#and like I know its like that because of aristotles poetics or whatever.. its still cool like it has the form of a tragedy yk

[thursdayg1rl]

im so glad we do an inspector calls in english tbh

[noshitshakespeare]

just discovered your blog a few days ago, & I'm madly in love. I would like your opinion on something. a huge focus of my English lit professors is identifying the fatal flaw of Shakespeare characters and I find myself wondering why/how this concept started & why it's so stressed in Shakespeare characters. do you think he meant to write them with a flaw in mind. also, do you think the flaws have standard answers ( like Macbeth's is always ambition ) or it's whatever a reader interprets it to be?

Thank you @scvthian​! Glad you like the blog. 

The concept of the fatal flaw comes from the idea of hamartia theorised by Aristotle in his Poetics. It may have existed before then, but Aristotle is the earliest existing record of such an idea. But the concept has become a little bit diluted through the ages and in coming to be known as a ‘fatal flaw’. But for Aristotle, hamartia isn’t actually a negative term. It’s an error, but more like a misunderstanding, something the person couldn’t possibly have known would lead to such tragic circumstances. In its original form, it certainly doesn't mean a moral flaw of character or a vice. The protagonist of a tragedy, Aristotle says, should be noble, but not exceptionally good or evil, just a person who makes a mistake, sometimes fated, that leads to his tragic destiny. Aristotle’s chief example is always Oedipus Rex. Oedipus couldn’t possibly have known that the man he killed was his father, or the woman he married is his mother. The hamartia here is an error or failure of recognition that’s not because of a personality trait, though it is made worse by his hot-headedness, part of what makes him not entirely virtuous.  

I explained once in this post here that I don’t think the concept of the tragic flaw or hamartia is actually very relevant to Shakespeare. I don’t know what Shakespeare was thinking when he wrote the plays, but if he did know Aristotle, he barely ever follows the conventions when writing tragedies, so there’s no reason to think he wrote with an idea of hamartia in mind either. 

Still, you can certainly find a flaw if you’re looking for one, and there’s nothing wrong with looking for fatal flaws as a way into Shakespeare as long as you can go on to recognise that such an idea really simplifies the more complex issues Shakespeare depicts. It’s certainly a good classroom exercise, so I wouldn’t fault your professors for focusing on it either, particularly as it introduces a key literary concept (the tragic flaw). The key thing here is to recognise that concepts and categories are not clear cut or set. Sometimes they’re useful as ladders to get to your next stage of study, where you can discard it.

As for how to define a tragic flaw if you’re looking for one... Since we can never know what Shakespeare was thinking, whether he even had a tragic flaw in mind, or, (if he knew the concept) whether it was the same as the one people think of now, it’s certainly not a case of trying to work out a correct answer. But things aren’t completely up to the reader either, because you have to have reasons (preferably textual evidence) for believing what you do. For instance, you say that ambition is often given as Macbeth’s tragic flaw. What’s the evidence? Macbeth, who says ‘I have no spur / To prick the sides of my intent, but only / Vaulting ambition’ (1.7.25-27). So if we believe Macbeth, then his vice is ambition. Another possibility is that he’s too easily influenced, and one might bring as evidence the fact that Lady Macbeth can encourage him to murder. Lady Macbeth is also ambitious, perhaps, but that’s not Macbeth’s own flaw. You could even say his inability to see through the weird sisters’ equivocation is what leads to his downfall, if you think they were responsible for sparking macbeth’s ambition to begin with. Macbeth himself identifies ‘these juggling fiends... keep the word of promise to our ear / And break it to our hope’ (5.7.49-52). You can raise anything that you can prove, basically. 

But here’s the thing, the very fact that you could come up with several possibilities for what constitutes a tragic flaw suggests that one flaw isn’t enough to encompass what happens in this play. I’ve said this quite often before, but my own approach is to think about the essential questions. So maybe it’s all true: Macbeth’s ambitious, he trusts too readily in the supernatural and he’s a pushover. Why does Lady Macbeth try to influence her husband? What gives power to the weird sisters’ prophecies? What drives ambition? I would suggest that the more fundamental issue is that there is a hierarchy that means some people are above others, and that murder can be rewarded with more power. If Macbeth didn’t live in such a competitive world, then the weird sisters, his wife, and murder itself wouldn’t be such a temptation to begin with. Ambition wouldn’t be relevant. While it doesn’t make Macbeth’s crime any less hideous, where his flaws derive from is an important question, because he can be blamed for murder, but not as much for ambition itself. 

[akocomyk]

The Top 10 Books I Read in 2017

Funny how I wasn’t able to read as much books as I wanted to despite the fact that I wasn’t really doing anything for two and a half months.  I was able to read 25 books in 2017, just enough to hit my Goodreads 2017 Reading Challenge.  Usually, I go over my pledged number of books.  This was the only time, if I remember right, that I wasn’t able to surpass my reading challenge.

Finishing that challenge was an effort, mind you.  I finished reading the last book for 2017 on December 30, and i pushed myself just so that I can finish the challenge.  I blame all this slow reading to Miss Peregrine.  If you’ve read my thoughts on that book, you’d know why.

Going back to the real purpose of this blog... Of the 25 books I read this year, 15 were considered for this list.  I know that’s quite a lot, but that’s good, in reality.  That means I'm now more careful on choosing which books to read.

The sad part about this—similar to my dilemma last year—is that I have too many books that I want to include in the list.  It’s with great regret that I won’t be able to put them in here even if I wanted to.

Anyway... here it goes.

*The books in here are included regardless of their genre, release date, and author—whether they be Filipino or international.  As long as its a book that I’ve read within the given year, they can be considered for the list.

(Scores are on a scale of 1-5, inspired by Goodreads’ rating format)

10.  A Hat Full of Sky by Terry Pratchett (2005)

SCORE: 4.250

This is the second book in Pratchett’s Tiffany Aching series.  I really loved the first book and I’m so thrilled that whatever it is I liked from the first one continued with this—at times, even better.  But I’m a nothing-bests-the-original type of person, so the first book scored higher for me.  You’ll see it further on this list.

9.  The Inexplicable Logic of My Life by Benjamin Allire Sáenz (2017)

SCORE: 4.275

One thing that t I really love about Sáenz‘s books is the tone of his writing.  It’s utterly simple, yet very poetically beautiful—which for me makes it very quick and easy to read.

His other book that I read, Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe, is one of my favorite books.  Having known that he recently released a new book, I din’t mind that it’s still only available on hardbound, I immediately bought it when it came out.  I had high expectations for it.

This book gave me the same feelings when I read Ari and Dante, though it wasn’t as effective.  Toned-down would be a good word for it.  There are parts where it would hit you right on the heart.  Ironically, this is what the books is all about—love.  It’s about all types of love, even if the book never had an ounce of romance in it—maybe just a little bit.

8.  The Wee Free Men by Terry Pratchett (2003)

SCORE: 4.330

The story in itself is very similar to a fairy tale and you can even identify a few references grabbed from the classics.  But unlike those old tales of fantasy, this one is void of all the atrocities and rather has common sense and unwavering cleverness—not to mention, an ample amount of humor.

One thing that I also love about the book is that all characters are very likable and have distinct personalities—even the tertiary and background characters have personalities, it’s insane!

See full review

7.  The Girl Who Drank the Moon by Kelly Barnhill (2016)

SCORE: 4.345

I always love a book with amazing characters who have deeply rooted motivations.  This is what I adored about this book.  It felt like all the characters have valid reasons why they were doing the things that they did in the story, and the way it just pushed the plot forward and how everything went to be is just enchanting.

This is a book meant for children but it can certainly be enjoyed by any person of any age—except for the toddlers who can’t read, obviously.  This book is for the people who looooove fantasy.  I got into reading because of fantasy books—hello Chronicles of Narnia—and this creation by Barnhill is a unique jewel in the midst of middle grade to young adult novels which nowadays are starting to sound too similar to one another.

6.  The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky (1999)

SCORE: 4.405

I had setbacks when I decided that I wanted to read it.  It was on the bottom of my I-plan-to-read-list primarily because I’ve already watched the film adaptation and I’m worried that I wouldn’t appreciate the book that much since I already know the story and thought that it would take away too much of the book’s charm.

BUT I WAS WRONG.

I didn’t really plan on reading it but on June 10, when I was alone in our house and wanted to do something so that I won’t get bored, I went out to find a book and eat at a local café.  Turns out, this was the cheapest book I found that actually pulled my interest.

Anyway, the book—much like the film—is very touching and fun to read.  Like, I never would’ve thought that the book was written during the 90′s because it gave me the modern YA feels, like it totally blended in with the books that I love reading.

It gave me the feels.  You know, the weird feeling in your heart when you read a book or watch a film.  It was very prevalent in this book.

5.  The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss (2007)

SCORE: 4.475

I got this book as a Christmas gift from a fellow Star Wars nerd.  She loved it that’s why she gave me a copy.  Basing from the reviews it got from Goodreads, it is an amazing book.  AND IT LIVED UP TO MY EXPECTATIONS. 

I just love how the characters are fully made up… although some feel like cardboard cutouts, I don’t mind.  I mean, they’re very minor characters.  At most, the main characters are very interesting.

It’s a good substitute to those who are reading the A Song of Ice and Fire series.  It has the same amount of epicness, same amount of characters, ample amount of secrecy and mysteries, but thankfully not as grandiose and confusing\ as GRRM’s (yeah, as much as I love the ASOIF books, sometimes it goes a little too far).

It’s a really thick book which I would normally get bored of reading in the middle, but that didn’t happen.

4.  Simon Vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda by Becky Albertalli (2015)

SCORE: 4.605

It is a truly wonderful book that proudly represents the LGBTQ community.

I love how Albertalli wrote it in such a sarcastic tone, and it reminds me of the time when I have a similar tone in writing—the time before I started doing all those melodramatic stuff.

There are times in the book that I almost wanted to cry.

Also, it’s one hell of a page-turner.  I couldn’t stop reading it!  The book laid open on my desk at work and I occasionally read a few pages every now and then.  I wanted to know how it ends so badly.

I also love the way that the story is also very engaging to the readers, like the way that you want to share with Simon’s adventure and search for the mysterious identity of Blue.  I had speculations.  I said, if this would be him, the story would be stupid.  If this would be a girl, it would be disappointing (and Will Grayson-ish).  If it was this other characters, it just doesn’t make any sense.  But there’s this minor character who would probably fit.  AND I WAS DAMN RIGHT.  I predicted it but it was good, because all the other options would make a really bad story.  I predicted it but it was good, because if I was the one who wrote the story, I would’ve written it the same way.

3.  Scythe by Neal Shusterman (2016)

SCORE: 4.610

This is only my second Neal Shusterman book and I think I’m starting to become a fan.  In this novel, he created a world that is so thought-provoking, and he made it distinct among the over-crowded dystopian novels of the recent years.

I recommend this to anyone who loved reading The Hunger Games—or just to anyone who loves to read—because it gives you the same emotions.  Different story, same feeling.  It will surprise you.  It will scare you.  It will excite you.  And at a certain point, it will crush your heart.

See full review

2.  We Are the Ants by Shaun David Hutchinson (2016)

SCORE: 4.615

This book portrays the message that no person in this world has a perfect life.  We are all flawed, and we all have reasons to be unhappy.

I was heavily impressed at how Hutchinson was able to incorporate that factor in all of his characters.   That is what I like most about this book.  Anyone in the world who loves to read may be able to have a connection to it—naturally, everyone of us has imperfections and we can empathize on the characters because of that.

I love the little sci-fi things that are enclosed in-between chapters, including the main premise that Henry (the main character) is abducted by aliens.  And I love the mystery by the end as to whether or not these abductions are true or just a figment of Henry’s imagination. *Spoiler alert, if you’re wondering how this part of the story is resolved… it was never resolved*

He’s depressed and he probably has anxiety so this could possibly his mind’s manifestations to cope up with his life.  This real-unreal phenomenon kinda reminds me of A Monster Calls… you know, you’re not sure if whether or not the Monster was real or not.

This factor adds a little interaction with the readers as it forces us to use our own creativity and rely solely on our imagination on how this all adds up.  It can be true.  It cannot be true.

And also, the book has these occasional moments that will really crush your heart.  You know how much I love books that do that to me.

AND THE AWARD FOR THE BEST BOOK I READ IN 2017 GOES TO...

1.  The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini (2003)

SCORE: 4.630

I’ve seen this book on store shelves a couple of times and I always overlooked it.  Probably because the cover isn’t very much appealing to me, and I’m not a usual fan of books that center on war themes, especially those that are set in the middle east.

So when I finally paid attention to it, and saw the good reviews it had on Goodreads, I said to myself.  “I effin’ need to read this.”

Also, one of the reasons why I decided to read it is for this list.  At the time, this list was dominated by YA novels, all of which have LGBTQ themes in them.  Had We Are the Ants topped the list, for three years straight, YA-LGBTQ books bagged the top plum.  I have nothing against these type of books—I like them, obviously—but I thought that I just need some sort of variety.

Going back to this book... this has left me scarred.  There are scenes in the book that I will never, ever be able to forget.  Like there were scenes that I read while I was inside a bus on my way home, and I had to stop reading because I didn’t want people to see me crying in public.  Unfortunately, I still cried.

For me, this book tells us that life will always be full of sh*t.  You may have your good days, but it will always try to test you.  Other than that, it tells us that there are people in this world who would die for honor, and for love.

I will no longer tell anymore about this book.  I suggest that you should just read it.  I highly recommend it.  Definitely one of my favorites.

Other books considered for this list were I Wrote This for You by Iain S. Thomas, Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell, Chasers of the Light by Tyler Knott Gregson,  Kids of Apetite by David Arnold, and Everything, Everything by Nicola Yoon.  I really wish that they were in the top—especially the poetry books by Thomas and Gregson, that would’ve been a first—but I only need ten and 2017 was just crowded with good books.

I read better books this year than the past year.  You can just tell from the ratings.  The tenth place on this was already on 4.250—I had to include a third decimal to break the ties, that’s why the scores are so close.  Last year’s tenth was at 3.68, and the first book to actually go higher than 4.250 was All the Light We Cannot See with 4.32, last year’s fourth placer.  Last year’s first placer— I’ll Give You the Sun which scored 4.57—was edged out by this year’s with 4.630.

I wish I would still have the same dilemma for 2018.  I know it’s a problem, but it’s a good problem.

Happy book-reading this 2018!

[jamesdazell]

A Brief History of the Life and Death of God

“Fear created the first gods in the world” said Statius a 1st Century AD Roman poet. "God is a superstition" from film There Will Be Blood. “God is dead” said Nietzsche “I count religion but a childish toy” wrote Christopher Marlowe We have all had that sensation of an overwhelming tremendous feeling that we quite know not want to do with. It feels like too much to handle, it feels to be so much more than what we are that we must be a recipient of it, not the author of it. There must be someone to credit for it. And so we psychologically project it outwards, we empty it into what seems like a vessel, something that can contain it, and we try to give it explanation in order to give it accountability. In so much as to ease the sensation, but also to manifest that sensation in to some kind of phenomenon. Seemingly at all costs not to attribute it to ourselves. But why should we not be the author of it? * We can often see bursts of projected overwhelming feelings whenever love is too much to bare. Whether the love for another person or love received by another. We are suspicious of a strong and powerful love. We want it subdued. Containable. Playful. Too much makes it heavy and serious, and only ends up giving us the blues. And yet we say “he/she loves me too much” as though it were a bad thing to love. And yet we cannot hate enough. People commonly cant deal with overwhelming feelings. Or say you’ve been hurt in a relationship and are distrusting of love. If you hated love, you'll never find it and you never enjoy it. If you said to yourself I'll never let myself get hurt again, you'd never fall in love again. Falling in love involves hurting. Bob Marley said everyone's gonna hurt you, you just gotta find the one's worth the pain. Similarly with life, if you tell yourself you're never gonna get hurt by life, then you're never gonna live. It's just part of it but how you deal with it is a whole other matter.  * Science likes to demean the past by suggesting that the ancient people were naive about the world that they live in, and that all the world was understood as magic and superstition. It wasn’t that ancient people thought floods, hurricanes, lightning storms, death of loved ones, insane victories in battle, were so inexplicable that they must be attributed to gods. It’s that the feelings they caused were so tremendous, whether fear, grief, or awe, that it was cast off and projected in to the attribution of something which could retain authorship. It was too much for them. Psychologically speaking, it is rational psychology. We still do this today. In the beginning of cognitive thought, what else would man do with his understanding of the sun that gives life to all things? Was he supposed to assume the systems of the cosmos, a helio-centric solar system, the universe? The very misunderstanding of it would cause enough awe to overwhelm him. Science is overtuning itself all the time. We are still to be seen as naive to some distant future. Even our smartest thoughts might to some future seem stupid. It may be that man’s stupidity, his non-intellectual primal characteristics, even his barbarism, might seem more interesting to a future that has forgotten them by its ever elevated esteem for intellectualism. That man’s irrationality might be also his primal nature. * God is not so much a matter of belief but of psychology. It’s the incapacity to retain authorship of those overwhelming feelings in the face of events that create gods. God is just a psychological discharge when experiencing powerful and overwhelming feelings that one feels incapable to absorb and attribute to oneself. The crudely term it “a mental ejaculation.” And it’s completely rational. Anyone is capable of doing this. This is done in the same sense with miracles, ghosts, and energy and other supernatural phenomena. When someone feels afraid and that fear becomes heightened, one can create all kinds of things, aliens at the window, bogeymen in the house, ghosts appearing, and all manner of creations that stem from the feeling that inspired them. Sensations which are projected, emptied, and attributed to ‘a cause.’  God is just the psychology of that psychological resignation, that self-denial, casting off the authorship of oneself to project on to something else, something larger, more inexplicable. Whatever was too great to comprehend and hold on to was thrown out in to whatever could hold on to it, as nevertheless the overwhelming feeling was present. One believes in God because one believes in the sensation. Because one is real, so he assumes is the other. * So baring in mind those two psychological traits: an incapacity to attribute overwhelming feelings to oneself, and a disposition towards life that one doesn't want to experience hurt. 

What is your psychological disposition towards life? That is the question. How much can you draw those sensations back in to yourself, and affirmatively attribute them to yourself? What does your character say about your relation to life and your value of the meaning of life. How affirmative are you with life? How much is life valued and venerated to you? How much capacity for life do you actually have? How in love with it, under all its terribleness, its profoundness, its awe, can you be? And how close to that scale can you measure yourself to be? In short, now that you are born and alive, how up to life are you? Truth, whatever it may be, denotes a character. Truth is relative to the character that would possess the appropriate motive for the truth to be discovered and valued in the first place. Nothing is absolutely true, everything true is makeup for a variety of psychological archetypes. Because behind any truth there is always motive. Not so much our relationship to truth, but a relationship with a goal that needs a whole string of truths, because they are the as the atoms that make up its ideal. There are some people, we have all met them, when you remove a truth they held so dear, it’s as if you’ve removed a piece of the Jenga block from the tower and its all about to fall down. They refute you because the system of truths would be otherwise broken down. That thing has to remain true for them. That is conviction. That is faith. - Always allow the freedom for truths to be overturns, never nail a truth down. Aristotle said that if two people value wholly different things they would never be friends because they would be the sum of wholly different values. Variety is more important than perfection. Everyone has their place. * This isn’t an actual history, but a swift overview of how things come to be. I’ll begin where what matters to us most: the God we’re most familiar with. In the ancient world gods were generally exchanged between cultures the more they interacted with each other. There are parallels from Europe to India and even to China in some respects regarding parallel gods. Certain gods were more popular than others. Usually some rites associated with the gods were more favourable than other gods because they represented some vitality in the culture. And by way of myth, word of mouth, ritual, and conquering other regions of the world, gods kind of of frequently got chewed up and exchanged, metamorphosing from one place to another under different names, epithets and symbols. One such parallel being the Egyptian god Osiris, the Greek Dionysus, the Indian Shiva, and to some degree certain devas in Buddhism because of its Hindu influence. (I mention Dionysos because it’s related to Christianity later on.) These secret Dionysian cult rituals (called Dionysus Mysteries) are traced back long before Archiac Greece and the name Dionysus has been found on tablets from regions outside of Greece at earlier periods. But in archiac times (10th-6th Century BCE) these rituals were only participated in by invitation and then initiation ceremonies (think somewhere between an illegal word of mouth rave party and the infamous scenes in the film Eyes Wide Shut) consisting of wine drinking, psychedelic drugs, sexual orgies, dancing, as well as eating meal from sacrificed animals such as rams as well as flagellation. The purpose of it being to return back to the primal version of ourselves, outside/beyond the contrained systematic formalities of civilized culture and society. In a sense to lose formal character by civilization and return to a kind of primal vitality, free of civlized code and rationality, and affirmative an animalistic nature that was deeply instinctive and the basis of vitality. Yet despite all this seemingly barbaric primitivism, if you tennis ball that back and forth between civilized society, it only ends up revitalising your intellectual formal character too. We have a smaller version of this when we break up the working work with the weekend fun. The pinnacle of this found its place in the invention of formal Western theatre by the Archaic Greeks in honour of Dionysus born out of ecstasy of the rituals. Greek Theatre, it doesn’t feel right to call these plays, were essentially equally music-poetry-spectacle performances where poetry, music, spectacle came together. It was affirming both the wild ecstatic state in its musical singing dancing choruses and its formalised character in its speaking characters. But more than that it was simultaneously showing the truth behind life that is hard to bare, masked and beautified by art of beautiful poetic speech, costume, theatre in order to handle experiencing it. I don’t think theatre is art, but a communicating medium for pure art: poetry, music, dance. The elements of theatre are technical crafts (acting, set design, costume, lighting, camera etc). Dionysus was the patron god of theatre because he was a transformative god, he would appear as different creatures, which paralleled the idea of becoming actors, and the ecstasy of dance and music. The creative spirit of art paralleled with the wild ecstatic state of the rituals. Dionysus essentially was a god of the intoxicated creative spirit. The audience would be given cups of wine and ivy leaves. The event would be more like a pop concert than the opera. * It’s that same creative spirit that created the entire pantheon of Greek gods.  God is not so much a matter of belief but psychology. Polytheistic religions should be understood differently than monotheistic religions. The pluralism of polytheism does not censor new gods, in fact it adopts them if it can enjoy them. Polytheism is self-affirmative, throwing created projections out on to the world again and again. It’s psychologically a more artistic spirit. And adversely to a monotheistic God, driven by fear. Polytheism is driven by gratitude. The Greek gods were created out of veneration of life. They had a god for every aspect of life. They venerated life so much they deified every aspect of it. * Running underneath these religions (perpetuated by nobility) there was a subterranean religion known as Judaism, this was a religion of the people, conversely to the religion of the nobles. Unlike the other mentioned religions, it was monotheistic - one God. Nevertheless, the artistic spirit is still there. The mythology of the Old Testament is full of so much grandeur that it rivals are the literary epics of the same era. Its full of profoundness. Not so much in its teaching but in its imagery. The imagery of the Genesis, Great Floods, Goliath, these stories only have the great ancient literary epics to compare with. Yet they were completely in the same literary fashion as the time. It’s not so much a distinction of religion but of the times. And if anyone has heard a Jewish shofar before, it’s one of the most beautiful sounds there is. * Towards the period of the Roman Republic (1BC) Rome was becoming unstable and and from the assassination of Julius Caesar fell in to civil wars. This ended with Rome’s first emperor Augustus. In this period there was a Jewish man named Jesus. Jesus lived his entire life in the Roman Empire under the reign of Augustus and later under Tiberius, between Galilee and Caparnaum until he was crucified in Jerusalem. Jesus’ ethical teaching was a continuation of the people’s religion values, basically both a more honest form of Judaism and criticism of the Roman values, which were his greatest oppression, and created an ethical teaching which subverted its values. Naturally he was crucified by Romans which was a typical form of punishment and wouldn’t have been done so in a manner which was particularly ceremonious. The myth of Jesus Christ is interesting though. Alhough I believe Jesus was a real person, the myth surrounding him is very similar to Dionysus of Greek myth. Note that depictions of the Devil are somewhat similar to the goat-hoofed tailed horn-head faun, satyr, followers of Dionysus. This probably came by way of two things. The cult of Dionysus developed and separated off in to the cult of Orpheus which was influences Pythagorism, which in turn influenced Plato, which in turn influenced Christianity. And Dionysus’ cults have flourished on and off in Roman culture under their equivalent god Bacchus. And with Dionysos being an antithesis of Christian values bodily acestism could ward off preference by the pagan Dionysus by having his image like the Devil and his myth narrative like Jesus Christ. So if anyone gravitated toward him they would be swerved to Christianity. But it also shows how powerfully significant Dionysus had been throughout archiac greek, roman, and christian society. The Romans borrowed their religion from the The Greeks and the Etruscans. The Greeks were much more positivistic, affirmative, celebratory, happier, gratuitous, and pluralistic in their religion. They were, simply in themselves, a description of a pleasure of life and a strong disposition towards it.  When we come to Christianity, this turns around into the subduing of all powerful feelings, whether sexual, egotistical, power, etc. Things which belonged quite naturally to an archaic Greek in general or Roman of nobility. The best of the Greeks and Romans were far too free in how they handled their gods to legitimately believe in them, but they clearly saw a useful for them, both personal and political, and they loved making new ones - as did the Egyptians. Not fear, but the use of festivities, that would unite the people and momentarily make their social place ambiguous. The Roman equivalent of Dionysos was Bacchus. The festivals to him were outlawed and reinstated on and off. Julius Caesar has reinstated them with support of Marc Anthony. The world had two people of a J.C. initials that would make or break history: Jesus Christ and Julius Caesar. Everything that Julius Caesar represents is sinful in Christianity. Everything Christianity represents is symbolises by the dead man on the cross. As people they are antithesis of each other. The very Roman spirit was antagonistic to it. And yet it was Rome that gave us Christianity. During the 1st Century BC Rome had several philosophical schools that would make it ripe for Christian seduction: Epicurianism, Neo-Platonism, and Stoicism. As the Roman Empire spread far and wide it was under rule of a triumvirate, (three rulers, divided up regionally) each wanted total control. Due to this amongst other instabilities the Roman Empire was falling apart. Emperor Constantine (3rd Century AD) was the one to discover a means. He was ruling over Britannica (now Britain) which although the Romans somewhat admired its former Druids (as the notebooks of Julius Caesar show), they considered Britannica a land of masses by comparison to Rome. And therefore more given to the people’s religion of Christianity. Constantine therefore knew that if he had the people he had the empire. He declared that he would unite the Roman Empire under Christianity and make it the official religion. He thereby managed to sway all the people under the Roman Empire on his side, taking control of the empire in all regions. Now Christianity was the religion of the Roman Empire and thereby the religion of Europe - because it was a means for imperial power. The Roman Empire had collapsed by the 6th Century AD. And the majority of Europe consisted of bloody wars, mostly in the name of Christianity supremacy and executing paganism. Although Europe had collected many Greek and Roman books ordered by such rulers like French ruler Charlamagne, King of the Franks (8th Century AD) as a desire to preserve educated society. In the 8th Century when Mohammed had founded Islam, Arabia had several religions such as Roman, Christianity, Judaism, and smaller tribal communities. It’s likely that Mohammed was a scholar and reformer of the Judeo-Christian teachings. The Qu'ran is certainly the best writing of the three Abrahamic Holy Books, and unless God was taking serious writing classes between his serial publications, then it’s the penmanship of a well read scholar/s. It was the Muslim scholars who still had most important ancient books - the philosophers, mathematicians, grammarians, histories, etc. In the 9th century the Arab empire expanded and came to North Africa and Southern Europe. They arrived to dried desert like southern Spain, and since their scientific achievements had flourished beyond Christian Europe, and they were familiar with that terrain they used irrigation to extract water from deep beneath the dried surface make it useful to build settlements. There were Jews and Christians there and they formed a kind of religious hierarchy where Jews, Christians and Muslims lived together. But it was their Persian culture, still Indian influenced and retaining some of its Roman culture to Europe in the form of energetic music, erotic poetry, and glorious architecture, that injected a revived European spirit. Even Italian Christian clergy commissioned Muslim architects to design Christian Churches. It was this technological interest that revived their interest in their own classical Roman architecture. It was he erotic poetry that gave Europe its love sonnets. And its music that gave Europe the Goliards, Troubadours, Trovere, and Trecento - possibly the greatest period of music Europe has ever had still to this date. The European Renaissance (French for rebirth) 12th Century to 16th Century AD was a re-discovered enthusiasm for not only the literature of the ancient world which in truth had never so much fallen out of fashion during the medieval dark ages, but the resurgance for its ancient values and spirit. The medieval period had to deal with constant brutal wars and the black death which swept Europe. Christianity was inevitably not sufficient enough a disposition towards life for these people. They needed more strength towards life as individuals. Something more resilient and less resigned, something more empowering of the self, which felt isolated and vulnerable against the calamities it faced. This would make the values re-discovered in ancient literature mean more than just the enjoyment of stories. But an affinity with its spirit and attitudes. But the Renaissance was not to be a long rebirth of ancient values. This was undone by firstly the Protestant Reformation that felt the Catholic Church had become corrupt by this new “paganism.” And the final nail in the coffin by Calvinism in the 17th Century AD - which essentially is the basis of the world we live in today. Our law, politics, economy, social morals, culture, etc The ancient people’s values versus ancient royal values. And that no matter what you want to believe about God does not change that we still live in God's world. 

Atheism has none of this creative energy. It doesn’t tackle the matter at all. Atheism isn’t affirmative, its negative.  Atheism is neither positivistic nor affirmative. Formal atheism is more denying than Christianity. Atheism is just Christianity without God. It’s the same subduing and reductive mode of thought but turned in on itself. Catholicism, to Protestantism, to Calvinism, to Atheism. If you’re going to be Atheistic you may as well be a Buddhist; it has no god but at least it’s positivistic. Buddhism aims to ward off suffering, doesn't account it as sin, but seeks to purge it as a kind of hygiene of life. As a cleanliness and contentedness. Nevertheless, its disposition towards life is positive, unlike the Abrahamic which put under the microscope is negativistic towards life. With Atheism it’s that same negation that Protestants removed the Pope that takes out God as mere denial of belief - the construct of what is Christianity in its spiritual and moral sense still remains. Christians believe in the same God as Jews and Muslims - and this framework that Atheists deny. It’s morality that belongs to Christians, and I don’t see Atheists having done much to overcome that. Athetism to me is only a new version of Christianity.  Catholicism, to Protestantism, to Calvinism, to Atheism.

Consequently Christianity has attempted on multiple occasions throughout history at pivotal moments to collapse the positive artistic spirit - as secular Christianity in the form of Romanticism, Decadent Art, Nihilistic Art - a creative spirit that is wholly unartistic, who only attempts to dramatise and express the suffering they experience but is wholly incapable of overcoming it and mastering or venerating it as real artists do, and thereby glorifying life - instead they use their suffering to create an art which throws disgust at life and praises weakness, dysfunction, and exhaustion. Jesus was never a Christian; only those who followed him. Or if he was then he was the only Christian. Christ is a man superior to Christianity and cannot belong to it. Out of his artistic-creative spirit he overturned every positive element of man and turned it in to a sin, and toppled every good and great statement of life ever spoken, thought or felt, to the degree that we don’t even associate ourselves with Greeks, Romans or Renaissance men.  I.e, a people who would be brave and confident in the face of life for its terrors and love life for its pleasures. As opposed to the lower class who would fear and despise its oppressive rulers for their lot in life (both noble and life would also mean bad) and find themselves no equivalent pleasures which the nobles enjoyed, thereby despising pleasures which were exclusive to nobles. Life would be weighed and valued with veneration by the ancient upper class whilst being weighed and valued with resentment by the ancient lower class. Why then didn’t the nobles later overthrow it is because, ancient noble literature and religion, as full of wisdom about the nature of life and values of action, prudence, heroic codes and all that that it was, it didn’t have the psychological internalisation of a human being that Christianity had, profoundly deep speculations of conscience and how they think and feel. The noble religions consisted of more action than thought, they just got on and did things; it was more codes of conduct, more outwardly looking at life. And they didn't have a noble internalisation until perhaps Renaissance Humanism. Principally in Machiavelli, Montaigne, and Shakespeare. And nowhere more so than France. The whole modern period in French philosophy (and theatre too) has been both a scepticism of Christianity and a kind of noble internalisation that the both Europe of their day and the ancient world lacked. Until then the western world lacked equivalent books of Royal perspective, world interpretation, heart and conscience. Why it's important was because it detailed all the affirmative qualities within us all. Things which are natural to life. It existed in nobles because they had to both fight and lead men in war, lead nations, and had the luxury and pleasures in life. In a sense they had the worst and the best of it. If it took a person of noble class to make it so be it. It's the mentality and disposition towards life that matters. That it was achieved at all is what matters. Religion denotes a psychological construct of character. * The Egyptians, Greeks, Etruscans, Hindus, Shinto, ans Romans were hugely artistic in creating gods and by their pluralistic religions everyone was given the door to be able to have an artistic spirit. Monotheism is censorship like a locked door. There is no room for self-assertion, it is in itself denying a self-assertiveness before God. The polytheistic door was always open to new gods. Theirs was a positivistic affirming self-assertive culture. And so gave everyone the self-assertive right over his own world to contribute to it. In fact it was this very liberty that brought the end to them: it was liberal enough to let Christianity in. How dull we are in comparison. Two thousand years and no new gods. How unartistic of us! What is higher than any religion we have ever had is simply that positivitic affirmative artistic spirit that went in to creating them in the first place.   In both the mythology of religion and the values of its morality, that artistic act of creativity of religions is superior to the religion itself. To create a religion requires huge creativity of creating values, perspectives on life, stories which hold them. All religions have built on the creative spirit, whether positive or negative, whether affirmative or nihilistic, and all have principally been born from a relationship towards pain, suffering, and death. Pain and suffering are intrinsic aspects of life. They are inevitable aspects of life. They are causes of overcoming, they are signs of it too, they are the very seeds of the future. Pain and suffering is the creative aspect of life. A sign of our growth. The it the artist overcomes it and creates the beautiful music, image, words, or dance. The artistic spirit venerates pain and suffering therefore they venerate life. The artistic spirit requires it. It’s these antagonisms which make it. Every Holy book on Earth has misunderstood this. Whoever worries and complains focuses on what is wrong, but a person who believes everything is right does neither and is content. Any future good owes itself to the day we meet bad things head on, therefore there is necessity in bad things that they justified the moment we strive to overcome them and make things better. It is antagonisms that make us. Bad things are justified by that it makes stronger and that we have cause to correct them. Everything bad is necessary. Everything that succeeds does so because it excels in some good in some way. *

Fear creates gods said Statius - fear created many things it seems. Fear of life, fear of pain, fear of suffering, fear of death - Fear is the very foundation of our religions. Fear in the face of life. In contrast, the artistic creative spirit of those antique artists (Greeks, Romans) more artists than religion was the cornerstone for a quintessential mentality of confidence in the face of all things and veneration of life as it is. The artistic psychology is superior to every religion ever conceived. Culture, if its artistic, is higher than religion and a better answer to the same problem. If i were to rank religions and culture i would like this: 2. Archaic Greek and Late Republican Roman culture 3. The culture of France and Japan 4. Venetian Italian in the time of Renaissance Humanism 5. Buddhism and Hinduism 6. Judaism (i put it higher cos it existed alongside the above religions and cultures without ever destroying them whereas the below didnt. And Jewish people always have a self-assertive ballsy audacious out-spoken temperament which Ive always liked) 7. Islam and Christianity 1 being some future leader culture that would show tolerance for them all and allow them a proper place without persecution within one society but according to its psychological rank. Believing that variety is more important than perfection. You may somehow get rid of religion but you can never get rid of the person it constitutes; they will always exist within society. Its more a matter of understanding it and finding its proper place. To take out that block from the Jenga tower. To remove God. What then? For the longest period of time people have pursued spiritual and moral goals, with religious founders as being their pinnacle of representation. If God is removed, then the whole spiritual and metaphysical mythology is removed? What then? If people have no need to purpose a moral ideal for the judgement of the next world? Genius is the only character throughout history that has every time being beneficial to themselves and everyone. They're not only fundamentally good, they are the best of men. I believe that genius, whether a Leonardo da Vinci, or an Albert Einstein whatever is the only example without exception of a person who is fundamentally beneficial for both themselves and for everybody. That looks to this life and this actual world for its goals and endeavours. And in its creation affirms its inner vitality. Taps in to some personal vitality peculiar to itself that it has developed as a resource from protracted struggle. A heightened faculty which it has nourished on in order to thrive. The deepest self-assertive affirmation. A true being what one is. And that perhaps genius is the only time when the human race is really on target to actual goals. They can seemingly create new order out of such a chaos. For them, the whole Jenga puzzle can fall down, because they’d just build something else. Like a kind of noble genius Dionysus.