Just Some Stuff 8

In every development, just or false, real or imaginary collective or individual, it is always the first step, the first act that is the most difficult. That step once taken, the rest follows naturally as a necessary consequence. The difficult step in the historical development of this terrible religious insanity which continues to obsess and crush us was to posit a divine world as such, outside the world. This first act of madness, so natural from the physiological point of view and consequently necessary in the history of humanity, was not accomplished at a single stroke. I know not how many centuries were needed to develop this belief and make it a governing influence upon the mental customs of men. But, once established, it became omnipotent, as each insane notion necessarily becomes when it takes possession of man's brain. Take a madman, whatever the object of his madness--you will find that obscure and fixed idea which obsesses him seems to him the most natural thing in the world, and that, on the contrary, the real things which contradict this idea seem to him ridiculous and odious follies. Well religion is a collective insanity, the more powerful because it is traditional folly, and because its origin is lost in the most remote antiquity. As collective insanity it has penetrated to the very depths of the public and private existence of the peoples; it is incarnate in society; it has become, so to speak, the collective soul and thought. Every man is enveloped in it from his birth; he sucks it in with his mother's milk, absorbs it with all that he touches, all that he sees. He is so exclusively fed upon it, so poisoned and penetrated by it in all his being that later, however powerful his natural mind, he has to make unheard-of efforts to deliver himself from it, and then never completely succeeds. We have one proof of this in our modern idealists, and another in our doctrinaire materialists--the German Communists. They have found no way to shake off the religion of the State.
-from God and the State - Mikhail Bakunin

These "Just some stuff" posts started out innocently enough as just filler, or something to post when I was too lazy to do anything else here (most of the time, actually) but they've become a little more elaborate, or something, though still for me the lazy man's way to blog. I want to post some real stuff, but even with ideas, it is sometimes hard to write. It's been a suffering heat wave where I'm at, even hot near the water, which is not usually the case (I work near the coast and live inland, so one minor pleasure of going to work is the cooler temperatures-I take my breaks and lunch outside, you see, and sometimes even take a walk up the hill of a nearby street with brand new empty office buildings; glass and steel victims of the new depression) and you just don't feel like doing much when you've got no air conditioning and are relying on one lonely little whirring fan to relieve you.

I also have lower back pain as I write this, which is not helping either. I have a terrible mattress, but sometimes my back hurts no matter what I do. A couple of times (not recently) it's gone out to the extent that I could barely walk. My dad has this same problem. As long as I don't sit or sleep wrong, though, it's okay most of the time.

But enough about poor me. Maybe I have a difficult time getting things written because I'm too concerned with an imaginary perfection, which I never achieve anyway. I look at some blogs and come to the conclusion that you can have readers while just tossing stuff out there without much thought or editing. So you've been warned. Future posts of mine could become unreadable rubbish, if they aren't that already.



Hamish Imlach

When I first watched the video below I didn't know that the singer was dead, but looking at him I thought to myself that he soon would be. When I read more about him I wasn't surprised to learn he had died at the early age of 55, in 1996. We all know that obesity, smoking and excessive drinking will do us in, and maybe lead to a premature grave, but I wonder if some people just accept the fact that they will die young because of their habits and lifestyle. None of us get out alive, anyway.

Below is a live version of his most popular song, (it was banned by the BBC because of its content). He liked to throw jokes and anecdotes into the mix of his performances, and one line of his I especially like (not in the video) is "I think I have an allergic reaction to leather. I find that every time I wake in the morning with my shoes on I have a headache."