Question:
How did "Dimebag Darrell" die? Was it due to a drug overdose, a drug deal gone wrong, or any other interpersonal interaction that involved drugs in any way whatsoever?
No? Then what the fuck makes you think that the quick judgement you made has any validity whatsoever?
If his name was Greg "Glock" Gardner, then maybe the judgement would have made sense. Alternately, if he had died of the mythical marijuana overdose, then the judgement would make sense.
The reason I started this thread wasn't to bash Midnyte for quoting a "liberal" philosopher. Such a view is incredibly simplistic and ignores the complexity of his work. Midnyte seems to recognize this fact, but those people blindly criticizing or supporting him don't seem to.
I actually brought up the subject because I think that Kierkegaard wrote some beautifully scathing critiques of a particular lifestyle that I wondered if Midnyte associated with the "liberals" on this board. The parallel certainly isn't ideal, as Kierkegaard was a Christian philosopher and Midnyte's an atheist, but I felt that he made some salient points in the work that Midnyte quoted that I thought might have provided some insight into Mid's thinking. Specifically...
Judge Vilhelm wrote:Were I to imagine an artist, a painter, for example, who becomes blind, then if there was any depth in him he might perhaps despair. What he despairs over, then, is this particular thing, and if his sight returned the despair would cease. This is not the case with you. You are far too gifted mentally, and your soul is in a sense to deep for this to happen to you. Nor, in outward respects, has any such misfortune befallen you. You still have in your power all the requirements of an aesthetic life-view. You have wealth, independence, your health is unimpaired, your mind is still vigorous, and you have not yet been made unhappy by a young girl not wanting to love you. Yours is no current despair but a despair in thought. Your thought has hurried on ahead, you have seen through the vanity of everything but you have not come any further. On occasion you duck down into it and in abandoning yourself for a single moment to pleasure you discover also, in your consciousness, that it is vanity. You are thus constantly beyond yourself, that is to say, in despair. This is why your life lies between two huge antitheses: sometimes you are intemperately energetic, at others just as immoderately indolent...
Judge Vilhelm wrote:According to circumstance, you work untiringly for a day, for a month, you are happy in the assurance that you will have the same abundance of strength as before, you take no rest, 'no Satan can keep up with you.' If you work together with others, you work them into the ground. But then when the month or, what you always consider the maximum, the six months, have gone by, you break off and say 'and that's the end of the story.' You retire and leave it all to the other party, or if you have been working alone you talk to no one about what you were doing. You then pretend to yourself and others that you have lost the desire and flatter yourself with the vain thought that you could have kept working with the same intensity if that is what you desired. But that is an immense deception. You would have succeeded in finishing it, as most others, if you had patiently willed it so, but you would have found out at the same time that it needs a kind of perseverance quite different from yours...
Johannes de Silentio wrote:Venerable Father Abraham! Second father to the human race! You who first saw and bore witness to that tremendous passion that scorns the fearful struggle with the raging elements and forces of creation in order to struggle with God instead, you who first knew that supreme passion, which the pagans admired-- forgive him who would speak in your praise if he did not do it correctly. He spoke humbly, seeing it is his heart's desire; he spoke briefly, as is fitting; but he will never forget that you needed a hundred years to get the son of your old age, against every expectation, that you had to draw the knife before keeping Isaac; he will never forget that in one hundred and thirty years you got no further than faith.
It's pretty meaningless removed from context, but it's brilliant, complex stuff, and absolutely cannot be boiled down to "liberal" or "conservative," especially considering that the words now represent concepts that didn't really exist in 1850.
).
