The true warfare with the Giants takes place in souls: whenever reason and intellect rule in them, the goods of the Olympians and Athena prevail, and the entire life is kingly and philosophical; but whenever the passions reign, or in general the worse and earth-born elements, then the constitution within them is tyranny.Proclus, Commentary on … Continue reading Internalizing Externals and Fighting One’s Way Out
Tag: social media
Something Helpful From Proclus If You Want to Be Less Very Online in 2022
A few years ago, I discussed a passage from Proclus' Parmenides commentary. It was a short post, and I didn't share much beyond that. I want to flesh out some thoughts about that, speaking very heavily in first person, with the expectation that I am facing challenges similar to many people. Here is what Proclus … Continue reading Something Helpful From Proclus If You Want to Be Less Very Online in 2022
A Miscellany of Quotations: Proclus’ PARMENIDES Commentary
You may have read my previous post that mentioned torching everything on my Twitter account except for my current pinned Tweet and a few ornaments. Among the things torched were my live-reads of various philosophical texts, with images of the text. I had always intended to go back and clean my notes up significantly because … Continue reading A Miscellany of Quotations: Proclus’ PARMENIDES Commentary
Shifts and Changes
At the beginning of September, I was very restless, which for me can only be settled by organizing things in the world around me. There's a correlation between my spatial environment and my mental environment, and my physical environment had reached a tipping point of dissatisfaction in the 826 square foot apartment that I have … Continue reading Shifts and Changes
Something Beautiful from Plotinus
This week, I ended up reading Ennead I.6, "On Beauty," because I encountered a quotation from it twice, and it seemed like completing the repetition triad was in order. I would like to share the quotation with all of you, which makes a satisfying tetrad. How, then, can you see the kind of beauty that … Continue reading Something Beautiful from Plotinus
Speech and Silence
I had a nightmare last week that I'd been cursed, twice. The first time, the counter-work fixed it. The second, Yoyo woke me up before I was able to do anything, crawling up to me on the bed to lie by my side as if I would forget her breakfast if she wasn't the first … Continue reading Speech and Silence
Decompressing About Recent Events
When I quit Facebook in late 2016, it was because the site had shifted so much from learning about people I knew and keeping in touch with them to a collective political scream, with divides worsening as the people I knew, all of us processing what happened during the 2016 elections, fought with conservative relatives … Continue reading Decompressing About Recent Events
Acceptance and Resistance
Today was a blustery, sunny day. My girlfriend and I went out. I waited in the car rereading passages from Hermias and did a 15-minute Headspace meditation on acceptance while she navigated the line at a store to buy office supplies. People entered and exited every few minutes with balloons. She said that the interior … Continue reading Acceptance and Resistance
An Etiquette of Crowns, Floral and Verdant
At the beginning of Plato’s Republic, specifically at 328b-c, the elderly Cephalus is wearing a wreath upon his head because he had just finished offering divine sacrifices in the courtyard. In addition to generic ritual wreaths, ones that use specific materials — laurel, bay, rosemary, olive, oak, and so on — have been used for millennia … Continue reading An Etiquette of Crowns, Floral and Verdant
KALLISTI 