Life The most tragic form of loss isn’t the loss of security; it’s the loss of the capacity to imagine that things could be different. -~ Ernst Bloch Time Days to come stand in front of us like a row of lighted candles— golden, warm, and vivid candles. Days gone by fall behind us, a gloomy line of snuffed-out candles; the nearest are smoking still, cold, melted, and bent. – C. P. Cavafy ...

Folly’s Antidote But all historians are prisoners of their own experience. We bring to history the preconceptions of our personalities and of our age. We cannot seize on ultimate and absolute truths. So the historian is committed to a doomed enterprise – the quest for an unattainable objectivity. Conceptions of the past are far from stable. They are perennially revised by the urgencies of the present. When new urgencies arise in our own times and lives, the historian’s soptlight shifts, probing at last into the darkness, throwing into sharp relief things that were always there but that earlier historians had carelessly excised from the collective memory. New voices ring out of the historical dark and demand to be heard. ...

Our culture is centered around success in almost any area - work, art, marriage and so on. It’s committed to resisting the idea that all of this involves way more luck and uncertainty than we’d like to admit. For example, if you die climbing everyone says you are a foolhardy idiot. But if you just don’t die - and everyone who climbs long enough knows part of that is luck - everyone says you are a hero and an icon. ...

8月12日英国作家拉史迪在纽约的一个演讲上遇袭，随即他的小说《撒旦诗篇》冲上畅销书榜。他的书于1988年9月出版，在伊斯兰国家引发大论战，许多穆斯林指责该书亵渎了先知穆罕默德。次年2月伊朗精神领袖霍梅尼下了追杀令。拉史迪接受英国警方保护，躲躲藏藏多年。现在，悬赏追杀拉史迪的奖金已经高达3百万美元。 科学的进步并没有解决人类社会的诸多问题，宗教的受众依然颇多。就如弗洛伊德说的，宗教不过是大众的幻觉。许多人步调一致，在重塑现实的幻觉中，以为自己获得了幸福，获得了免于苦难的庇护。当然，分享这一切的人们自己并不会承认这仅是幻觉。 如果说《撒旦诗篇》挑战了许多人生而有之的身份认同，挑战了宗教信仰的正统，同时也挑战了国家和文化的正统。这些年来，民粹主义在全球沉渣泛起。而在这个多变的世界上，怎样才算是正统？当一个社会的包容空间不断缩小，当一个社会推崇通过暴力而非理性来解决问，文化和国家这样的认同是否也在步入宗教的后尘，成为大众的幻觉？ PS. The Satanic Verses incident is known as the Story of the Cranes in the Islamic tradition. It narrates the occasion when the Prophet Muhammad (died 632 CE) mistook the whispers of Satan for divine revelation. Of course, all Muslim group and sects today vehemently reject the Satanic Verses incident on both theological and historical grounds.

Science shows us a reality of the universe, not complete but better than guessing. However some problems of human being are not scientific but social. Each of us has our own small world, so our own different realities. Our worlds are small and partial of the whole world. Some overlapping perhaps. But how much? This reminds me of the story by Natalia Ginzburg, Family Lexicon. In this memoir, Natalia moved between fact and fiction. She puzzeled why her father and silbings argued so vehemently while they were all against fascism. The reality each of us has is really unique. ...

世界是很奇怪的。通货膨胀依旧，乌克兰抵抗俄罗斯的入侵依然，美国股市在技术性的经济衰退中一片繁荣景象。似乎乌克兰的战火只要还在乌克兰，世界就依然太平，似乎通胀只要没有影响到自己，经济就依旧繁荣。夏季的热浪从来没有如此普遍，只要没有吹进自己的家里，气候还依然正常。就像乌克兰不仅为自己的自由而战，而且为世界的和平而战一样。无数挣扎在贫困线的人们在为通胀和气候变暖付出代价，而其他人却丝毫不受影响。The war affects Ukraine. The inflation affects the poor. The climate change affects the vulnerable. Here is Volodymyr Yermolenko’s orignial tweet. He is a Ukrainian philosopher and chief editor at Ukraine World. War is when your friends die. When you see this breathless cruelty of death. You remember talks with this brave young man, a talented scientist, now he’s gone. Or a woman who cares about her rose garden, and you thought of her as the kindest person on earth. She’s gone too ...

前几天因为美国议长佩洛西访问台湾，社交媒体上热闹了一阵。在佩洛西离开台湾之后，中国立即开始在台湾附近海域进行实弹演习作为反制。为此，新华社发了公告(www.news.cn)，其中为了所谓的避讳，将军事“演习”改为军事“演训”。 避讳本来就是陈规陋习，在封建社会也只是不提君王、贵族或高官的名号以示尊重，名讳而已。不过在习近平准备终身连任的过程中，党章宪法都可以修改，避讳从名讳升级到了姓讳也就不奇怪。这无论怎样都是件很荒唐的事，难道以后别人都不能姓习了。习字从此只能习近平一人独享？ 邓小平敢开放敢于打破终身制，其他不论，仅此一点就可以写进史书。而习近平却在搞复辟，修改宪法以便终身连任。而现在利用网络审核和过滤，大肆进行封建避讳。这种倒退是逆历史潮流，完全违背自由平等的普世价值。不过，复辟也只是一时热闹，迟早是要失败的。

“And they laughed a little and were very friendly together, the three of them, Anna, Emanuele and Giustino; and they were pleased to be together, the three of them, thinking of all those who were dead, and of the long war and the sorrow and noise and confusion, and of the long, difficult life which they saw in front of them now, full of all the things they did not know how to do.” -― Natalia Ginzburg, All Our Yesterdays ...

For a man who no longer has a homeland, writing becomes a place to live. – Theodor Adorno In our society there seems a general rule that the more obviously one’s work benefits others, the less one is likely get paid for. – David Graeber

I wish you happiness, if there is such a thing, as happiness. – Natalia Ginzburg, Happiness, as Such 不知从什么时候开始，我已经不再追求幸福。一个人能够做点自己喜欢并力所能及的事情，看看周遭的世界，就够了。宇宙之大单是看看NASA发的照片就可感知一二。火星的表面一如地球上的荒漠，借由韦伯太空望远镜我们可以更清晰地看到更多星系，若干光年以前的景象。时间太少，心愿太多如书，看不过来，实现不及。而读书越来越像雾里看花，文字似乎可以给我一个世界，可是这个世界几分真实几分假？这个夏天超乎寻常地越来越热了。宇宙星空离我们越来越近，而家却离我们越来越远。