of its mystery. Their vocation is with the mere surface of the material. Not theirs is the mission to develop the soul of beauty, which reposes there, nor unfold the deep sublimities of the spirit, which are there enclosed. They see the rock, the wood, the water, and the earth; but the spirit of the earth, the wood, the water, and the rock, come not forth at their conjuration.
It is not, then, the senses, nor reasoning, which disclose to us the living reality, which is in everything that exists. The senses perceive the outward appearance, but cannot attain to the inner spirit; to the revelations of the Good, the Beautiful, the True, which every creation of God's hand contains for those, who seek it truly, for every one, who reverently opens the inward ear to hear it, and bows a pure heart to catch its inspiration. Not from sense, nor science, do we learn the emphatic truth of the approbation, which the Creator bestowed upon his successive works, when he pronounced them good. The prophetic spirit of man beholds them, and feels that they are glorious and divine.
― scott seward, Tuesday, 21 February 2012 06:08 (thirteen years ago)
two years pass...