I like this poem. It's vivid and precise, and makes its points regarding death and rebirth rather well, before leaving us with a nice image of a phoenix, alive and flying in a starry sky. The positivity of that appeals to me.
Life is, indeed, a mystery. I believe both Twain and Einstein did not side with the Phoenix and said no wise man would want to return to this planet. Some of the greatest poets were antinatalists, arguing against procreation:
It’s a hundred times better not be born;
but if we cannot avoid the light,
the path of least harm is swiftly to return
to death’s eternal night!
—Sophocles, Oedipus at Colonus, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
***
Happy the soul who speeds back to the Source,
but crowned with peace is the one who never came.
—a Sophoclean passage from the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
***
According to Aristotle, it had become so common in ancient Greece to say "It is best not to be born" that it was considered a cliché!
"You ... may well consider those blessed and happiest who have departed this life before you ... This thought is indeed so old that the one who first uttered it is no longer known; it has been passed down to us from eternity, and hence doubtless it is true. Moreover, you know what is so often said and [now] passes for a trite expression ... It is best not to be born at all; and next to that, it is better to die than to live; and this is confirmed even by divine testimony [i.e, the wisdom of Silenus]: ... The best for them [humans] is not to be born at all, not to partake of nature's excellence; not to be is best, for both sexes. This should be our choice, if choice we have; and the next to this is, when we are born, to die as soon as we can." — Aristotle, Eudemus (354 BCE), surviving fragment quoted in Plutarch, Consolatio ad Apollonium, sec. xxvii
***
The Bible's wisest man, King Solomon, agreed with the ancient Greeks that it was best not to be born:
"So I returned, and considered all the oppressions that are done under the sun: and behold the tears of such as were oppressed, and they had no comforter; and on the side of their oppressors there was power; but they had no comforter. Wherefore I praised the dead which are already dead more than the living which are yet alive. Yea, better is he than both they, which hath not yet been, who hath not seen the evil work that is done under the sun." — King James Bible, Ecclesiastes 4:1-3, attributed to King Solomon
***
Another strong, relentlessly questioning voice was that of a blind Arabic seer ...
Antinatalist Shyari Couplets by Abul Ala Al-Ma'arri (973-1057)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
Lighten your tread:
The ground beneath your feet is composed of the dead.
I side with Job and the Book of Job, among others.
I love The Book of Ecclesiastes, it’s a song, a dower one, but I think it’s partly by making it through the darker stuff that we discover a higher light. Think of all the starry-eyed people, they’re just as useless as the “black-pilled” folks, who no matter what, maintain that it’s all for naught ie nothing is worth fighting for, and so it’s best to just look out for #1.
Ecclesiastes is great, but it’s also not the final word. Consider Brahms’ “Four Serious Songs.”The first three are settings of Ecclesiastes; the last is a setting of Corinthians. The cycle is meant to be listened to as a whole, with the concluding song transforming everything that came before. Having made it through the dark realities, everything that came before is given new meaning.
I feel that’s the takeaway from the Book of Job as well, one of the most poetic works of the Old Testament. Brahms’ composition essentially captures the qualitative shift from the old to the New Testament. It’s quite genius — one of his crowning achievements.
The "god" of Job was an absolute bastard, far worse than the Devil.
1 Corinthians 13 says, in effect, that if God is not Divine Love, he is nothing at all, and all the words of the Bible are useless noise: clanging gongs and tinkling cymbals. Like Thomas Jefferson, but far more exacting, one would have to snip out 95% of the pages of the Bible that don't live up to the ultra-high standard of Paul's epiphany on Divine Love. One would have to consign both Jehovah and Jesus to nonexistence -- mere nothings -- for not saving everyone, if they are capable of salvation.
Now we have Hell we know that death can be even worse than life. So we can begin to feel grateful for the sheer gift of life. This is one of the benefits of dualism.
Nor is the avoidance of Hell so difficult: all we have to do is be good.
Indeed if we are Christians we don't even have to be good. God does all that for us. All we have to do is believe in Christ. In fact the Bible points out that we are bound to be evil anyway. However Christ has already taken our punishment on his own back, so all we have to do is be grateful to him.
On top of that, in these latter days, we now have meditation, which can give us all the benefits of Heaven before we actually get there, and so with its help life can be very pleasant indeed.
Hell is a giant con, created by the witch doctors of Christianity and other religions to rob the gullible of trillions of dollars.
According to the Bible, being "good" is of no use because "there is no one righteous, no not one." But the Christian version of "salvation" makes its "god" infinitely worse than the Devil, because a diabolical, wildly unjust "god" sends billions of souls to "hell" for guessing wrong about which religion to believe, all completely without evidence that anything they say is true.
If Christians had an ethical bone in their bodies, they would tell their "god" that "hell" is a sickening, infinitely unjust torture chamber unworthy of even Hitler, and find something better to believe. Perhaps in the Tooth Fairy.
How can anyone be taken in by such an evil con job?
I don't think any compassionate person could wish hell on their worst enemy. As for an excuse to carry on living, we all die in the end, so where does that get us? A hell-based religion is like putting a torture chamber next to your children's bedrooms, then telling them how much you "love" them.
Blake is not being "ambivalent." He is saying that the biblical god IS actually Satan. He says, very clearly and without ambivalence, that Satan is worshipped by the names of Jesus and Jehovah. Blake's position on the Creator-God was alway nonambivalent. The Creator was responsible for all evil, making the Creator the Devil. You seem to consider yourself an intellectual, and yet you fail to see Blake's very clear position: that the Creator was responsible for all evil, all suffering and all death.
Most human beings are black and white on Hitler. Blake saw the Creator as worse than Hitler, as the ultimate evil. So of course he was black and white about the biblical god.
Most Christians don't believe they will have to love Satan. The majority of Christians believe Satan will end up in hell. There is no reason to believe Blake thought he would have to love Satan. You seem to see Blake through your own beliefs, rather than giving him credit for what he actually said, so very clearly. That is not being an intellectual, but a poor thinker. An intellectual would realize that different people think differently.
Blake was no Christian in the orthodox sense of believing God is good, or that Jesus is the Savior, or any of that. Blake thought the Christian god was the Devil, and that is what he clearly says, with no ambivalence, in the poem in question. He says to Satan, "You are worshipped by the names Jesus and Jehovah, but you are a dunce, you are powerless to change human nature, you can't even tell a man from is clothes, and you remain Satan in decline. The last line is open to interpretation. I think it means that the Satan-God is a lost pilgrim's dream, a figment of his imagination, and that Satan residence is hell.
I like this poem. It's vivid and precise, and makes its points regarding death and rebirth rather well, before leaving us with a nice image of a phoenix, alive and flying in a starry sky. The positivity of that appeals to me.
Life is, indeed, a mystery. I believe both Twain and Einstein did not side with the Phoenix and said no wise man would want to return to this planet. Some of the greatest poets were antinatalists, arguing against procreation:
It’s a hundred times better not be born;
but if we cannot avoid the light,
the path of least harm is swiftly to return
to death’s eternal night!
—Sophocles, Oedipus at Colonus, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
***
Happy the soul who speeds back to the Source,
but crowned with peace is the one who never came.
—a Sophoclean passage from the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
***
According to Aristotle, it had become so common in ancient Greece to say "It is best not to be born" that it was considered a cliché!
"You ... may well consider those blessed and happiest who have departed this life before you ... This thought is indeed so old that the one who first uttered it is no longer known; it has been passed down to us from eternity, and hence doubtless it is true. Moreover, you know what is so often said and [now] passes for a trite expression ... It is best not to be born at all; and next to that, it is better to die than to live; and this is confirmed even by divine testimony [i.e, the wisdom of Silenus]: ... The best for them [humans] is not to be born at all, not to partake of nature's excellence; not to be is best, for both sexes. This should be our choice, if choice we have; and the next to this is, when we are born, to die as soon as we can." — Aristotle, Eudemus (354 BCE), surviving fragment quoted in Plutarch, Consolatio ad Apollonium, sec. xxvii
***
The Bible's wisest man, King Solomon, agreed with the ancient Greeks that it was best not to be born:
"So I returned, and considered all the oppressions that are done under the sun: and behold the tears of such as were oppressed, and they had no comforter; and on the side of their oppressors there was power; but they had no comforter. Wherefore I praised the dead which are already dead more than the living which are yet alive. Yea, better is he than both they, which hath not yet been, who hath not seen the evil work that is done under the sun." — King James Bible, Ecclesiastes 4:1-3, attributed to King Solomon
***
Another strong, relentlessly questioning voice was that of a blind Arabic seer ...
Antinatalist Shyari Couplets by Abul Ala Al-Ma'arri (973-1057)
loose translation/interpretation by Michael R. Burch
Lighten your tread:
The ground beneath your feet is composed of the dead.
Walk slowly here and always take great pains
Not to trample some departed saint's remains.
And happiest here is the hermit with no hand
In making sons, who dies a childless man.
***
Bittersight
by Michael R. Burch
for Abu al-Ala Al-Ma'arri
To be plagued with sight
in the Land of the Blind,
—to know birth is death
and that Death is kind—
is to be flogged like Eve
(stripped, sentenced and fined)
because evil is “good”
in some backwards mind.
I side with Job and the Book of Job, among others.
I love The Book of Ecclesiastes, it’s a song, a dower one, but I think it’s partly by making it through the darker stuff that we discover a higher light. Think of all the starry-eyed people, they’re just as useless as the “black-pilled” folks, who no matter what, maintain that it’s all for naught ie nothing is worth fighting for, and so it’s best to just look out for #1.
Ecclesiastes is great, but it’s also not the final word. Consider Brahms’ “Four Serious Songs.”The first three are settings of Ecclesiastes; the last is a setting of Corinthians. The cycle is meant to be listened to as a whole, with the concluding song transforming everything that came before. Having made it through the dark realities, everything that came before is given new meaning.
I feel that’s the takeaway from the Book of Job as well, one of the most poetic works of the Old Testament. Brahms’ composition essentially captures the qualitative shift from the old to the New Testament. It’s quite genius — one of his crowning achievements.
I should probably run it at some point.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=knHeiIjzvYU&pp=ygUZQnJhaG1zIGZvdXIgc2VyaW91cyBzb25ncw%3D%3D
Lyrics/verses set by Brahms:
1. Ecclesiastes 3:19
For that which befalleth the sons of men befalleth beasts,
as the one dieth, so dieth the other;
yea, they have all one breath;
so that a man hath no preeminence above a beast:
for all is vanity.
All go unto one place;
all are of the dust
and all turn to dust again.
Who knoweth the spirit of man
that goeth upward,
and the spirit of the beast
that goeth downward to the earth?
Wherefore I perceive that there is nothing better,
than that a man should rejoice in his own works;
for that is his portion:
for who shall bring him to see
what shall be after him?
2. Ecclesiastes 4:1-3
So I returned, and considered
all the oppressions that are done under the sun:
and behold the tears of such
as were oppressed, and they had no comforter;
and on the side of their oppressors there was power;
but they had no comforter.
Wherefore I praised the dead
which are already dead
more than the living
which are yet alive.
Yea, better is he than both they, which hath not yet been,
who hath not seen the evil work
that is done under the sun.
3. Ecclesiastes (Sirach), 41:1-2.
O, death, how bitter you are,
in the thoughts of a a man
who has good days, enough
and a sorrow-free life
and who is fortunate in all things,
and still pleased to eat well!
O, death,
how bitter you are,
O death, how well you serve him who is in need
Who is feeble and old,
and is beset by all sorrows,
and has nothing better to hope for
or to expect;
O death,
how well you serve.
4. I Corinthians 13:1-3, 12-13.
Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels,
and have not charity,
I am become as sounding brass,
or a tinkling cymbal.
And though I have the gift of prophecy,
and understand all mysteries,
and all knowledge;
and though I have all fatih,
so that I could remove mountains,
and have not charity,
I am nothing.
And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor,
and though I give my body to be burned,
and have not charity,
it profiteth me nothing.
For now we see through a glass,
darkly;
but then face to face;
now I know in part;
but then I shall know
even as also I am known.
And now abideth faith, hope, agape (love)
these three;
but the greatest of these is agape.
The "god" of Job was an absolute bastard, far worse than the Devil.
1 Corinthians 13 says, in effect, that if God is not Divine Love, he is nothing at all, and all the words of the Bible are useless noise: clanging gongs and tinkling cymbals. Like Thomas Jefferson, but far more exacting, one would have to snip out 95% of the pages of the Bible that don't live up to the ultra-high standard of Paul's epiphany on Divine Love. One would have to consign both Jehovah and Jesus to nonexistence -- mere nothings -- for not saving everyone, if they are capable of salvation.
They hadn't invented Hell then.
Now we have Hell we know that death can be even worse than life. So we can begin to feel grateful for the sheer gift of life. This is one of the benefits of dualism.
Nor is the avoidance of Hell so difficult: all we have to do is be good.
Indeed if we are Christians we don't even have to be good. God does all that for us. All we have to do is believe in Christ. In fact the Bible points out that we are bound to be evil anyway. However Christ has already taken our punishment on his own back, so all we have to do is be grateful to him.
On top of that, in these latter days, we now have meditation, which can give us all the benefits of Heaven before we actually get there, and so with its help life can be very pleasant indeed.
Hell is a giant con, created by the witch doctors of Christianity and other religions to rob the gullible of trillions of dollars.
According to the Bible, being "good" is of no use because "there is no one righteous, no not one." But the Christian version of "salvation" makes its "god" infinitely worse than the Devil, because a diabolical, wildly unjust "god" sends billions of souls to "hell" for guessing wrong about which religion to believe, all completely without evidence that anything they say is true.
If Christians had an ethical bone in their bodies, they would tell their "god" that "hell" is a sickening, infinitely unjust torture chamber unworthy of even Hitler, and find something better to believe. Perhaps in the Tooth Fairy.
How can anyone be taken in by such an evil con job?
At least it gives us a good excuse to carry on living. And a place to wish our enemies into without having to do worse.
I don't think any compassionate person could wish hell on their worst enemy. As for an excuse to carry on living, we all die in the end, so where does that get us? A hell-based religion is like putting a torture chamber next to your children's bedrooms, then telling them how much you "love" them.
In which case, like Dante, I must be lacking in compassion.
(But isn't Hell exactly where people lacking in compassion go? After all it's where Dante went.)
There never was a "hell" if one reads the Bible. If the Bible is not authoritative, everything Dante believed was sheer evil stupidity.
Blake is not being "ambivalent." He is saying that the biblical god IS actually Satan. He says, very clearly and without ambivalence, that Satan is worshipped by the names of Jesus and Jehovah. Blake's position on the Creator-God was alway nonambivalent. The Creator was responsible for all evil, making the Creator the Devil. You seem to consider yourself an intellectual, and yet you fail to see Blake's very clear position: that the Creator was responsible for all evil, all suffering and all death.
Most human beings are black and white on Hitler. Blake saw the Creator as worse than Hitler, as the ultimate evil. So of course he was black and white about the biblical god.
Most Christians don't believe they will have to love Satan. The majority of Christians believe Satan will end up in hell. There is no reason to believe Blake thought he would have to love Satan. You seem to see Blake through your own beliefs, rather than giving him credit for what he actually said, so very clearly. That is not being an intellectual, but a poor thinker. An intellectual would realize that different people think differently.
Blake was no Christian in the orthodox sense of believing God is good, or that Jesus is the Savior, or any of that. Blake thought the Christian god was the Devil, and that is what he clearly says, with no ambivalence, in the poem in question. He says to Satan, "You are worshipped by the names Jesus and Jehovah, but you are a dunce, you are powerless to change human nature, you can't even tell a man from is clothes, and you remain Satan in decline. The last line is open to interpretation. I think it means that the Satan-God is a lost pilgrim's dream, a figment of his imagination, and that Satan residence is hell.