by Li Cheng Shuo
Let’s Begin
O reader, can I be bothered to write this book?
To what end?
What chance have I for success?
Why should I make an effort to entertain you?
Why not just pretend I wrote it and it’s a best seller?
Shall I begin? Dare I begin?
At what moment shall I begin? Why that moment and not another? Why that moment and not a million others?
Anyway the book will be short. And with a lot of quotations and illustrations.
What is Nihilism?
Nothing.
No morality.
No reality. No truth.
No hope.
No beauty.
No order.
No freedom.
No effort.
No understanding.
No communication.
No self sacrifice. No self. No joy.
No sense.
No mercy.
These are my articles of faith, my commandments.
Annihilate all. No absolutes.
Sink into disorder, disintegration, disease, distress, dissatisfaction, despair, distortion, dissipation, dismay, dismemberment, dishpan hands, disaputerogativity
What?
5 random nouns:
nutmeat harpsichord clambake wallaby inserting frigate Osaka
What was I saying?
Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion,
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.
I am a fanatic of indifference.
I am a devotee of dissolution.
I am a prophet without a god.
The Plague Years
Covid 19 has many ramifications, some of them positive.
Less time spent with people.
Little work done.
Virtual reality.
Less communication with people.
Less people.
Pants not necessary when communicating.
So many buried at home.
Little accomplished.
Lies from the TV.
Even when I do talk with others the sound is muffled.
Wah diyu shay?
I haven't really understood anyone for a couple of years.
Will pandemics continue indefinitely?
The Covid generation: confused by unable to understand facial cues expressions, physical interaction
carefully planned disorder
IO
topical but not hip
Lady Gagga? Sailor Drift?
Geshichte breitungen
Crazy Man overboard!
1 3 5 7 9…
Shall we row row row the boat or just wade across?
vast undifferentiated heaving ocean
which way do I go?
cold bodies sinking in the deep
unfathomable
IIII Ill
Odd Todd consuming cod
swiftly plodding to the land of Nod
If you have a bowl, I will give you a bowl. If you have no bowl, I will take it from you.
scatological
my mind is a garbage dump
the fence is locked
it is summertime
feign candor
disingenuous
Why do children resist sleep with such tenacity?
Danse Macabre
A Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe
But in the whole the face of things, I say, was much altered; sorrow and sadness sat upon every face; and though some parts were not yet overwhelmed, yet all looked deeply concerned; and, as we saw it apparently coming on, so every one looked on himself and his family as in the utmost danger. Were it possible to represent those times exactly to those that did not see them, and give the reader due ideas of the horror ‘that everywhere presented itself, it must make just impressions upon their minds and fill them with surprise. London might well be said to be all in tears; the mourners did not go about the streets indeed, for nobody put on black or made a formal dress of mourning for their nearest friends; but the voice of mourners was truly heard in the streets. The shrieks of women and children at the windows and doors of their houses, where their dearest relations were perhaps dying, or just dead, were so frequent to be heard as we passed the streets, that it was enough to pierce the stoutest heart in the world to hear them. Tears and lamentations were seen almost in every house, especially in the first part of the visitation; for towards the latter end men’s hearts were hardened, and death was so always before their eyes, that they did not so much concern themselves for the loss of their friends, expecting that themselves should be summoned the next hour.
The Decameron by Boccacio: Let me say, then, that thirteen hundred and forty-eight years had already passed after the fruitful Incarnation of the Son of God when into the distinguished city of Florence…there came a deadly pestilence. Either because of the influence of heavenly bodies or because of God's just wrath as a punishment to mortals for our wicked deeds, the pestilence, originating some years earlier in the East, killed an infinite number of people as it spread relentlessly from one place to another until finally it had stretched its miserable length all over the West. And against this pestilence no human wisdom or foresight was of any avail; quantities of filth were removed from the city by officials charged with the task; the entry of any sick person into the city was prohibited; and many directives were issued concerning the maintenance of good health. Nor were the humble supplications rendered not once, but many times, by the pious to God, through public processions or by other means, in any way efficacious.
Almost at the beginning of springtime of the year in question, the plague began to show its sorrowful effects in an extraordinary manner. It did not assume the form it had in the East, where bleeding from the nose was a manifest sign of inevitable death, but rather showed its first signs in men and women alike by means of swellings either in the groin or under the armpits, some of which grew to the size of an ordinary apple and others to the size of an egg (more or less), and the people called them gavoccioli (buboes). And from the two parts of the body already mentioned, in very little time, the said deadly gavoccioli began to spread indiscriminately over every part of the body; then, after this, the symptoms of the illness changed to black or livid spots appearing on the arms and thighs, and on every part of the body – sometimes there were large ones and other times a number of little ones scattered all around. And just as the gavoccioli were originally, and still are, a very definite indication of impending death, in like manner these spots came to mean the same thing for whoever contracted them. Neither a doctor's advice nor the strength of medicinecould do anything to cure this illness; on the contrary, either the nature of the illness was such that it afforded no cure, or else the doctors were so ignorant that they did not recognize its cause and, as a result, could not prescribe the proper remedy (in fact, the number of doctors, other than the well-trained, was increased by a large number of men and women who had never had any medical training); at any rate, few of the sick were ever cured, and almost all died after the third day of the appearance of the previously described symptoms (some sooner, others later), and most of them died without fever or any other side effects.
This pestilence was so powerful that it was transmitted to the healthy by contact with the sick, the way a fire close to dry or oily things will set them aflame. And the evil of the plague went even further: not only did talking to or being around the sick bring infection and a common death, but also touching the clothes of the sick or anything touched or used by them seemed to communicate this very disease to the person involved…
There were some people who thought that living moderately and avoiding any excess might help a great deal in resisting this disease, and so they gathered in small groups and lived entirely apart from everyone else. They shut themselves up in those houses where there were no sick people and where one could live well by eating the most delicate of foods an drinking the finest of wines (doing so always in moderation), allowing no one to speak about or listen to anything said about the sick and dead outside; these people lived, entertaining themselves with music and other pleasures that they could arrange. Others thought the opposite: they believed that drinking excessively, enjoying life, going about singing and celebrating, satisfying in every way the appetites as best one could, laughing, and making light of everything that happened was the best medicine for such a disease; so they practiced to the fullest what they believed by going from one tavern to another all day and night, drinking to excess; and they would often make merry in private homes, doing everything that pleased or amused them the most. This they were able to do easily, for everyone felt he was doomed to die and, as a result, abandoned his property, so that most of the houses had become common property, and any stranger who came upon them used them as if her were their rightful owner…
Many others adopted a middle course between the two attitudes just described: neither did they restrict their food or drink so much as the first group nor did they fall into such dissoluteness and drunkenness as the second; rather, they satisfied their appetites to a moderate degree. They did not shut themselves up, but went around carrying in their hands flowers, or sweet-smelling herbs, or various kinds of spices; and they would often put these things to their noses, believing that such smells were a wonderful means of purifying the brain, for all the air seemed infected with the stench of dead bodies, sickness, and medicines…
And not all those who adopted these diverse opinions died, nor did they all escape with their lives; on the contrary, many of those who thought this way were falling sick everywhere…brother abandoned brother, uncle abandoned nephew, sister left brother, and very often wife abandoned husband, and – even worse, almost unbelievable – fathers and mothers neglected to tend and care for their children as if they were not their own..
Many ended their lives in the public streets, during the day or at night, while many others who died in their homes were discovered dead by their neighbors only by the smell of their decomposing bodies. The city was full of corpses…Moreover, the dead were honored with no tears or candles or funeral mourners; in fact, things had reached such a point that the people who died were cared for as we care for goats today…So many corpses would arrive in front of a church every day and at every hour that the amount of holy ground for burials was certainly insufficient for the ancient custom of giving each body its individual place; when all the graves were full, huge trenches were dug in all of the cemeteries of the churches and into them the new arrivals were dumped by the hundreds; and they were packed in there with dirt, one on top of another, like a ship's cargo, until the trench was filled…
What more can one say except that so great was the cruelty of Heaven, and, perhaps, also that of man, that from March to July of the same year, between the fury of the pestiferous sickness and the fact that many of the sick were badly treated or abandoned in need because of the fear that the healthy had, more than one hundred thousand human beings are believed to have lost their lives for certain inside the walls of the city of Florence – whereas before the deadly plague, one would not even have estimated there were actually that many people dwelling in the city.
Ancient Greece
I will begin in Ancient Greece. So many disciplines, so many great thinkers begin in Ancient Greece.
If only I could live back then.
Not long ago I dreamed I was living in ancient Greece. On the margins of society. I paraded around wrapped in a sort of blanket or robe. I was supported by my devoted pupils who brought me offerings: spicy fish on a platter, grapes, figs, cheese. We ate in the shade of a big oak tree. Was it a dream? I’m not entirely sure. We ridiculed the strutting Peripatetics and were ridiculed ourselves in return. We visited the temples newly-built and gaily-painted.
A charming nymph served us. Later on I rewarded her by gifting her with a truckload, a ton of flowers.
If by gifting you mean suffocation
I remember vividly one evening sitting on a cold marble bench squeezed into a corner with my disciples. In the dark for hours. Expectations rising as the priestess danced in an alley. Drums beating. Half moon off to the side. Then at once came a shocking, ecstatic encounter (real holding/grappling) with a being. The atmosphere somehow thick and trembling and electric. More a connection to my nervous system than for my eyes. A ferocious god. Bloodlust. Magnetic attraction I can’t convey how cruel. Afterward corybantic movements so contorted, goats bleeding everywhere, we somehow ended up caves underground covered in mud I drank some kind of drug. my forehaed sweating I felt like I was about to go into cardiac arrest or heart attack.
I spent my days reading, trying to understand the competing philosophies.
A few weeks later. Of course everything went to hell like it always does. Arguments, yelling, fistfights, sexual jealousy. The smug, pompous bastards at the Lyceum gained the upper hand. The few of us left were reduced to sleeping on the ground and begging for food. If only I could find a stream that didn’t taste of urine.
Anyway let's look at the Cyreniacs.
Apollo of Cyrene
About Aristippus: Someone accused him of exposing his son as if it was not his offspring Whereupon he replied, "Phlegm, too, and vermin we know to be of our own begetting, but for all that, because they are useless, we cast them as far from us as possible."
About the god Theodorus: Friendship he rejected because it did not exist between the unwise nor between the wise; the former, when the want is removed, the friendship disappears, whereas the wise are selfsufficient and have no need of friends.
Theft, adultery, and sacrilege would be allowable upon occasion, since none of these acts is by nature base, if once you have removed the prejudice against them, which is kept up in order to hold the foolish multitude together. The wise man would indulge his passions openly without the least regard to circumstances.
Hegesias, the Cyrenaic philosopher, that he is said to have been forbidden by Ptolemy from delivering his lectures in the schools, because some who heard him made away with themselves.
The book I mentioned of that Hegesias is calledἈποκαρτερτερῶν, or “A Man who starves himself,” in which a man is represented as killing himself by starvation, till he is prevented by his friends, in reply to whom he reckons up all the miseries of human life.
The school of Hegesias as it is called, adopted the same ends, namely pleasure and pain. In their view there is no such thing as gratitude or friendship or beneficence, because it is not for themselves that we choose to do these things but simply from motives of interest, apart from which such conduct is nowhere found.94.They denied the possibility of happiness, for the body is infected with much suffering, while the soul shares in the sufferings of the body and is a prey to disturbance, and fortune often disappoints. From all this it follows that happiness cannot be realized. Moreover, life and death are each desirable in turn. But that there is anything naturally pleasant or unpleasant they deny; when some men are pleased and others pained by the same objects, this is owing to the lack or rarity or surfeit of such objects. Poverty and riches have no relevance to pleasure; for neither the rich nor the poor as such have any special share in pleasure.95.Slavery and freedom, nobility and low birth, honour and dishonour, are alike indifferent in a calculation of pleasure. To the fool life is advantageous, while to the wise it is a matter of indifference. The wise man will be guided in all he does by his own interests, for there is none other whom he regards as equally deserving. For supposing him to reap the greatest advantages from another, they would not be equal to what he contributes himself. They also disallow the claims of the senses, because they do not lead to accurate knowledge.
And the Sophists
The sophist Gorgias thought: first and foremost, that nothing exists; second, that even if it exists it is inapprehensible to man; third, that even if it is apprehensible; still it is without a doubt incapable of being expressed or explained to the next man.
The legendary Protagoras!
Socrates
And, indeed, if I may venture to say so, it is not a bad description of knowledge that you have given, but one which Protagoras also used to give. Only, he has said the same thing in a different way. For he says somewhere that man is “the measure of all things, of the existence of the things that are and the non-existence of the things that are not.” You have read that, I suppose?
Theaetetus Yes, I have read it often.
Socrates Well, is not this about what he means, that individual things are for me such as they appear to me, and for you in turn such as they appear to you —you and I being “man”?
Theaetetus Yes, that is what he says.
GORGIAS: That good, Socrates, which is truly the greatest, being that which gives to men freedom in their own persons, and to individuals the power of ruling over others in their several states.
CALLICLES: Nay, Socrates, for you profess to be a votary of the truth, and the truth is this:—that luxury and intemperance and licence, if they be provided with means, are virtue and happiness—all the rest is a mere bauble, agreements contrary to nature, foolish talk of men, nothing worth.
Sceptics
About Pyrrho the Skeptic: Afterwards he joined Anaxarchus, whom he accompanied on his travels everywhere so that he even forgathered with the Indian Gymnosophists and with the Magi. This led him to adopt a most noble philosophy, to quote Ascanius of Abdera, taking the form of agnosticism and suspension of judgement. He denied that anything was honourable or dishonourable, just or unjust. And so, universally, he held that there is nothing really existent, but custom and convention govern human action; for no single thing is in itself any more this than that.
62. He led a life consistent with this doctrine, going out of his way for nothing, taking no precaution, but facing all risks as they came, whether carts, precipices, dogs or what not, and, generally, leaving nothing to the arbitrament of the senses; but he was kept out of harm's way by his friends who, as Antigonus of Carystus tells us, used to follow close after him.
Often, our informant adds, he would leave his home and, telling no one, would go roaming about with whomsoever he chanced to meet. And once, when Anaxarchus fell into a slough, he passed by without giving him any help, and, while others blamed him, Anaxarchus himself praised his indifference and sang-froid.
Epicurians
Lucretius wrote:
That in no wise the nature of all things For us was fashioned by a power divine- So great the faults it stands encumbered with. First, mark all regions which are overarched By the prodigious reaches of the sky: One yawning part thereof the mountain-chains And forests of the beasts do have and hold; And cliffs, and desert fens, and wastes of sea (Which sunder afar the beaches of the lands) Possess it merely; and, again, thereof Well-nigh two-thirds intolerable heat And a perpetual fall of frost doth rob From mortal kind. And what is left to till, Even that the force of Nature would o'errun With brambles, did not human force oppose,- Long wont for livelihood to groan and sweat Over the two-pronged mattock and to cleave The soil in twain by pressing on the plough.