Nihilism.
(This might be the right time to consider this, as my own life is going quite well.)
It seems that some lives just don't work out. A person can do all the right things, make all the smart choices, scrimp and save and toil and try, but in the end their home is still bombed by the Japanese. Or they die in childbirth. Or lightning. Or any of the countless ways that chance or fate can walk out onto stage and say "It's Over!"
The Chinese seem especially vulnerable, especially in the ... well, in all eras of history, really. phramok's latest book is literally a tale of woe. Babies dying. Beloved horses shot for rent money. Blah blah pain. The deck really seems stacked against these people.
Is this what drove the American project? A realization of the likelihood of despair, and the struggle to build the bulwarks against capricious fate? Could this be the primal drive that took them to a rugged land to lash out at all resistance? Is there something of Nietzsche's philosophy there? The will-to-life as the will-to-conquer? Perhaps greed, violence, and all the vices can boil down to a primal dread of lethal chance.
Or perhaps not. =)
p.s. My twitch came back at work. Just once. Strange.
It seems that some lives just don't work out. A person can do all the right things, make all the smart choices, scrimp and save and toil and try, but in the end their home is still bombed by the Japanese. Or they die in childbirth. Or lightning. Or any of the countless ways that chance or fate can walk out onto stage and say "It's Over!"
The Chinese seem especially vulnerable, especially in the ... well, in all eras of history, really. phramok's latest book is literally a tale of woe. Babies dying. Beloved horses shot for rent money. Blah blah pain. The deck really seems stacked against these people.
Is this what drove the American project? A realization of the likelihood of despair, and the struggle to build the bulwarks against capricious fate? Could this be the primal drive that took them to a rugged land to lash out at all resistance? Is there something of Nietzsche's philosophy there? The will-to-life as the will-to-conquer? Perhaps greed, violence, and all the vices can boil down to a primal dread of lethal chance.
Or perhaps not. =)
p.s. My twitch came back at work. Just once. Strange.