Category: random thoughts

He Promised Only To Betray

Posted on by motionblur

I’ve been reading “The Decline And Fall of the Roman Empire” by Edward Gibbon, which ironically was published in 1776 … it’s one of those books that’s highly regarded not just bc of the treatment of the subject matter, but also bc it’s written in a really articulate/eloquent (and occasionally snide/sarcastic) way that you usually don’t find in history books, and also has profound insights that apply to more than just that era.

Anyway, there’s lots of parallels all through history of course, with what’s happening now … this passage from that book is about the emperor Septimius Severus, who took over with mass adulation in about 200 A.D. … mostly by pandering to the mobs and lying through his teeth about everything, and getting away with it … it’s a little dense if not used to the language but it says a lot about how these things happen:

“Falsehood and insincerity, unsuitable as they seem to the dignity of public transactions, offend us with a less degrading idea of meanness than when they are found in the intercourse of private life. In the latter, they discover a want of courage; in the other, only a defect of power; and, as it is impossible for the most able statesmen to subdue millions of followers and enemies by their own personal strength, the world, under the name of policy, seems to have granted them a very liberal indulgence of craft and dissimulation. Yet the arts of Severus cannot be justified by the most ample privileges of state-reason. He promised only to betray, he flattered only to ruin; and however he might occasionally bind himself by oaths and treaties, his conscience, obsequious to his interest, always released him from the inconvenient obligation.”

i.e. We tend to let our public officials get away with insincerity and falsehoods much more than we’d tolerate the same things from someone we’re personally dealing with … possibly because we perceive that it’s unlikely that a statesman can govern just based on their own personal strength, and so we accept that there’s gonna be some craft and pretense involved. But even by those standards, this dude (Severus) was especially phony & disingenuous, & “promised only to betray, flattered only to ruin,” and no matter what he might pledge or swear the one day, could always justify going back on his word the next.

But the crowds loved him cause he indulged and entertained them … he (and his offspring) brought the place to ruin, after which the next 250 years or so were a continuous shitstorm of disasters, culminating in the fall of the (Western) Roman Empire in 476 A.D. … nice going Severus!!

Things done changed

Posted on by motionblur

Crazy how many of the things mentioned in the link below have been completely eliminated from existence … it was fun popping popcorn in those aluminum foil balloons though! Maybe the current “Microwave bag this side up” method is a lot more effective and all, but … where’s the joy in that??

Obsolete Items Quiz

It’d be interesting to see how many things we currently see every day are just as obsolete 20 years from now … If there’s any justice in the world, LEAFBLOWERS will be one of those things~~

12 Years

Posted on by motionblur

I moved back to LA 12 years ago today—November 17, 2008.

It’s a different world now, than it was then … at least it feels different.

And not everything that’s happened between then and now has been desirable, or even tolerable.

But I still can’t really imagine living elsewhere and feeling quite at home as I do here.

In many ways I wish that weren’t the case … I miss being near my family, every day.

Anywhere else I’ve lived though, I constantly feel like I *ought* to be in LA—like, the feeling of missing out on being where I belong, and just biding my time till I can get back.

Feels like yesterday …

Posted on by motionblur

The years do go by pretty quickly … I’ve got these yearly calendar reminders to commemorate when I first met certain people, or did so-and-so with someone, etc—and it’s always the same pattern: at about 4-5 years it’s sorta cool, that we’ve gotten to that mark. Then the years start adding on without that much happening, till the 10-year commemorative. “Wow, 10 years!”

Then, after that, it’s a slow trudge till the next 5-year or even next 10-year mark … because, again, not a whole lot happens in terms of the friendship or whatever, even if lots of things are happening in the individual lives.

Twenty years … thirty years … at some point it start being pointless to even keep track. And I start ignoring most of the yearly reminder notifications, unless it’s a major one (Multiples of 5 are probably worth mentioning! probably …)

I think it’s mostly because we pretty much all stay the same people inside … friends I met when we were teenagers, well, we really haven’t changed THAT much—I mean there’s age and the vissicitudes of living but the person is the same for the most part. We all become a little wiser—whatever that means to us—and more “mature” in our views and choices … but the connection is the same, so it doesn’t really feel like as much time has gone by as the numbers of years would suggest.

That’s probably also partly a function of selection bias (or some term like that)—in that the only people that I’d set up that sort of yearly reminder for would be people with whom I do retain that connection … and they are the very same people for whom the years would seem compressed in such a way.

In contrast, when considering someone with whom I might have once been close in some way, but who went on to live a life divergent from mine—there, 5 years might as well be 50, as whatever connection I had with that person has long dissolved, and, to me, their “essence” exists only in what feels like a distant past.