Thursday, May 13, 2010

I've been reading a lot

Much reading has brought upon us a learned barbarism.
Lichtenberg (1742-1799)

6 comments:

  1. Please, keep going, Sean. You might be the one who will bring us to the stammering first steps of gentle civilisation.

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  2. Claudia,
    thank you so much for kindly drizzling balm upon my soul; you are, though - and you do know this yourself - exaggerating.
    I won't change anything; still ... I might keep going.

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  3. Lichtenberg took after his name! The gem above reminds me of a line by Robert Anton Wilson: "We are all giants, raised by pygmies, who have learned to walk with a perpetual mental crouch."

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  4. Hmm I have a mental image of a person with a club in one hand and a bible/koran/kapital in the other....

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  5. As Jams so wisely points out, the problem is not the quantity of one's reading, but in which manner one reads certain books. As a Bible reader myself, my friends would point out that I've never carried a club. On the contrary, the reading has cut down my (sometimes) hard-to-control acerbic state, and has given me a great desire to let anyone be what they wish to be. It also has increased my deep dislike for anyone, or any organisation, who would use the magnificent book to control, judge and punish the free spirits of our world.

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  6. Stan,
    ha ha, what a fitting addendum to the old hunchback's remark.

    Jams,
    spot on! Such mental images do sometimes let emerge the wish of not only becoming an iconoclast, hm?

    Claudia,
    that's how idealiter it should be. There'd be less misery, mentally and physically.

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