oh, du fröhliche!

For this first weekend after the New Year finding many agonising over resolutions, Brain Pickings presents a nice book-review of a vintage, seminal work by Friedrich Nietzsche called Die Fröhliche Wissenschaft—usually translated as the Gay Science.

This happy discipline is itself derived from a Provençal term—gai saber—needed for the art of composition, which was already popularised through parody by writers like Ralph Waldo Emerson, who coined the phrase appositely as the “dismal science,” sure that poets were supposed to be tortured, wretched souls. As the name implies, it is on the balance a positive and optimistic work, and Nietzsche, on the occasion of the New Year, resolves to be a yea-sayer and presents ideas that echo in famous and constructive lists of resolutions of other authors, thinkers and celebrities that the article also features. The Gay Science is often summarily dismissed as being the first instance in the philosopher’s body of work to contain the phrase “god is dead,” and although Nietzsche, as a secularist, wants to find the divine in ourselves that was imparted to us before we can intelligently discuss true deities, I think that the statement is amplified far beyond its tenor. The “dead god” is the departed Buddha and the vignette paints a swirling image of madmen desperately searching for religion but only finds worshipers bowing to the flickering shadows projected from a statue of the Enlightened One—and for this, Nietzsche makes us all accomplices.

false-flag or the real mcguffin

Even though it seemed that a disguntled former-employee of the entertainment concern was behind the hack attack against the movie studio’s estate and not factions of cowboys Juche sponsored by an obliviously angry and belligerent government of the People’s Democratic Republic of Korea, the US has decided to impose the already political-isolate with more punishing sanctions.

Even though North Korea’s involvement of prizing into a gossip column of a Japanese company was not cleanly exonerated and the general conduct of the nation is pretty inexcusable, this resolution, though typical, strikes me as suspicious. Either—and this a real possibility, there is either more at stake behind these cyber-skirmishes that’s being held back, or—which the whole business is starting to absolutely reek of—this is a carelessly crafted plan to tame the Chinese dragon, a creature conjured up by Western conspiracy and appetite in the first place, indirectly by winning over its perceived partners that it cannot influence in other ways. It is not exactly like earlier shameful episodes where the world’s will was drawn together with fabricated stories about weapons of mass destruction ready to be released in Iraq, in this Hack-attacky II, there’s no time to bother with such theatre, since I am sure that there are already test-audiences that panned it. First, however, destabilising Syria, Kiev, next making a pariah out of Russia, then making friends with Cuba, it does seem like the next step in their minds would be to drive a wedge between regional partners.

epiphany, theophany

The feast of the Epiphany—or Dreikönigstag as it is known in German, celebrates the arrival of the Magi to greet the infant Jesus and marks the twelfth day of Christmastide. On the eve of the holiday, priests bless frankincense (Weihrauch), gold that decorates the church and the chalk used to inscribe the initials of the Three Wisemens over the thresholds of the community, the names Caspar, Melchior and Balthasar also being an abbreviation for Christus mansionem benedicat—“may Christ bless this house.” One of the original purposes behind this pageant was to publicise the date of Easter and thus the liturgical schedule of the new year, before the availability of calendars. Eastern traditions also observe a similar feast on 6 January—though the Julian calendar in the present century is thirteen days ahead of the Gregorian one, though it is called Theophany, which is closer to the Greek source word meaning God’s shining forth.
Among other solemnities, which include priests making the rounds to homes of parishioners, the Orthodox priest will also bless a special batch of holy water that’s known as the Waters of Theophany and shared from the fount by the faithful. A greater ablution will take place afterwards, with a procession proceeding to the nearest natural reservoir, a lake, a harbour, and a cross will be cast into the water. In Greece particularly, this is done to calm the waters and make it safe for sea-travel after the stormy winter months and disperse the gremlins called καλικάντζαροι that bedevil ships. Parishioners will dive in to retrieve the cross and return it to the priest for a special blessing.

big fat surprise

A study, heavily laden with footnotes and cross-references, from the British Medical Journal suggests that all the lies the public have been fed regarding diet and nutrition over the last five decades or so was more or less experimental in nature—with the subject of study being more marketing, agricultural surplus and farming lobbies rather than health and well-being—and could neigh equate with mass-murder. This rather short analysis has been bantered about in the news for the past few days and subject to quite a bit of elaborate and imaginative conclusions, which was the stuff of the fringe-community previously, for going against the rubric of the Food Pyramid.

The article is not a summary dismantling of the pseudo-science, sponsored studies and poor sampling techniques that launched a thousand fad-diets and ensured that despite what appear to be good-faith remediation, we are as a whole, much unhealthier than ever before, but it does open the way for rigourous and humbling studies to follow. What do you think? Were we just naïve in believing that we not are surrounded by touts and hucksters—untouchable even in more wholesome rackets? Is this bit of righteous arson just clearing the stage for the next round of opportunists, as usually what’s quality isn’t worth the investment?