“I love you because you do not know how to live in this world.”

– Zarathustra, by Nietzsche

This has zilch to do with formal, systematic academic philosophy, which I don’t understand, or care about, at all. It has to do with living life.

And if someone were to ask me right now what my philosophy of life is, I would say a combination of stoicism with a small s and the very earliest Christianity. There is a reason why some early Christians got thrown to the lions, and why Nero had Paul beheaded.

The earliest Christians, of whom there were around 150 in Rome, were rebels. Among other things, they granted women and slaves a status that was almost unheard of back then, and they refused to honor the traditional gods or worship the emperor as if he were holy.

They were following a man who said, “Where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the middle of them.” What he meant by that was, after I die my spirit will still guide you, but you must be the artist of your own life. Riches or fame or power are not the things you should seek (like the emperor does), because they are only the empty things of this temporary world. It is yourselves you should seek, because you have selves and they are your eternal gifts and possessions which no one can take away from you, ever – not even the emperor. This philosophy can only be more crucial now (2026 AD) than ever before.

The Jesus of the masses is a false Jesus.

The Prosperity Gospel was written by Satan, that great snake oil salesman.

The stoicism part has to do with being what might be called a “badass.” Marcus Aurelius, one of the greatest stoic philosophers, said that even if you’re being devoured by a wild animal, you should keep your cool, because it will all be over soon and you may as well not look like a fool screaming your head off on the way out. It is akin to what the Native Americans meant when they said, “Today is a good day to die,” and then acted like it, like Sitting Bull sitting down amid whizzing bullets aimed at his head and smoking his pipe. All the bullets but one missed (until the end), no one knows why.

It is not about looking for death, it is about not fearing death, even when it knocks on the door. Too many people fear death and dissolution and don’t even know they fear it. This condition makes them angry, cramped, greedy, grasping, cowardly, pinched, bitter, resentful, uptight and mean (and then they take it out on the rest of us). Marcus said that the first thing you must do is understand, that is seek, yourself. In this he was much like Jesus, Buddha, Socrates, Plato, Nietzsche, Freud and Jung. Marcus, who was an opium user like Nietzsche, the emperor of Rome, and a general who witnessed gory war over and over again, and almost all of whose children died before he did, did not believe in tragedy.

Bukowski said, “Find what you love and let it kill you.” Neil Young said, “It’s better to burn out than it is to rust.” Someone once said that real rock stars do not die, they collapse.

Sinead O’Connor was found in her house, already dead from emphysema at 56. She was a lifelong chain cigarette smoker and heavy marijuana smoker who said the sacred Ganja helped her creativity. (I believe her, truly.) Her version of Prince’s song, “Nothing Compares 2 U,” permanently redefined what pop music is, and what it should be, forever (even though it isn’t any more). It was a case, in 1990, of real and true, solid and great art becoming wildly popular. Such things (the convergence of real art and the popular taste) almost never happen today. If you want to find great new art now, you must look outside the mainstream, first and foremost. THE MACHINE has taken over the mainstream and the Machine does not understand the human soul, which is the first criteria for both great art and great philosophy.

Chris Cornell was found on the bathroom floor of a fancy hotel room in Detroit, Michigan, at 52. He had benzos and other prescription downers in his system. The hanging rope (so-called) was around his neck, just like in the music video he’d recently made. Almost all suicide is an accident. If someone had gotten to him just a little bit sooner, things may have turned out differently. But he had found what he loved and let it kill him.

Prince checked himself out of a hospital after an opioid overdose, even though his doctors and assistants begged him not to. Very soon afterward, he was found alone in his own elevator in the Minneapolis, Minnesota, suburbs. He was 57. He, too, had found what he loved and let it kill him.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, universally acknowledged as the greatest German of all time, said we should live like this. Every day, we should let one song, one picture, and one poem or piece of writing take us away to somewhere else and then bring us back to ourselves. Every day. And we should work at it – harder, much harder, than we ever work at anything else, even though we also need to work very hard at everything else. “It” is never easy. And it is not supposed to be easy. Easy things are worth nothing. There are too many easy things and too many easy people in the world right now.

All three songs attached to this essay bring tears to the eyes behind the shades within seconds of being heard, for the writer of this essay. It is not because the writer of this essay is sad, although he is sad.

It is because the music is so beautiful.

END NOTE: They say AI is gonna get us, permanently. But not if you have a superhuman spirit of mind, or a mind of spirit, that can outmatch it. “Artificial Super Intelligence” will be able to do everything better than us. But not with the things of the spirit. And the spirit flies, it rises, far above all – even artificial super intelligence (no contest in the end).

CODA:

Bukowski’s T Shirt

Late in life

he wore a t shirt

with his own, old face

upon it.

(See the cover of

You Get So Alone at Times That It

Just Makes Sense, 1986.)

This was a way

of saying

fuck you!

to all those who

had tried to kill him

off.

Now

here

it’s gotten

worse

than it already was.

Don’t let them

or It

take over,

that is,

destroy

(devour),

your soul.

By Dale the Drifter, including photos and music selections!