MONDAY, 19 JULY 2004
It is not a matter of escaping or not escaping – it is a matter of degree. I may currently not think of myself as an escapist, but when I look at the things with which I fill my days … the routine, the three-cereal breakfast, snacks and drinks, cigarettes, computer, movies, coffee dates. I don’t know a single person who can say there’s nothing they can do, today, to save someone’s life somewhere in the world or to drastically improve someone’s life. We all run away from things. We all hide in our own little worlds. And I’m not arguing against it (not now, anyways) – I’m just saying.
Why do thinkers think?
All thinkers – philosophers, writers, poets or anyone else who puts his or her thoughts on paper – who have come up with ideas that either follow on the ideas of other thinkers, or ideas that are relatively original, have done so because they were not satisfied with what had been given to them.
TUESDAY, 20 JULY 2004
It is a struggle, and you have to choose your side
I cannot do otherwise than to think, after watching Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 9/11, that you have to choose your side. There’s a struggle going on between good and evil, and you have to choose your side. The struggle lies much deeper than the average person believes or suspects, and it’s on the temporal plane – in this world.
Choose your side, and make it clear. As it works with identity – if you don’t define it for yourself, is will be defined for you, so it is with this struggle. If you don’t choose your side, in clear terms, you may just be counted amongst the “Silent Majority” on the wrong side.
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[George W.] Bush and his cohorts have the mentality and approach to political power of medieval aristocrats. The ordinary man and woman on the street – or in front of the TV, or in the office, or in a factory, or on the battlefield – are as expendable as the peasants of old.
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