more notes
[Zadig] was invited to an excellent dinner, and was to have been poisoned during the second course; but during the first he received a message from Astarte, at which he left the table and departed. When a man is loved by a beautiful woman, said the great Zoroaster, he always gets out of trouble.
The Cockatrice, Zadig.
a note on schadenfraude
We fancy that we are less wretched when we are not alone in our sufferings. But, according to Zoroaster, that is the result not of evil destiny but of natural laws; for we find ourselves attracted towards another’s misfortunes, as like attracts like. The joy of a happy man would be an insult to our misery; but two unhappy wretches are like two weak shrubs which lean upon each other and so resist the storm.
The Fisherman, Zadig.
i am probably a better person this morning
Last night I had a migraine so bad that I curled up in bed and for a few hours, during which I shuttled between consciousness and a dark vacuum in time. I was too afraid to go to sleep because I was afraid I wouldn’t wake up this morning, and there I found myself relying on the great opiate: I lay in the dark and didn’t stop praying that I would make it past the night. I did, so I think I will go to the temple today.
I stopped short of calling Sp to ask him to pray to God that I would live, but that was mainly because I couldn’t turn around to grab my phone.
This brings me to an idea I’ve been mulling over in the past few months: I need religion because it gives me something to fall back on when everything else fails. Individual willpower sometimes only takes me this far… and anything more just gives me a headache. Who overcomes a migraine with sheer willpower anyway?
Some days I also wonder if Anglo-American jurisprudence can be applied to the entire state of affairs. First, is there a fiduciary duty? I repose trust and confidence in a Supreme Being (or a number of Supreme Beings), and Supreme Being undertakes to do something on my behalf, thus creating a fiduciary relationship. I guess the problem with this conception is that there is no way of proving the second limb: that SB undertook to do something for me. So, no fiduciary duty.
Is there a duty of care? This involves factual foreseeability, proximity, and public policy. Yes, there is factual foreseeability because SB would probably know that I would flounder without SB’s help (no gender-betraying pronouns here); I pray directly to SB, or through my agent Sp, thereby establishing proximity; public policy will probably not negate SB’s duty of care towards a believer. This establishes a duty of care, but does it mean I can sue for negligence?
Now this is where the application breaks down: there is no enforcement regime. This is probably why SB is a Supreme Being in the first place, duh. Therefore, to my beliefs I have to add that SB is never negligent — not that I can do much about it anyway.
I end now my tight-arsed exposition on religion with a disclaimer: that this is just a musing and I don’t usually mean whatever I say, in my life online and off (still alive). I don’t really apply year one law to religion; that’s just weird and not even smart enough to be pretentious — though pretentious things are often not very smart. Actually it’s just odd to apply jurisprudence to religion; they’re different bodies of understanding altogether. Oh and, people should really learn to laugh at themselves and things around them. I wasn’t kidding about the migraine, though.
In other news, and on a slightly related note, I am reading Zadig.
sex and the censors in Asia
There’s a short critical analysis of censorship in Asia here. Was the lead photo taken in Singapore? The parking sign looks oddly familiar but nothing in the text points to the little island. A snide remark in that direction, or simply a failure to obtain more relevant photographs?
again, tokyo?
また、東京へ行きたくなっちゃった。
a zen life
Today I’m making linguine with roasted capsicum (K taught me to do this). I also found a couple of plum tomatoes sitting in the bottom compartment of the fridge, so I chopped them up and sprinkled pepper and salt on them. We’ll probably have oats later in the day before the marder goes off for yoga.
I wonder if we can get lavender sprigs around here — I’d like to try making the lavender lemonade at Sunday Suppers.
行方不明
地図で君を捜してみた。
Norfolkっていったいどういう所でしょう。
今日の天気予報
どっか行こうか。探しに行こう。
落ち着いた性格、落ち着いた人生を。
Commercial Geeks
“These minibonds were really risky, which is why some people started calling them suicide bonds.”
one afternoon
I found this picture of Lou Doillon somewhere on the net.
