Watching Steven and Cory playing tonight really made we want to learn an instrument. I can't believe how musically retarted I am. Who gets kicked out of middle school band, honestly? Like why was I so damn ignorant that I couldn't even learn how to play the fucking bells? So anyway, I came back to the room tonight wanting to do nothing more than play Brittany's keyboard. So I unwrapped it of its towel raincoat and turned it on and went to play the only thing I know. And then there was no sound. Nothing happened. That would fucking happen. So what I have decided is, along with saving money for plane tickets, spending money in general, and future NYC tuition, I am going to get piano lessons. To learn a song on the piano is on my list of things to do before I'm 30. Well, I'm being an over-achiever here and getting lessons so I can learn many songs. What do you think about that, huh?
Whilst listening to Steven and Cory, I also read something that fascinated me out of my fascinating book by an author that does nothing more than fascinates me.
"'Preach abstinence from procreation in the name of making it always possible for English lords to gormandize, and it will go! Preach abstinence from procreation in the name of giving a greater pleasure, it will go! But try to persuade people to refrain from procreation in the name of morality-ye fathers! what an outcry! The human race would not be extinguished, because an attempt was made to keep men from being swine.'
'Nevertheless," said I, "if all men should adopt this for a law, the human race would be annihilated.'
'You ask: 'How would the human race be perpetuated?' ' said he. 'Why should it be continued-this human race of ours?' he exclaimed.
'Why do you ask such a question? Otherwise there would be no more of us.'
'Well, why should there be?'
'What a question-why, to live, of course!'
'But why should we live? If here is no other aim, if life was given only to perpetuate life, then there is no reason why we should live. And if this is so, then the Schopenhauers and Hartmanns, and all the Buddhists as well, are perfectly right. Now, if there is a purpose in life, then it is clear that life ought to come to an end when that purpose is attained. This is the logic of it," said he, with evident agitation, and seeming to set a high value on his thought. 'This is the logic of it. Observe: if the aim of mankind is happiness, goodness, love if ou prefer; if the aim of mankind is what is said in the prophecies that all men are to unite themselves in universal love, that the spears are to be beaten into pruning-hooks and the like, then what stands in the way of the attainment of this aim? Human passions do! Of all passions, the most powerul and vicious and obstinate is sexual, carnal love; and so if passions are annihilated and with them the last and most powerful, carnal love, then the prophecy will be fulfilled, men will be united together, the aim of mankind will have been attained, and there would be no longer any reason for existence. As long as humanity exists, this ideal will be before it, and of course this is not the ideal of rabbits or of pigs, which is to propagate as rapidly as possible, and it is not the ideal of monkeys or of Parisians, which is to enjoy all the refinements of sexual passion, but it is the ideal of goodness attained by self-restraint and chastity. Toward this men are now striving, and always have striven. And see what results.
It results that sexual love is the safety-valve. If the human race does not as yet attain this aim, it is simply because there are passions, and the strongest of them the sexual. But since there is sexual passion, a new generation comes along, and of course there is always the possibility that the aim may be attained by some succeeding generations until the aim is attained, until the prophecies are fulfilled, until all men are joined in unity. And then what would be the result?
If it be granted that God created men for the attainment of a certain end, then He must have created them mortal, without sexual passion, or immortal. If they were mortal, but without sexual passion, then what would be the result?-this: that they would live without attaining their aim, and then would die, so that, to attain the aim, God would have to create new men. But if they were immortal, then let us suppose, I say, that they reached their goal after many thousand years; but then, why should they? What good would the rest of their lives be to them? It is better as it is!....
But perhaps you do not approve this form of expression, perhaps you are an evolutionist. Even then it comes to the same thing. The highest genus of animals, men, in order to get the advantage in the conflict with other creatures, must band together, like a hive of bees, and not propagate irrefularly; must also, like the bees, nourish the sexless ones; in other words, must struggle toward continence, and never allow the kindling of the carnal lusts to which the whole arrangement of our life is directed.'
He paused.
'Will the human race come to an end? Can any one who looks at the world as it is have the slightest doubt of it? Why, it is just as certain as death is certain. We find the end of the world inculcated in all the teachings of the Church, and in all the teachings of Science it is likewise show to be inevitable.'"
-The Kreutzer Sonata by Leo Tolstoy.
Christopher McCandless got it all wrong. It wasn't Jack London. Leo Tolstoy is king.
Thank you.
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