David Hume on identity and the idea of a deity

What is the soul of man? A composition of various faculties, passions, sentiments, ideas; united, indeed, into one self or person, but still distinct from each other. When it reasons, the ideas, which are the parts of its discourse, arrange themselves in a certain form or order; which is not preserved entire for a moment, but immediately gives place to another arrangement. New opinions, new passions, new affections, new feelings arise, which continually diversify the mental scene, and produce in it the greatest variety and most rapid succession imaginable. How is this compatible with that perfect immutability and simplicity which all true Theists ascribe to the Deity? By the same act, say they, he sees past, present, and future: his love and hatred, his mercy and justice, are one individual operation: he is entire in every point of space; and compleat in every instant of duration. No succession, no change, no acquisition, no diminution. What he is implies not in it any shadow of distinction or diversity. And what he is this moment he ever has been, and ever will be, without any new judgment, sentiment, or operation. He stands fixed in one simple, perfect state: nor can you ever say, with any propriety, that this act of his is different from that other; or that this judgment or idea has been lately formed, and will give place, by succession, to any different judgment or idea.

-
from Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion Section vi

another stray piece of quotation from my desktop

Joseph Conrad

from a letter he wrote to Robert Cunninghame Graham

"Life knows us not and we do not know life - we don't even know our own thoughts. Half the words we use have no meaning whatever and of the other half each man understands each word after the fashion of his own folly and conceit. Faith is a myth, and beliefs shift like mists on the shore; thoughts vanish; words, once pronounced, die; and the memory of yesterday is as shadowy as the hope of tomorrow."

I'm not sure where I found this, it seems to to have been loitering on my desktop for an age so I thought it best to save it up here. This blog seems to have become a sort of a clippings journal.

from Understanding Power by Noam Chomsky

p88
Something similar happened in the United States during our industrial revolution, actually. Mass public education first was introduced in the United States in the nineteenth century as a way of training the largely rural workforce here for industry-in fact, the general population in the United States largely was opposed to public education, because it meant taking kids off the farms where they belonged and where they worked with their families, and forcing them into this setting in which they were basically being trained to become industrial workers. That was part of the whole transformation of American society in the nineteenth century.



p211
So when you have a chance to meet with people or talk with them, I think the thing to do is to try to get them to learn how to explore things for themselves- for example, to help them learn for themselves the way that the media shaped and frame issues for the purpose of manipulation and control. Now, there's not much point in doing it abstractly- you know, like some theory of how it works. What you have to do is look at cases. So take cases that people are interested in, and just teach them how to do research projects- research projects are very easy to do, you don't need a Ph.D.; maybe in physics you do, but not in these topics. You just have to have common sense, you have to look carefully at the facts; it may be a little bit of work to find the facts- like usually you're not just going to find them right therein the headlines or something. But if you do a little work, you can find out what the facts are, you can find out the way they're being distorted and modified by the institutions. And then the purposes of those distortions quickly become clear.

-----
from History is A Weapon

from Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations

"..ask yourself whether our own language is complete- whether it was so before the symbolism of chemistry and the notation of the infinitesimal calculus were incorporated into it; for these are, so to speak, suburbs of our language. (And how many houses or streets does it take before a town begins to be a town?) Our language can be regarded as an ancient city: a maze of little streets and squares, of old and new houses, of houses with extensions from various periods, and all this surrounded by a multitude of new suburbs with straight and regular steets and unifrom houses." (18)

"to imagine a language means to imagine a form of life" (19)

"... Instead of pointing out something in common to all that we call language, I'm saying that these phenomena have no one thing in common in virtue of which we use the same word at all- but there are many different kinds of affinity between them. And so on account of this affinity, or these affinities, we call them 'languages'." (65)

" Consider for example the activities that we call 'games'. I mean board-games, card-games, ball-games, athletic games and so on. What is common to them all?- Don't say: "They must have something in common, or they would not be called 'games'"- but look and see whether there is anything common to all. - for if you look at them, you won't see anything that is common to all, but similiarities, affinities, and a whole series of them at that. To repeat: don't think, but look!- look, for example, at board games, with their various affinities. Now pass to card games; here you find many correspondences with the first group, but many common features drop out, and others appear. When we pass next to ball games, much that is common is retained but much is lost.- are they all 'entertaining'? Compare chess with noughts and crosses. Or is there always winning and losing, or competition between players? Think of patience. In ball-games, these is winning and losing; but when a child throws his ball at the wall and catches it again, this feature has dissappeared. .... We see a complicated network of similiarities overlapping and criss-crossing: similiarities in the large and in the small" (66)

2 Biblical Quotations

"When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.

For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known."

-- 1 Corinthians 12-13


“One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh; but the earth abideth forever... The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to the place where he arose... The wind goeth toward the south, and turneth about unto the north; it whirleth about continually, and the wind returneth again according to his circuits... All the rivers run into the sea; yet the sea is not full; unto the place from whence the rivers come, thither they return again.”

-- Ecclesiastes

A Nocturne for Blackpool by Theo Dorgan

Dolphins are coursing in the blue air outside the window
And the sparking stars are oxygen, bubbling to the moon.
At the end of the terrace, unicorns scuff asphalt,
One with her kneck stretched on the cool roof of a car.

A key rasps in a latch, milk bottles click on a sill,
A truck heading for mallow roars, changing gear on a hill.
The electric hum of the brewery whines, then drops in pitch-
Ground bass for the nocturne of Blackpool.

The ghost of Inspecter Swanzy creeps down Hardwick Street,
MacCurtain turns down the counterpain of a bed he'll never sleep in,
Unquiet murmurs scold from the blue-slate roof tops
The death squad no-one had thought to guard against.

The young sunburned hurlers flex in their beds, dreaming of glory,
Great deeds on the playing-fields, half-days from school,
While their slightly older sisters dream of men and pain,
An equation ot be puzzled out again and again.

Walloo Dullea, melodious on the Commons Road, hums airs from Trovatore
The recipe as before, nobody stirs from sleep
And 'Puzzle the Judge', contented, pokes at ashes-
'There's many a lawyer here today could learn from this man.'

North Chapel, The Assumption, Farranferris and Blackpool,
The mass of the church in stone rears like rock from the sea
But the interlaced lanes flick with submarine life
Older than priests can, or want to, understand.

This woman believed Jack Lynch stood next to God, who broke the Republic.
This man beyond, his face turned to the wall, stares at his friend
Whose face will not cease from burning in an icy sea- torpedoed off
Murmasnk from a tanker. He shot him, now nightly he watches him sink.

Here is a woman the wrong side of forty, sightless in her kitchen
As she struggles to make sense of the redundancy notice,
Of her boorish son, just home, four years on the dole, foulmouthed,
Of her husband, who has aged ten years in as many days.

The bells of Shandon jolt like electricity through lovers
In a cold water flat beneath the attic of a house in Hatton's Alley,
The ghost of Frank O' Conor smiles on Fever Hospital Steps
As Mon boys go by, arguing about first pints of stout and Che Guevara.

The unicorns of legend are the donkeys of childhood, nobody
Knows that better than we know it ourselves, but we know also that
Dolphins are coursing through the blue air outside our windows
And the sparking stars are oxygen, bubbling to the moon.

We are who we are and what we do. We study indifference in a hard school
And in a hard time, but we keep the skill to make legend of the ordinary.
We keep an eye to the slow clock of history in Blackpool-
Jesus himself, as they say around here, was born in a stable.

for Mick Hannigan

----------
taken from Sean Dunne's Cork Anthology

What The Horses See at Night by Robin Robertson

Link: What The Horses See At Night

Cuchulain Comforted by W.B. Yeats

A MAN that had six mortal wounds, a man
Violent and famous, strode among the dead;
Eyes stared out of the branches and were gone.

Then certain Shrouds that muttered head to head
Came and were gone. He leant upon a tree
As though to meditate on wounds and blood.

A Shroud that seemed to have authority
Among those bird-like things came, and let fall
A bundle of linen. Shrouds by two and thrce

Came creeping up because the man was still.
And thereupon that linen-carrier said:
'Your life can grow much sweeter if you will

'Obey our ancient rule and make a shroud;
Mainly because of what we only know
The rattle of those arms makes us afraid.

'We thread the needles' eyes, and all we do
All must together do.' That done, the man
Took up the nearest and began to sew.

'Now must we sing and sing the best we can,
But first you must be told our character:
Convicted cowards all, by kindred slain

'Or driven from home and left to die in fear.'
They sang, but had nor human tunes nor words,
Though all was done in common as before;

They had changed their throats and had the throats of birds.

Way of Peace by Pat Boran

Way of Peace by Pat Boran

i.m. Eamon Keating

In Adidas runners
and white karate suit
with the simple crest-

a dove round a fist,
Wado Ryu,
the way of peace-

down the Downs,
past the gate house gate,
a chubby druid,

a breathing oak,
a shifting mountain,
following patterns

modelled on monkeys,
eagles and cranes,
stray dogs and dragons,

bird man of Portlaoise,
puff-jowled adder,
dancing bear,

a man in his 60s
somehow still
sane enough to play;

and me, 16,
hidden among trees,
glimpsing the way.

---
found in the great anthology 'Our Shared Japan' (ed. Irene De Angelis & Joseph Woods)

Canoe by Keith Douglas

Canoe by Keith Douglas

Well, I am thinking this may be my last

summer, but cannot lose even a part

of pleasure in the old-fashioned art

of idleness. I cannot stand aghast

at whatever doom hovers in the background:

while grass and buildings and the somnolent river,

who know they are allowed to last forever,

exchange between them the whole subdued sound

of this hot time. What sudden fearful fate

can deter my shade wandering next year

from a return? Whistle and I will hear

and come again another evening, when this boat

travels with you alone toward Iffley:

as you lie looking up for thunder again,

this cool touch does not betoken rain;

it is my spirit that kisses your mouth lightly.

------

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keith_Douglas