personal identity is the enemy of personal progress.

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we are already responsible for ourselves long before we are able/allowed to take responsibility for ourselves.

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"progress" (of the (hegelian?) historical variety) is defined meaningfully only in hindsight. the work that is worth doing now always appears as a catching-up, as ( ( Read more... )

or, "what you said."

the good is dynamic, in at least this one way: it only occurs in movement across a gap (/lack). a perfect being would be incapable of goodness for just this reason. no gap, no good.

we are all irreperably screwed up--that is to say, capable of goodness, of infinite movements towards the good.

you know what's awesome? paradise lost. unexpectedly but truly beautiful. truly.

a few of my readers might recognize this bit, which (perhaps not so strangely) still breaks my heart (among other things):

...abasht the Devil stood,
And felt how awful goodness is, and saw
Vertue in her shape how lovly, saw, and pin'd
His loss...
book iv, lines 846-9 ( Read more... )

i'm definitely in an augustinian period.

...or, things that i believe but cannot yet even think fully through, let alone prove:

1. no simple removal of the bad in us (or the good, for that matter) is possible. this is not because of the (sigh, unfortunately unavoidable) practical limitations of humans, but because the good and the bad in us (and, hence, in the world) are inextricably ( Read more... )