I am a madman and all madmen are me.
The Gods are my calling
Dionysian my stance
This pact is exacting
Between my soul and the Fates
and I will sing no other way
for this is my life
my vocation
my passion
my voice
Rob Goldstein 2015-2019
Tag: #endpoverty
10 Harsh Facts
1. More black men are behind bars or under the watch of the criminal justice system than there were enslaved in 1850. Michelle Alexander
2. Legal is not the same as moral or right.
3. A great sex life is not the same as a great love life.
4. One can only be an individual in a social setting.
5. If you decide to live as a digital doll, don’t expect grown ups to respect
you for it.
6. If love is like an itching in your heart, it’s not love
7. The only real sin is making others suffer.
8. Looking young is not the same as being hot.
9. There’s more to life than being alive.
10. One in Four girls and one in six boys will be sexually abused before age 18.
Rob Goldstein 2015 -2019
Revised June 2019
A Definition of Evil
“I was motivated by absolutely humane feelings. I never had any other intention. I never had any other belief than that those poor miserable creatures-that the painful lives of these creatures were to be shortened.”
Karl Brandt, the physician who suggested that Hitler use poison gas to exterminate the Jews.
To Karl Brandt, the people he murdered weren’t human.
They were creatures.
They were “those” poor miserable creatures.
Brandt told himself that killing Jews was an act of mercy; the behavior
of a civilized man.
M. Scott Peck, the psychiatrist who authored, The Road Less Traveled, described evil as a form of “militant ignorance“.
He addressed human evil in “People of the Lie: The Hope for Healing Human Evil“.
According to Peck an evil person tells himself he’s doing good to keep up
an image of perfection.
They,
- Deceive others as a consequence of their own self-deception
- Project their sins onto specific targets (scapegoats) while being
apparently normal with everyone - Commonly hates with the pretense of love, for the purposes of self-deception as much as deception of others.
- Abuses political (emotional) power (“the imposition of one’s will upon others by overt or covert coercion”
- Maintains a high level of respectability based on lies.
- Is consistent in his or her sins. Evil persons are characterized not so much by the magnitude of their sins, but by their consistency (of destructiveness)
- Is unable to think from the viewpoint of their victim (scapegoat)
For me, the most horrific aspect of the violence I experienced as a child was the worst anti-Semitic beatings were given by adults in the neighborhood.
I was that Jew.
That Christ killer.
The adults at that time felt they had a moral duty to debase and humiliate
me.
How is it different today?
How does it feel to the six-year-old son of impoverished immigrants who hears his parents described vermin?
What happens when a society abuses children as a matter of policy?
What happens to America with a President who incites violence?
M. Scott Peck defines evil as the use of cruelty against people who
cannot defend themselves.
11 Beautiful Minds of The 20th Century
Eleven brilliant and courageous men and women.
1.
Pablo Neruda
July 12, 1904-September 23, 1973
I want to eat the sunbeam flaring in your lovely body,
the sovereign nose of your arrogant face,
I want to eat the fleeting shade of your lashes,
and I pace around hungry, sniffing the twilight,
hunting for you, for your hot heart,
like a puma in the barrens of Quitratue.
2.
Norma Jeane Mortenson
June 1, 1926-August 5, 1962
I am not a victim of emotional conflicts. I am human.
Norma Jeane Mortenson
3.
Harvey Milk
May 22, 1930 – November 27, 1978
“All men are created equal. No matter how hard they try, they can never erase those words. That is what America is about.”
― Harvey Milk, The Harvey Milk Interviews: In His Own Words
4.
el-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz
May 19, 1925 – February 21, 1965
“I’m for truth, no matter who tells it. I’m for justice, no matter who it is for or against. I’m a human being, first and foremost, and as such I’m for whoever and whatever benefits humanity as a whole.”
― Malcolm X
5.
Nina Simone
February 21, 1933 – April 21, 2003
“I am just one of the people who is sick of the social order, sick of the establishment, sick to my soul of it all. To me, America’s society is nothing but a cancer, and it must be exposed before it can be cured. I am not the doctor to cure it. All I can do is expose the sickness.”
― Nina Simone
6.
John Fitzgerald Kennedy
May 29, 1917 – November 22, 1963
“If by a “Liberal” they mean someone who looks ahead and not behind, someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions, someone who cares about the welfare of the people-their health, their housing, their schools, their jobs, their civil rights and their civil liberties-someone who believes we can break through the stalemate and suspicions that grip us in our policies abroad, if that is what they mean by a “Liberal”, then I’m proud to say I’m a “Liberal.”
― John F. Kennedy, Profiles in Courage
7.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
January 15, 1929- April 4, 1968
There comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe nor politic nor popular, but he must take it because his conscience tells him it is right. Martin Luther King, Jr.
8.
Jean Maurice Eugène Clément Cocteau
July 5, 1889 – 11 October 11, 1963
The poet is a liar who always speaks the truth.
Jean Cocteau
9.
Frank O’Hara
March 27, 1926 – July 25, 1966
“I wonder if the course of narcissism through the ages would have been any different had Narcissus first peered into a cesspool. He probably did.”
― Frank O’Hara, Early Writing
10.
Simone de Beauvoir
January 9, 1908 – April 14, 1986
Life is occupied in both perpetuating itself and in surpassing itself; if all it does is maintain itself, then living is only not dying. Simone de Beauvoir
11.
Jean Genet
December 19, 1910-April 15, 1986
What I did not yet know so intensely was the hatred of the white American for the black, a hatred so deep that I wonder if every white man in this country, when he plants a tree, doesn’t see Negroes hanging from its branches. Jean Genet
Disclaimer: To the best of my knowledge the images on this page are in the public domain.
Header photo, Portrait of Malcolm X, by Rob Goldstein (c) 2016
Blog post updated June 2020
