Thought

Genius Springs Up In Unlikely Places

Quintus Curtius Thought , , ,

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On an airline flight yesterday I was watching a 2014 Mark Wahlberg film called The Gambler.  I had not heard of it before.  Apparently it didn’t do too well at the box office last year, due to its depressing and nihilistic tone.

Regardless, there was a great speech near the beginning of the movie by Wahlberg, who plays an existentially-troubled English teacher.  In the speech to his class, he offers a few words on the whole “Shakespeare controversy”:  that is, were Shakespeare’s plays written by him, or by someone else?

You may know that there is an industry built up around the denial that Shakespeare wrote his places.  These deniers claim it must have been some aristocrat or some professor who wrote the plays attributed to him.

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Never Get Out Of The Boat, Unless You’re Going All The Way

Quintus Curtius Film, Thought , , ,

There is a scene in the 1979 film classic Apocalypse Now where Willard and the Chef stop their river patrol boat to collect some mangoes in the jungle.  They come face to face with a tiger, and this causes the tightly-wound Chef to become unglued.

“Never get out of the boat…never get out of the boat…I got to remember:  never get out of the boat,” he repeats over and over.

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You Will Never Reach The End-Zone

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Some want to reach a point of victorious finality.  They want to enter the end-zone of the football field, slam the ball down, and celebrate.  Finally, they say, I have arrived!

I have made it, they bray.  I can now coast a little, they assure us.  Listen to these asses bray, bray, bray. I can hardly stand it.  And then they tell us:  I can subsist on this victorious inertia for a while, and see where that takes me.

Oh, if only it were that simple.  The end-zone, sorry to say, does not exist.  Fortune hates inertia, and will snuff it out quickly.

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I Won’t Go Back To Nature

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There is this entire literature of sentimentalizing the soil, and Nature in general.  Sentimentalizing the brute labor required to fructify the soil.  Think of Hector St. John de Crevecoeur, Rousseau, Emerson, Thoreau.  You know, the whole nineteenth century Romanticism of it all.  I never really liked this impulse, as it always smacked to me of idealistic falsity, of insincerity.  Those who hate the world find solace in the Stone-Age.

And modernly we have Pearl Buck, with her odes to the Chinese peasant.  Never mind, of course, that that same saintly peasant would have stank to high heaven.  There may be a Good Earth, but there is also a Bad Earth, too, and Peal Buck never wrote that novel.

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Beware The Waters Of Salmacis

Quintus Curtius Literature, Thought , ,

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Men take their masculinity too lightly.  That is, they do not value that which makes them men.  They are too eager to minimize its power, to dull its sheen, and to snuff out its distinct phosphorescence.

What one does not value, is not safeguarded from outside attack.

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My Own Ten Commandments

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I was having a chat with some friends recently about some aspects of life.  It gave me the opportunity to express my thoughts on one or two subjects.  Let me tell you more about it.

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A Passage From Plutarch’s “Life of Timoleon”

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Here is a morsel to chew on.

I was reading a bit of Plutarch this morning and came across a passage that is worth sharing.  It is from the Life of Timoleon (6):

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How A Rogue Can Take Over A Village

Quintus Curtius Thought ,

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I was talking to a friend earlier today, and the conversation happened to be diverted into the topic of hucksters, pitch-men, and carnival-barkers.

After thinking about the conversation, my mind wandered off to some of the late-night “pitch-man” advertising I had seen years ago.

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You Need To Think Hard About Your Educational Choices

Quintus Curtius Thought ,

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I wanted to write something in response to some recent articles and commentary I’ve seen from colleagues and friends of mine.  It concerns the subject of college.

Much of this recent commentary, while well-meaning and making valid points, nevertheless paints a picture that is in need of qualification.

So I wanted to share my thoughts.

Is it a waste of time?  Should you go?  Should you go to a trade school?  Should you start working?

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Jacopo Zabarella On The Advancement Of Learning

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We do not often think about how knowledge is gained or transmitted.  We simply take it for granted that some idea or morsel of information crosses our path, which we then incorporate into our storehouse of knowledge.

Or do we?  Is this really how information is, or should be, passed on?

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