When it comes, it comes on slowly
The day feels holy, a hush falls down
Whispered names, remembered faces
From desperate places, all gather ‘round
– Tom Paxton, “Come on, Holy”
Early morning and the first heavy snow is falling. It is beautiful. I walk around the lake in the holy hush. Alone except for two newly arrived ducks swimming on an open patch of icing water. When I stop to watch them, the soft sound of the falling snow grows gradually louder, beating drums, like truly listening to Beethoven, not the lionized one, about whose honored status James Agee wrote “is the one surest sign of fatal misunderstanding, and is the kiss of Judas,” but the Beethoven whose music you won’t hear nicely but will hurt you and for which you should be glad.
Although I have come here to flee for an interlude the sound of the world’s anguish and to contemplate its beauty, I am deflected, as usual. How could I not be? Isn’t it true as the poet Rilke said, that “beauty is nothing / but the beginning of terror,” and we, with all our strange thoughts inside us, try to swallow the sobs that accompany all our joys.
My brother-in-law died unexpectedly a few days ago.
I watch the ducks swim so placidly in circles and I wonder.
I realize that my thoughts are meaningless to most but me, a minor writer in a world of screamers, yet I record them here to learn what I may think and to share with a few other human souls the musings of a distraught man in a world made mad and running red like a butcher’s bench with the blood of the innocent shed by ruthless people. I am old but hope I am forever young with a strong foundation that will help me find some insights along this path. Who knows?
I have spent many decades lost in beauty and an intense scholar’s study of the propaganda the world’s rulers use to convince the gullible that their intentions are pure and their actions are carried out for the common good. Few have heeded my findings. Why should they?
While the rulers’ endless lies should be apparent, they are not, for too many people have built their own lives upon foundations made of sand, and though they are shaking, few believe they will fall. And to think the official doll’s house of fabricated reality within which they dwell and upon whose words they build their lives will also fall – that is deemed impossible.
William Saroyan, in his 1939 play “The Time of Your Life,” (winner of both the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and the New York Drama Critics Circle Award) has a minor character, the Arab, repeat, “No foundation. All the way down the line.” That is all he has to say. “No foundation. All the way down the line.” Concise and cutting to the bone. True then, but much, much truer now.
Then came World War II and the defeat of Germany, Japan, and their allies with the United States dropping atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki after fire-bombing Tokyo, Dresden, Cologne and dozens of other Japanese and German cities, intentionally killing vast numbers of civilians.
And if that wasn’t enough, the future CIA Director Allen Dulles, James Jesus Angleton, and colleagues brought nearly 2,000 Nazis scientists, engineers, biological weapons experts to the U.S. to work in government programs, while helping thousands more flee justice by helping them escape to South America and other places along the “rat lines.”
Thus the U.S. became the evil they denounced in others, and it could rightly be said Hitler triumphed in defeat.
Upon this evil foundation, which is now crumbling, the U.S. empire was built despite its alleged Christian underpinnings.
There’s an old saying:
And everyone who hears these words of mine and does not do them will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand. And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat against that house, and it fell, and great was the fall of it.
And when Jesus finished these sayings, the crowds were astonished at his teaching, for he was teaching them as one who had authority, and not as their scribes. Mathew: 7:21-29
Being alone on my walk helps me focus on the elementary truth that we are all mortal and that beauty is terrifying since it evokes the anguish of its and our endings. And when we go, end, pass on, or die – take your pick – all the secret thoughts, hopes, memories, lives, and dreams we have had will vanish with us, if we have not, while living, found a way to tell the truths we harbor in our secret hearts. We will be but mysterious melodies others might hum without grasping our lyrics, as the Gershwin brothers referenced in their song “They Can’t Take that Away From Me.” Our melodies may linger on for a while once our songs have ended, as the songwriter says, but who we really were will vanish with us into the mists of time.
In quiet moments of timeless reflection, everyone knows we are complex creatures; just as they quickly don their masquerades when time resumes to face the faces that they face to deny such complexity.
When I left the ducks to their circle games, I continued on my way along the lake. The snow blew from the north into my face and made it hard to see. The lake and the neighboring woods disappeared and so did my thoughts as I constantly wiped my eyes of snow. But I felt a certain joy beyond telling.
As the snow and wind eased up, I saw up a hill through a cut in the woods a large doe with her three fawns grazing under some sheltering pine trees on posted property owned by a local college. A smart mother, I thought, since I knew shotgun deer hunting season was underway.
It was then that the hushed peace of the morning was broken by a few shotgun blasts from the western woods. Did the doe and her fawns, who in days past I would often meet and converse with at very close range along the road, take heed? Can such creatures learn to avoid men with guns? Why were the hunters on the prowl for deer to kill? Did they need the meat to eat, or did they just get their kicks from the killing and slicing and gutting of once living creatures who never did them any harm?
I wondered – and leave that wondering to you – as my mind turned to the genocide in Gaza and the murder of the innocent in so many other places by men with guns and weapons more amazing in their killing power, manufactured in spotless factories by people indifferent to how their bread is buttered. But I knew that the workers on the factory floors were no more guilty than those whose butter comes from investments in these ghoulish places. Yes, Thoreau knew:
Do not ask how your bread is buttered, it will make you sick if you do – and the like. A man had better starve at once than lose his innocence in the process of getting his bread. If within the sophisticate man there is not an unsophisticated one, then he is but one of the devil’s angels.
When I was about four years old, I went with my mother to the local butcher shop. When Sol the butcher came to wait on my mother, I noticed his white apron was covered in blood, so I asked him if he cut himself. He laughed and asked me if I would like a slice of liverwurst.
Didn’t Hitler claim to be a vegetarian because of animal suffering?
The shotgun blasts increased on my way home. I stopped to gather some long-needle pine and wild red berry branches for our mantle since it was December and the birth of the Prince of Peace was approaching. My knife slipped and I cut my finger, the blood dripping onto the white snow matched the berries’ redness. It was startlingly beautiful, but the cut was painful as I stanched it with a few tissues.
When I got home and was bandaging my finger and my wife was decorating our mantle with my cuttings, I recalled an analysis of our current situation offered by the French demographer, Emmanuel Todd, “The Dislocation of the West.”
Todd is an all facts guy, an historian, a sociologist, a middle-of the roader, far from a romantic dreamer, an analyst of the extensive data that he gathers. Years back, based on data analysis, he correctly predicted the fall of the Soviet Union. Now he is predicting the fall of the West based on certain specific variables that he considers key. When I read his work and heard him talk, I concurred completely, for I had for years, based on my work in the sociology of religion, reached the same conclusion without all his data to back me up.
We in the West, he says, are living at a time when nihilism, meaninglessness, and zero religious belief is the norm. It has come on slowly over a century and a half to the point where nothing seems holy. We have passed from a Zombie religious state when traditional religious values, but not belief, survived somewhat, to a time when nihilism undergirds everything. A nihilistic foundation, meaning no foundation. Reality has been undermined and a zombie state of lostness prevails, and irrational pure evil state nihilism lives for endless war. Moral values have disappeared behind a façade of fake belief.
If Thoreau were around, he might ask people what they really believed about God, death, and moral values, and the stuttering responses would befit the times. But no one is asking.
The song is over but only the melody lingers on, even as Bing Crosby sings “O Little Town of Bethlehem” on a cyber sale at Amazon.
Todd is a data man, a non-believer, a normal academic, and yet from his research he probably sounds to many as if he is unhinged. But he is just repeating what Jesus, Saroyan’s character, and the Protestant theologian Paul Tillich (in 1948) all said was happening with the shaking and undermining of the Western foundation. Hell would break loose. Nihilism would triumph.
And it did, of course, and will unless …. I don’t know; Todd has no answer.
I think of all the blood in the woods, on the tracks, all the blood being shed everywhere, the killers licking their chops, the earth indifferently drinking all the blood, and the words of the French poet Jacques Prevert’s “Song in the Blood”:
Where’s it going all this spilled blood?
Murder’s blood, war’s blood, misery’s blood
And the blood of men tortured in prisons
And the blood of children calmly tortured by their papa and their mama
And the blood of men whose heads bleed in padded cells
And the roofers blood when the roofer slips and falls from the roof
And the blood that comes and flows in great gushes with the newborn
The mother cries
The baby cries
The blood flows
The earth turns
The earth doesn’t stop turning
The blood doesn’t stop flowing
Where’s it going all this spilled blood?
Blood of the blackjacked
Of the humiliated
Of suicides
Of firing squad victims
Of the condemned
And the blood of those that die just like that by accident
But then my wife suggested that Todd and I may be wrong. When religious belief was strong in the West, weren’t nations and people slaughtering their enemies in the name of religion? Don’t many social scientists use data to argue points that lack counterpoints? Haven’t people long been fanatical killers in the name of religion and for their gods? When did morals or religious belief ever stop the shedding of blood? Such times are few and far between.
Perhaps religious belief is not the explanatory variable that Todd thinks it is and seemed so to me when I first read his work and even concurred with it a few minutes ago.
Could not the key be that mysterious human attribute – love – that like despair cannot be measured, that finds in every other living creature a part of oneself, just the inkling in our hearts that everyone is us and should always be treated as an end and not a means, especially at a time when the spiritual has been subordinated to the technical, everything has become means, and the ends have disappeared.
It may sound laughable to suggest that Fyodor Dostoevsky explained it better than all the data gatherers in his story “The Dream of A Ridiculous Man”:
It is so simple: in one day, in one hour, everything would be settled at once. The one thing is – love thy neighbor as thyself – that is the one thing. That is all, nothing else is needed. You will instantly find how to live.
Or as Jesus said and other great religious leaders affirmed:
Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity [love], I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal.
– Corinthians 13
Who can explain it? Who can tell you why?
Not this fool. I can only wonder as I wander in the beautiful falling snow. Like Dostoevsky, “I will not, I cannot believe that evil is the normal condition of men. Yet all of them only laugh at my belief.”
It’s understandable.
Edward Curtin is a sociologist, researcher, poet, essayist, journalist, novelist…writer — beyond a cage of categories. His new book is “At the Lost and Found: Personal & Political Dispatches of Resistance and Hope,” (Clarity Press),
May the peace, blessings, and mercy of God be upon you
Our true Islamic religion has urged its followers to love and strengthen the bonds of love, to purify feelings of affection, and to strengthen the bonds of relationships between people. Man cannot live in this worldly life except through love and affection. Through love, communication is established and unity is harmonized among Muslims in their homes and homelands, mutual support is genuine, and cooperation is achieved. Love is what preserves human relationships and strengthens fraternal bonds… If love is achieved among people, depression and anxiety will disappear from their souls. For man is a spirit that soars, a mind that understands, a heart that loves, and a body that moves… Love is emotions, feelings, behavior, and expression. Love is an innate, noble human feeling, manifested and revealed by a heart free from malice, deceit, envy, hatred, and resentment. The Almighty says, through the words of the sincere believers: “Our Lord, forgive us and our brothers who preceded us in faith and do not place in our hearts any resentment toward those who have believed. Our Lord, indeed You are Kind and Merciful.”… And the high status of love is sufficient in that every person desires to be loved and hates to be hated. The discussion of love is beautiful, lengthy, and extensive. And there is ample room for our worries, sorrows, and tragedies, however numerous and burdensome they may be. These should not prevent us from speaking of love, declaring love, and expressing affection at all times.
O brothers and sisters in faith: No religion urges its followers to love, cherish, and be kind to one another like Islam. The words “love” and “affection” appear in the Book of God Almighty more than eighty times. Indeed, it is among the wisdoms and subtleties of our religion’s teachings that it commands us to declare love and not conceal it. Our Prophet Muhammad, peace and blessings be upon him, said: “If a person loves his brother, let him tell him that he loves him.” Biographical accounts relate that the Messenger of God, peace and blessings be upon him, delivered a sermon on the topic of love during his first days in Medina after his arrival as an emigrant. Among what he said, peace and blessings be upon him, was: “Love what God loves, and love God with all your hearts, and do not tire of the words of God and His remembrance.” He also said: “Love one another for the sake of God’s love among you, for God hates that His covenant be broken.”…
Dear brothers and sisters: The feelings of sincere love within a person are truly remarkable; they extend to everything that falls under their senses, their gaze, their contact, and their relationships. Out of love for his Lord, his Prophet, his religion and beliefs, his self, his parents, his spouse and children, his siblings and friends, all people, his homeland, its righteous leaders, his possessions, and all that surrounds him—the natural world and its inanimate and animate beings, with their beauty, colors, scents, landscapes, and adornments.
O believers: The highest and greatest love is the love of God, may His glory be exalted, who bestowed the blessings of existence and sustenance, guidance, righteousness, and happiness. Then comes the love of the beloved Prophet Muhammad, peace and blessings be upon him and his family, the means by which creation reaches their Lord. Through him, God guided humanity. Our love for God encompasses our prayers, our worship, our life, and our death. He is worthy of piety and forgiveness. And the love for the Messenger of God, peace and blessings be upon him, is our example, our role model, our beloved, and our intercessor. Every calamity after him is immense. Anas ibn Malik, may God be pleased with him, narrated that a man asked the Messenger of God, peace and blessings be upon him, “When is the Hour?” He replied, “What have you prepared for it?” The man said, “I have not prepared much in the way of prayer, fasting, or charity, except that I love God and His Messenger.” The Messenger of God, peace and blessings be upon him, said to him, “You will be with whom you love.” In another narration, he said, “A person is with whom he loves.” Anas said: “I have never seen the Muslims rejoice over anything after Islam as much as they rejoiced over that.” And no servant will find the sweetness of faith until God and His Messenger are more beloved to him than anything else. Our Lord has nourished us with His blessings, fashioned us with His power, provided for us from His abundant grace, and managed our affairs with His kindness and wisdom.
I hope you can read the truth in islam and i think you will be satisfied.
Thanks again
After I finished reading your lovely post with all of its beauty, horror, and erudite musings, this commonplace thought among others bubbled up: You never know.
Lately, I’ve noticed that many people—whether right-wingers, social democrats, Marxist leftists, Jewish Zionists, Palestinian activists, conspiracy theorists, or mainstream bourgeois leftist activists—often appear on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and other social media praising their kings or totalitarian rulers, from Trump and Putin to Maduro and China. In a way, they all seem like slaves. Even radical leftist political parties can impose a totalitarian grip over their members, dictating how they should act. Governments of all kinds, along with institutions like churches, families, and workplaces, are ultimately forms of dictatorship that exert control over their members.
Many people have a mistaken idea of what it means to be a slave. They often picture the traditional image from ancient times, with chains and harsh treatment from owners. But in reality, many humans today are still slaves in different ways, without experiencing true freedom. Mankind isn’t truly free.
I don’t understand how most people can be slaves and not free. Many still live in a way that feels like slavery. For example, workers are bound to their business owners and bosses, wives to their husbands, some husbands to their wives, children to their parents, and even friends to their own friends. That’s why Max Stirner emphasized the importance of the ego, and why the song *Tom Sawyer* by Rush speaks about being a free person with complete free will, untied to any god or government. La Bruyère, Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche argued that true greatness comes from solitude, not from crowds. Emma Goldman, the anarchist, even described marriage as a form of slavery.
Michel Foucault argued that all schools and universities are essentially prisons. That’s why Pink Floyd wrote a song suggesting that educational institutions aren’t necessary, as they represent thought control. People can even become prisoners of their own habits and traditions.
Some religions, like Jehovah’s Witnesses, choose not to celebrate any holidays, but most people still celebrate Thanksgiving and Christmas. This is often influenced by traditions, habits, corporations, and the media, which encourage spending large amounts of money during this time of year to mark the Christmas season.
People aren’t even self-interested enough; they care more about Christmas celebrations than their own economic situation or future. That’s why Nietzsche embraced the idea of evolving into higher men and women—individuals truly free from all traditions, habits, and moral codes. Humanity needs to evolve to bring about the overthrow of all governments and ruling classes worldwide, in order to achieve liberty and freedom.
Thank you Ed. My walks in the nearby hills help keep my heart tethered to the natural world in the midst of all the human created madness about. Both the coyote and the deer I saw recently while hiking seemed to stare back at me as if asking “why?” After a lifetime of asking that same question – “why?” – I still had no answer for them. We all continued on our way content as we must be with the next step, the next breeze, and next turn in the trail.
Dear Edward and friends:Merry Christmas to all! Enjoy the holiday with your friends and family, because life is too short and often too painful. As Baudelaire said, people should be drunk all the time to avoid the boredom and pain of the passing of time—perhaps this is what drove Jim Morrison to drink so much. There was truly a philosophy behind his drinking. Nietzsche also suggested that one should be drunk in order to create great art.
I was reading a book by Epicurus, and he suggested that people should embrace pleasures. Schopenhauer also noted that most of human life is filled with pain and spent on activities like work and chores that are physically and mentally taxing, while moments of genuine pleasure are fleeting.
Many Americans are quite revolutionary and strongly dislike capitalism, as well as both Democrats and Republicans. However, I think the real reason some seem indifferent to the idea of Trump causing the deaths of 2 million Venezuelans if he were to invade Venezuela lies in the pressures of work and domestic responsibilities.
In the book The Politics, Aristotle wrote that too much physical labor can destroy the ability to think clearly, read, or engage in emotional, spiritual, and intellectual pursuits. Nietzsche also claimed that excessive physical labor can even kill the motivation for religious activities. Life in America is undeniably physically demanding, filled with regular jobs, household tasks, driving, and more. There’s even a book by Bob Black advocating for the abolition of work. I don’t understand how can many americans love working so much. There is even an anarchist manifesto calling for the abolition of restaurants, there is no greater pain than working at restaurants
Take a look at the negative consequences of living in a society that requires too much work:
“No one should ever work. Work is the source of nearly all the misery in the world. Almost any evil you’d care to name comes from working or from living in a world designed for work. In order to stop suffering, we have to stop working. That doesn’t mean we have to stop doing things. It does mean creating a new way of life based on play; in other words, a ludic revolution. By “play” I mean also festivity, creativity, conviviality, commensality, and maybe even art. There is more to play than child’s play, as worthy as that is. I call for a collective adventure in generalized joy and freely interdependent exuberance. Play isn’t passive. Doubtless we all need a lot more time for sheer sloth and slack than we ever enjoy now, regardless of income or occupation, but once recovered from employment-induced exhaustion nearly all of us want to act.”
-Bob Black, The Abolition of Work
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/bob-black-the-abolition-of-work
Maybe the real reason most Americans won’t stop Trump from harming Venezuela or steering the U.S. toward a potential World War 3 dystopian future is simply that they’re too busy working all day, too tired, and too exhausted.
We put to much effort and time doing the wrong kind of work.
Being a slave! “not only has man accepted his enslavement, he has even become proud of his enslavement. And this is a terrible thing!”
Work – grow food – small scale farming – we most likely want to eat food
Spend time looking at the trees – Climb a tree and simply set on a limb and contemplate.
listen to music or play music or simply hum or sing – create you own music
help others doing the above
sew new buttons on your coat
spend more time talking to your pet dogs or cats. They are quite intelligent so we will learn something from them.
None of the above require 40 or more hours of misery, while inside a building with terrible ventilation and pathetic lies and spoken gobbledegook!
Run away from anyone wearing a shiny necktie and shiny suit…., militants and zombies.
There are other things we could be doing in place of lying to ourselves and others.
You’re right, thanks for the comment. I don’t understand how most people can be slaves and not free. Many still live in a way that feels like slavery. For example, workers are bound to their business owners and bosses, wives to their husbands, some husbands to their wives, children to their parents, and even friends to their own friends. That’s why Max Stirner emphasized the importance of the ego, and why the song *Tom Sawyer* by Rush speaks about being a free person with complete free will, untied to any god or government. La Bruyère, Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche argued that true greatness comes from solitude, not from crowds. Emma Goldman, the anarchist, even described marriage as a form of slavery.
Michel Foucault argued that all schools and universities are essentially prisons. That’s why Pink Floyd wrote a song suggesting that educational institutions aren’t necessary, as they represent thought control. People can even become prisoners of their own habits and traditions.
Some religions, like Jehovah’s Witnesses, choose not to celebrate any holidays, but most people still celebrate Thanksgiving and Christmas. This is often influenced by traditions, habits, corporations, and the media, which encourage spending large amounts of money during this time of year to mark the Christmas season.
People aren’t even self-interested enough; they care more about Christmas celebrations than their own economic situation or future. That’s why Nietzsche embraced the idea of evolving into higher men and women—individuals truly free from all traditions, habits, and moral codes. Humanity needs to evolve to bring about the overthrow of all governments and ruling classes worldwide, in order to achieve liberty and freedom.
Well, we’re thoroughly indoctrinated and we cling to our fear of so many things. Being confused doesn’t help. So where do we find clarity and courage? The corner therapist will not likely be helpful.
People who have similar ideas and feelings need to start talking; have real conversations about what is in common and then how to go forward with these insights. Perhaps at the very least, citizens, some group of citizens can become at least 75% independent of the main insanity ! It will be helpful to understand and learn compassion, learn how to listen to others feelings and the common denominator, the common experience will be felt/heard ! Don’t quote any bible or other book…that’s wondering away from the self and the group!
Hi again, Thanks for your comments. I think it’s extremely hard, almost impossible, for people to truly liberate themselves and break free from being like slaves, as many are now, to becoming independent individuals. That kind of freedom requires knowledge, reading, and studying, but most people in the USA—especially during this time of year—are too caught up in grocery shopping, cooking, daily hassles, and chores.
And the same thing happens all year long—Americans are too physically tired, worried, and busy to have the energy or time to really think about why only a few people in America and around the world live very good lives, while the majority are forced to endure a living hell.
A Marxist friend once told me that most countries are split into a 20% and an 80%. The 20% make up the oppressor class, economically exploiting the 80%. In poorer countries, the share of the oppressor class is even smaller, while the proportion of people living in harsh, painful conditions is even larger.
That’s why Schopenhauer said the world is hell, life is constant pain, and true happiness doesn’t exist. Most people who claim to be happy are really just lying, because happiness only seems real when you’re drunk or on drugs.
Something has got to give !!
I’ve become an anti-social, deeply introverted person, spending 99% of my time alone. Even without close connections, I’ve noticed what feels like a global conspiracy, where most people seem to support the status quo and resist any chance for change—or even discussing the idea of a completely new USA, with a workers’ humanist government and a fresh philosophy of life rooted in altruism, rationality, love, science, and economic progress for all.
Off topic.
You’re probably already aware of this story Ed:
https://www.winterwatch.net/2025/12/zapruders-jfk-assassination-footage-altered-by-nefarious-forces/
Peace be with you.
All of the comments already expressed I endorse. And yes – the wandering in the fresh and still falling snow – thinking of the death of your brother-in-law – the deer with fawns – hunters gunfire – and the wider world – the ending of the US as we have known it – engage in feeding the genocide in Palestine – in murdering people in other lands – Iran, Venezuela anyone – me as a US watcher from afar and occasional traveller/visitor to many of its corners – now mostly in despair at its warmongering and lawlessness abroad (and within). I’m wandering about myself in some senses – returned from a couple of months in the UK and Eire – now writing up my diary notes – the places and faces – kinfolk, casual strangers engaged in conversation – not only English, Scottish, Irish or Welsh but of varied ethnicities and and foreign origins – visiting, studying, working – and observing how people were with each other. I observed very little rancour – mostly kindness, smiles and a willingness to assist. Of wonder at natural beauty or the colours of autumn – and all of these things I am reliving as I put down my scribbles into something more legible, understandable – something I can share. And yes as you point out – something which may survive my own demise – for a moment or two. But it’s not my purpose. Living this life is my purpose – and doing my best to counteract the negative – to Johnny Mercer-like “accentuate the positive, eliminate the negative”!
Beautiful. A mountain stream of existential insight. Thanks.
Thanks Ed.
Heartfelt and honest.
Really beautiful, Ed, and feels true in the truest sense …
Edward, WOW!
My condolences on your family’s loss.
We are not religiously bereft, we are SPIRITUALLY bereft.