Almost.

Sometimes you can listen to Parabola and ALMOST believe what Maynard is saying.

40/Week.

Adorno and Horkheimer argue that the chief characteristic
of the modern self is that it is constituted through a process of renunciation;
that is, through a process of giving up things. This is what they mean when
they remark that ‘The history of civilization is the history of the introversion
of sacrifice – in other words, the history of renunciation’ (DE: 43). Sacrifice
has come to be internalized; I sacrifice (aspects of) myself. The ‘identical,
enduring self’ (DE: 42) relies on the renunciation of the immediate
satisfaction of impulse in exchange for its continued existence. The problem
with this, according to Adorno and Horkheimer, is that what is given back
to the self – its continued existence – is not equivalent to what it has
relinquished: ‘All who renounce give away more of their life than is given
back to them, more than the life they preserve’ (DE: 43).

Troublesome Terminology.

This opposition between myth and enlightenment brings us to what
Adorno and Horkheimer might mean by a ‘dialectic’ of enlightenment.
Again, like ‘enlightenment’, ‘dialectic’ has a significant philosophical
pedigree. Perhaps the most important understanding of ‘dialectic’ upon
which Adorno and Horkheimer draw is that developed throughout his work
by the German philosopher, G.W.F. Hegel (1770–1831). In his Logic, which
is the first part of his Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences (first published,
1817; third edition, 1830), for example, Hegel says that ‘dialectic’ names
the way in which apparently simple concepts or propositions ultimately go
beyond their own simplicity and turn into their opposites (Hegel 1975b:
115). We can most usefully begin to see what this might mean by considering
Adorno and Horkheimer’s opposition between enlightenment and myth
itself. The argument of their book is that myth is already, in some sense,
enlightenment because it is already an attempt at knowledge: the bogeyman
is an attempt to explain the bump in the night. Conversely, enlightenment
is still myth because, although human beings might have been relieved of
their fear of nature, they are increasingly alienated from it and thus an
antagonistic relationship with it persists: the squirrel gets it in the neck.
Enlightenment can be shown to be characterized by what is allegedly opposed
to it; in this way, it is dialectical.

The End of the Road.

It abandons us in this contradiction with no grounds either for preventing or for justifying murder, menacing and menaced, swept along with a whole generation intoxicated by nihilism, and yet lost in loneliness, with weapons in our hands and a lump in our throats.

In that every action today leads to murder, direct or indirect, we cannot act until we know whether or why we have the right to kill.

Rebellion Against the Astronomer's Hellscape.

It is no longer the revolt of the slave against the master, nor even the revolt of the poor against the rich; it is a metaphysical revolt, the revolt of man against the conditions of life, against creation itself. 

'People like us must have the religion of despair. By dint of saying "That is so! That is so!" and of gazing down into the black pit at one's feet, one remains calm.'

No Dancer.

He never married, and he never learned to dance. He was so resistant to dancing that most of the principal male characters in his novels take sympathetic action and refuse to dance as well.

For you have blown a large breach in the walls of my existence.

Fair summary cribbed from a letter of Flaubert's. Russell was better off with those delicate aspects withered and crushed, better off never pulling the cover back, not like now, exposed.

As if he came somewhat close to an automated existence, mechanical, but blew it.

Figure-8.

Just try to sit there and imagine the bodily mechanics involved, when Elliott Smith stabs himself through the heart.

It seems to require an effort beyond what the mind can conceive properly in preparation.

It's a sort of miracle of determination.

Elliott like some angel of self-deliverance.

Twenty-Nine.

Four thousand degrees beyond medication.

Your units don't make sense.

It's a little late for this now.

A little too late for everything.

Everything is the devil.

Astronomy is the science of hell.

Russell can only wait for those final threads of emotional attachment to wither on the vine, so to speak.

Predicted Outcome.

As Thom says on one of those PH-era songs, it's inevitable, it's inevitable.

And one gets the sense that this patchwork of increasingly-permanent failure is part of an unconscious process, a preparing-of-the-field for what is seen, again, as ultimately Inevitable.