Tag Archives: Milan Kundera

rage against the trader

The origin may be an ancient one, that idea, peculiar to many, which asserted that making business is dirty business. Money is ugly. It appears to be a Medieval concept and a Greek and Roman notion that looked negatively upon … Continue reading

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judging a cover by its book

Biblical prophecy is always a fascinating subject, dealing as it does with the hope of golden age, a repairing of the world, a making whole, a redemption mixed with the equal propensity for apocalyptic destruction. It predates the secular utopianism … Continue reading

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ordinary protektion

Accommodation and resistance. A cynical adaptation blending to outright futile rebellion. It is said to be a peculiar triangle, the one formed between Munich, Prague and Vienna, the one responsible for among others, Kafka, Freud and Hitler and the late … Continue reading

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Havel enough

There has been a lot of ink spilled for Vaclav Havel, most all of it favorable. He was deeply Western; acculturated to rock music and American culture in general, and a willing actor to boot communism into the dust-bin, greatly … Continue reading

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a grid of paradoxes

The Middle Way. To find the way through the enigma of the middle way. Vaclav Havel was beset by various interpretations of the middle course of action; between the Maimonides view and the older Aristotlean. To be stuck between the … Continue reading

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a little face to face

Is it possible to be so politically correct that we end up chewing our own tail. Is there a realm within the politically correct that is not politically correct? Its been said that as long as there exists the dynamic … Continue reading

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beatlemania : because we said so

Celebrity as a cultural signifier. The need for the sacrificial. Are myths to a large degree, constructions, fabrications, which are conspirational in nature? Something to serve a base need as a substitute for finding meaning in life. Here, the victim … Continue reading

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innocently traipsing across the great divide

The creepiest aspects of normalcy are the one’s we don’t think about, that we take for granted, that slip under our radar and end up drawing them into our web complete with their structural cultural pattern, their mechanisms of reinforcement, … Continue reading

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escape to the clumsy arrangements

The aesthetization of political understanding. After all, kitsch is the dominant culture, almost the only culture. Its effects are characterized by immediacy, an ingratiating nature,a form devoid of ambiguity and a cuteness marked by superficiality. Sometimes however, and somewhat disconcertingly, … Continue reading

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boredom: waiting for something to happen

and so it is so Modern boredom. Deep-seated boredom. The suspension of relations with reality and its replacement mined from the depths of the netherworld splitting into variations of nothingness; a world without meaning, without autonomy and without larger connections … Continue reading

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