Alexander Hislop wants to Chant Down Babylon, and So Do I

The Two Babylons: or, the Papal Worship Proved to Be the Worship of Nimrod and His Wife – Alexander Hislop (1916)

            (Recently I came across a Reading List for a University lecture course taught by the great Sun Ra back in the day.  Fascinating stuff.  This is my review of the first book on the Sun Ra Reading List.  I hope to make it through them all this year. - RXTT)

            This one is heavy.  First, a little background.  I am the son of an Episcopal Priest.  Because of this, I grew up in church, and because of my curiosity, I was always reading the Bible, or any theology that came my way.  I wanted to know what in this collection of books (BIBLIA means a collection of separate books, hence our Bible) was the source for the seemingly infinite variety of denominations and sects that claimed to be following the teachings of Jesus the Christ.  In all my study as a youth, and in the decades since, I have never found any of what Jesus the Christ taught, preached, or espoused, to be complex.  His teachings are exceedingly basic, and applicable to all humans in all lands.  The many religions/sects/cults (they are all the same thing) that sprung up in Jesus’ wake, however, have conflated his teachings, and obscured the simple message behind walls of ritual, baroque language, and the seemingly impenetrable man-made creation of the priesthood.  The worst one seems to be the Roman Catholic Church.

            A quick history lesson: the times in which Jesus the Christ lived are estimated to be between 2,000 and 2,100 years ago.  No one can be sure. There is no record anywhere of the date of his birth, the date of his mitzvah (Jesus was a Jew, you know), or of the date of his death.  There are no Roman or old Israelite records showing Jesus specifically being tried and executed.  All we have are the words of Scripture, in which very little of Jesus’ life is actually discussed.  There is nothing in the Bible between his birth and the time he came of age, and very little between that and his rise as a prophet and leader of men.  You can find Bibles that mark all of the words claimed to be spoken by Jesus the Christ in red letters, and let me tell you, it is barely two pages of text collectively.  That is, two pages of text, out of a collection of books running thousands of pages long.

            The initial Christians, in the three to four-hundred years after his passing, maintained for the most part the teachings he gave.  People today talk constantly about Jesus’ calls to be humble, to turn the other cheek to your enemy, to not use violence, for violence is an evil method.  These are all great teachings and deeply valuable, as evident in the US Civil Rights movement of the 1960’s with Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s non-violent protest, and in India’s Revolt from the yoke of the British Empire, with Mahatma Gandhi's non-violent protest tactics.  They were also central to the early Christians.  However, if you actually read the Gospels instead of accepting your local cult leader’s (priest’s) interpretation, you will see that Jesus preached against many things which, today, are not so commonly discussed.  Jesus preached against all organized religion of any type, and the idea that any intermediary can or should come between a human and his divinity (God).  He saw first-hand the corruption Rabbinical “leaders” caused in his Jewish faith.  He saw how those people get assigned power over the rest of us, power which only leads to evil and ill.  Jesus also preached heavily for the personal dissolution of the family.  He states many times that a good person values god more than their family.  Jesus lived in a time where one’s family dictated everything about your life.  If you were born to a rich landowner, you were to be a rich landowner.  If you were born to a destitute family, you deserved it and you were going to stay destitute.  The modern ideal of a human being making something out of themselves, regardless of their familial status or where they come from, is a very recent phenomenon, and for most of human history this has not been the case.

            Jesus also preached separation from the concerns of the state.  He witnessed the corruption inherent when a powerful religion (concerned primarily with men’s souls) comingled and eventually entrenched themselves into local (Roman) politics.  What is the old saying?  “Power tends to corrupt.  Absolute power tends to corrupt absolutely.”  Jesus preached against the old codes in the Bible, stating that, as he had come to redeem the world of all sin, past and present, the old Abrahamaic and Mosaic laws of the Hebrews were null and void, and there was but one way to salvation, faith in the teachings of Jesus.  This may have been his greatest act of rebellion, and is most definitely the teaching that caused him to be executed by religions leaders using the Roman courts as their proxy.  (Many claim that Jesus was put to death for preaching to non-Jews.  In fact, many of the apostles were against Jesus teaching his lessons to non-Jews.  Jesus did not see the difference, for we are all human, and his teachings applied to all.  He began preaching to “gentiles,” the non-Jews such as Greeks, Phoenicians, Egyptians, etc. who happened to live in or near Israel.  It is easy to see how this would piss off some rich bastard priesthood/rabbis whose sole claim to power was being able to guide Hebrews to God.)

            In other words, Jesus’ teachings amounted to a direct and absolute threat to all established powers in his world.  “Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s” as Jesus stated so famously when asked about money and taxes.  Jesus did not care about money.  The early Christians followed his teachings, abstaining from blind obedience to families, the state or any organized religion, and not seeking to hoard riches or wealth.  They met in un-decorated rooms, and humbly prayed, quietly, as Jesus taught.  It only took three to four hundred years for these good teachings to be overrun by an organization seeking to regain their power, both religious and political, and for them to claim to be the sole and only source for true salvation.  That group of evil bastards is, according to Mr. Hislop, what is currently known as the Roman Catholic Church, home of endless nun-rapes, pedophiles, bastard children, and the most exquisite blasphemies and idolatries ever, all the while telling the millions of Christians worldwide that they are the sinners, that they are born evil, and that only through the Roman Catholic Church (RCC) and their priests can humans hope to achieve redemption.

            It is this organization, at one point so powerful that the Pope actually ruled an entire empire (Papal States - edit, thanks to !@#$#%$), that Alexander Hislop has put squarely in his sights.  His disdain for the evils of the RCC is so great that he spent a great part of his life in research, reading, learning, and understanding exactly how the RCC has managed to enslave much of the world in a deeply Pagan and un-Christian religion.  Hislop goes into extravagant detail about pretty much every single aspect of what we call today Roman Catholicism, and how it is all just a subversion of Christian tropes in service of a more ancient pagan belief, the worship of the god/godman called Baal, Cyrus, or Nimrod.  This individual, Hislop claims, was the son of Noah, the first creator of a large walled city after the Biblical Flood (Babylon), who, after his death in a violent manner, was deified as having been resurrected as the God of all Men.  His wife, Semiramis, gave birth to a son, Tammuz, in a virgin birth.  The Babylonian religion coalesced these two entities, the father and the son, as being the same person, essentially having Nimrod father himself and be reborn as Tammuz.  They also ended up worshiping Semiramis as a goddess who had a miraculous “Virgin” birth.  She became so very powerful as a goddess object of worship that Tammuz was infantilized, and both of them were portrayed just as Mary and Jesus are now portrayed, a virgin mother saint holding her sainted son, reborn of the Father.

            When the Roman Emperors’ began to attempt to control Christianity, they essentially couched the old paganism in Christian symbolism, turning the ancient festival of Saturnalia (celebrating the Virgin birth of Tammuz/Mithra) into Christmas, turning the spring festivals to Ishtar (a goddess Hislop shows to be just an inversion of the worship of Semiramis) into the High festival of Easter, supposedly commemorating Jesus’ reincarnation after his crucifixion, but celebrated with Pagan symbols such as eggs, rabbits, and other ancient stand-ins for fertility.  They declared formally that they were the only true Christian religion, that no others are valid, and that redemption and salvation do not come from faith in Jesus the Christ and following his teachings, but in endless cycles of pagan bullshit such as flagellation, contrition, the paying of tithes, suffering for suffering’s sake, and the constant reminder of the horrors that the human body of Jesus endured by the fetish of the Roman execution device of the cross.  This is essentially religious horror-porn.  Christ never mentioned any of these things as divine and in fact, actually denounced most of them.

            One of the biggest areas that Hislop explores is the method by which the Roman Catholic Church has ingrained the cardinal sin of idolatry into its very essence.  The very first of the Mosaic Commandments states thus, “I am the Lord, thy God.  Thou shall have no other gods before me.  Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image.”  Jesus, in his Gospels, states that this Commandment takes precedence above all others.  However, this is exactly the opposite of what the Roman Catholic Babylon Church has forced upon the devout.  Their houses of worship are covered in idols, images, and statues that are MEANT to be prayed to.  Instead of praying quietly to god, as commanded by Jesus, Roman Catholics are expected to supplicate to dead saints (many of them converted Pagan gods or ideas), and Mary and the priests to plead to God on their behalf.  Nowhere is Jesus mentioned.  The pagan worship of a Virgin Mother has so corrupted the Roman Catholic Church that even the Popes exclaim that Mary is the redeemer, the one who makes Jesus save us.  That is deep blasphemy.

            I have not even scratched the surface of what Hislop exposes.  In the Gospels, Jesus states that we are all to confess our sins to each other, including religious leaders.  This keeps everyone humble, and human, and understanding of our failings, and better able to accept the faults of others (a very Christian thing to do), but the Roman Catholic Church does not follow Jesus’ teachings on this.  They demand that all subjects confess their sins to a Priest, who remains anonymous, and then the priest will give them some rote bullshit to do to be “absolved,” such as reciting countless prayers to Mary (more blasphemy). Never, ever, do the Priests confess their sins to the people in their care.  In fact, when the people come out and inform authorities that many of the Roman Catholic priests/monks/nuns are pedophiles, rapists, abusers, inveterate drunks, gamblers, and all-around professional sinners, there is never any accountability!   Rapist pedophile priests are slightly chastised and sent to a different parish, where their evil can continue unabated.  Recently a comprehensive list of priests accused of credible sexual rape and abuse, has been published.  It runs over THREE THOUSAND NAMES LONG.  None of these assholes will be jailed.  None will even be prosecuted in court.  The Roman Catholic Church treats their priest’s crimes as “sins” to be dealt with internally, regardless of the horror and trauma they cause to countless generations of people.  This has been the case for hundreds of years.  If anyone does come to trial, it is always some ancient old priest who raped kids for decades, but now looks so feeble and old that people feel pity for the rapist!

            Religion is, to me, the last great superstition left in humanity.  It is the single largest source of pain, suffering, and outright evil in the world.  The biggest crimes against humanity have been done in the name of religion, or attempting to stop one specific religion.  It is all a crock of shit.  As soon as we all rid ourselves of the idea that cryptic and debased belief systems are truth and the key to happiness once we are dead, then humanity will reach a deeper closeness with the true teachings that Jesus the Christ died to impart.  Mr. Hislop, as a Christian in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s, is a devout believer in Jesus.  He deeply believes that Jesus and his sacrifice were, as Jesus stated, the final redemption of mankind, and that no other redemption is required, which is the exact opposite of what the Roman Catholic Church preaches.  I do not feel this way.  I do not “believe” in anything.  I am purely a human being, living my life as best I see fit, and trying my hardest to help others when I can, and not hurt others when I am able to stop myself from doing so.  I have had many people in my life, people very close to me, tell me that in my day to day living, I am the closest thing to a Christian they know.  I take it as a compliment.  Jesus was a REBEL.  Jesus knew his teachings were important enough to die for.  Jesus whupped some money-lender ass when they defiled his father’s house. 

            This is not an easy book to read.  The work is dense, and Mr. Hislop gives you everything he can find to prove his point.  There are so many examples, so many unavoidable truths within, that I can see why this book is not more widely known.  The Wizard of Oz does NOT want you to see how he makes the magic happen.

(EDITED for clarity - 2/5/2020 - RXTT)

(This book can be downloaded as a PDF here: http://www.ldolphin.org/PDFs/The_Two_Babylons-Alexander_Hislop.pdf )

Heredity, and genetic science, are more complex than one could ever imagine

She Has Her Mother’s Laugh: The Powers. Perversions, and Potential of Heredity – Carl Zimmer (2018)

            (A quick note on some awesomeness that has graced this humble book review blog recently.  Several weeks ago I received notice that RXTT’s Intellectual Journey has been included in Feedspot’s Top 200 Book Blogs, currently found at #193! Amazing!  Many thanks to blog master Mr. Anuj Agarwal, and the good people at Feedspot.  BOOKS RULE!)

The past decade has seen the world of genetic research explode, in both the amount and the scope of what is being attempted.  Researches the world over have new tools with which to explore the genetic codes that provide the instructions to make all parts of living organisms.  As with all emerging scientific fields, the general public’s discourse is decades behind the forefront of research.  This leads to reactionary angers, manipulation of the ignorant through fear, and an inability to properly fund cutting edge research.  Carl Zimmer has done an amazing job corralling the wild and weird history of the human study of heredity and genetics, and made it truly enjoyable to read.

Humans have been genetically altering the natural world around us for millennia; way before we knew what drove heredity, or had any idea about why offspring acquired certain characteristics of their parents and lost others.  These early genetic experimenters were the early humans that began to cultivate wild plants.  An example of this is the modern tomato.  The original fruit, which is exceedingly rare to find these days, was basically a tiny, tart and seedy berry.  The humans in the New World (many of our modern foods were not found in Eurasia, Africa, or Australia) would choose a plant with slightly lager or sweeter berry, collect those seeds, and propagate it.  Each new generation, the human would choose the plants with the best fruit, propagate that one, and dispose of the lesser plants.  Over the centuries, that basic method created whole new species of tomato plants, capable of producing much bigger, sweeter, and more nutritious food.  The same process allowed our New World ancestors to create what we now call corn, chili peppers, potatoes, and a host of other vegetables that are ubiquitous in modern diets worldwide.  This same process was undergone by early humans domesticating cattle, goats, swine, etc.  By breeding only the animals whose traits were preferred, more animals capable of reproducing those traits existed, soon making them the norm.

In spite of the long history of humans altering the plants and animals around us, it seems that as a species, we humans have an extremely short memory of our collective past.  We allow ideas that have no relation to the world around us to color how we see the world itself.  One of the biggest restraints to developing the science of heredity and genetics came from organized religion, and the blind obedience that their dogma requires of their followers.  Ideas that are in opposition to religious dogma are disposed of without exploration, and people are kept blind, ignorant and happy in their stupidity.  For centuries, the idea that the world was truly static, truly unchanging, was prevalent in Western culture.  This stems solely from theologians and priests demanding that everyone see their little collection of stories, history, genealogy, myths, and fables as LITERAL TRUTH, never to be questioned, never to be doubted.  In this world view, every animal species was perfectly crafted by an omniscient creator, and these species have remained unchanged since the beginning of time.  This belief depended on the unchallenged assumption that the world was just over 6,000 years old, an assumption so stupid and wrong yet strictly dogmatic, that it was unchallenged for centuries, even causing the execution of people willing to claim otherwise.

It is quite fitting that despite these idiocies pushed on people by organized religions, it was ordained members of the clergy who did the most groundbreaking work on genetics.  Gregor Mendel, an Augustinian friar and abbot, decided he was going to do his own experiments, regardless of the consequences.  He used the common pea plant, and its many colorful flowers, as his subject.  By cross-breeding them over and over, and carefully observing the results, he developed the idea that the outcome of reproduction is due to the offspring inheriting some sort of instructions from both of its progenitors.  He showed how, for these plants, and it turns out, for much of life on Earth, there is a rigid set of probability controlling which traits are passed on and in what quantity.  By selectively breeding only tall plants, an d then pollinating them with pollen from short plants, he was able to show the existence of dominant, and recessive, traits.

Dominant traits are those that will appear in an offspring if only one of its parents carries that trait.  Recessive traits can spring up in offspring, but only if both parents carry the recessive trait themselves.  He also determined the ratio in which these traits would appear, and was vindicated by his experiments.  People condemned the man, ignoring his work. It was only after his death that recognition came, and now Mendel is considered the father of genetics for his efforts.

Breeders and scientists continued working in this manner for centuries, through trial and error, until a great discovery was made.  This was the discovery of the DNA molecule, and how it is found in every single form of life on the planet, from bacteria to trees to humans.  Understanding that this complex and huge molecule encoded instructions for the creation of all parts of an organism was something that, even today, many people are not willing to accept.  Once this was found out, scientists and researchers sought to decode what was now called a genome.  Some animals have few chromosomes containing DNA, and others have dozens and dozens.  Each species is different, yet each species carries so much “junk” DNA (DNA that is left over from previous ancestors or organisms) that looking for the genes that are actually shaping our bodies was a herculean task.  Over the past 30 years much groundbreaking work has been done in studying genes, what they are responsible for, how to alter them, and how to use gene therapy to help people suffering from genetic diseases.

Another awesome part of this book discusses the study of heredity, as it relates to what traits and genes are passed on to our children.  Humans are pretty selfish and stupid, for the most part, and because of this many people were convinced that having “bad” parents automatically created “bad” offspring.  This was such a racist and classicist idea, yet it persisted for a long time, because, of course, most “educated” people canme from the rich white upper crust of society.  It allowed people to classify a pecking order of human quality, with white Europeans on top of the list, and African and tribal people at the bottom.  These morons made the grievous mistake of assuming that genetics count for everything in a person’s makeup, and that environment, opportunity, and nutrition had no bearing.  These idiots fought the hardest, and still fight today, to try and maintain the status quo which keeps them fat and happy while everyone else deserves their shit lot in life.  It has been shown, countless times, that human achievement and quality is an ongoing process, and results from everything that shapes a person, from their family life, to their education, to their nutrition, to where they are born.

Even after these dumb-ass ideas were discounted, people continued to stick to strict ideas of heredity, ideas which have no bearing in the real world.  In one example, around the 1920’s, the comedian Charlie Chaplin was sued by a young lady claiming her son was his illegitimate child.  Chaplin sought to have the court accept scientific evidence (blood type) that the child could not be Chaplin’s, but at the time the courts were scientifically ignorant, and would not allow it.  In recent decades, this mindset has flipped, and in most courts, only DNA evidence is accepted and it is seen as irrefutable. The blind stupidity of this is pointed out by the case of a woman with three children, who, in a custody battle, had blood work done.  The blood work showed that her kids did not share her DNA, so the courts accused her of stealing the babies when they were young.  She tried everything, including testimony from the doctor that delivered her babies, but had no luck.  It was not until several scientists did extensive work on the lady that it was discovered that she is a chimera.  Her body is composed of two distinctly different sets of DNA.  Her blood contained DNA that did not match her kids, but her muscle and skin contained matching DNA.  Genetic chimeras are quite common, in fact, it is estimated that most humans are genetic chimeras on some level.  Some of them are formed when two eggs are fertilized by two sperm I the uterus, and then these two combine into one embryo, creating one human.  Sometimes these come out hermaphroditic, other times it is seemingly undetectable.  Even other people have stripes across their skin, from two separate genetic pools. 

One other seeming insanity I came across while reading this book is the discovery that human mothers exchange DNA with their offspring, and vice versa.  It used to be thought that the placenta was a protective barrier, keeping the fetus separate, but that is not the case.  The mother’s DNA does enter the child, and sometimes the child’s DNA goes back through the umbilical cord in the form of stem cells and become part of the mother’s body.  In some cases it was found that the fetus’ stem cells became neurons in the brain of the mother, sometimes months after the child had been born.  The implications are awesome.

I could write about the amazing stuff in this book forever.  I think it is a very engaging read, and worth the time it takes, for anyone interested in heredity, genetics, science history, and the foolishness of man’s assumptions about our own nature.  Highly Recommended.

(This book can be purchased here: SHE HAS HER MOTHER'S LAUGH )

Violence, like everything else, is relative

The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined – Steven Pinker (2011)

      Living in our world today presents a duality that we all must cope with.  Firstly, we now live in a time where fewer people are living in extreme poverty than ever before in our collective history.  Humans are living to older ages than ever before.  Humans have managed to engage in worldwide trade and diplomacy, and do so with the minimum of force or violence.  Secondly, we now have the ability to be informed about every single horror that occurs anywhere on our planet within seconds of its happening.  We have the ability to detect more and more varieties of cancer and disease.  We also have a never-ending news cycle that will repeat ghastly news over and over again, giving the impression that everything is chaos and horror.  These two sides of our world fight for our collective consciousness. 

Many people claim that humanity has degraded over the eons, beginning in a pastoral and peaceful existence, and ending in our constant competition for resources, bringing wars, violence, and terror to the people.  What Steven Pinker has done in this amazing book is gather up the data available to show that, as a whole, and throughout all of humankind, our collective violence has actually decreased due to the evolution of our collective humanity. 

Pinker explores the many methods by which violence is categorized and quantified, and proceeds to regale the reader with 8 chapters of the most brutal history of human violence upon ourselves, animals, and the world around us.  He details everything from state sponsored war, to individual acts of murder and violence.  In each instance, these violent acts have drastically decreased throughout the world.  Even in the most remote and government-less parts of Earth, violence has decreased. 

It is hard for a modern human to consider how horrible it was to exist a thousand years ago, with our knowledge of world wars, genocide, and other horrors fresh in our collective minds.  Pinker describes exactly how dangerous it was to be a human being at various points in our past, both distant and recent.  In fact, up until very recently indeed, most humans died before the age of 30, and a person reaching 50 years of age was considered ancient!  These days, we all expect to live to 80 and worry a ton about “premature” death, as if death was something we all have on a schedule like lunch or nap-time.  This bias comes specifically from how safe and non-violent our day-to-day world is. 

One of the most important conclusions from this research is that, as the world becomes less religious, it becomes less violent.  In previous eras, when religion was state-sanctioned, and belonging to a different religion regularly meant death, or at best, banishment, the ease by which humans saw other humans as NON-humans is evident.  Religion also taught men to subjugate women, and to approve of using “lesser humans” as slaves, for their god told them it was A-OK.  The worst were states where the religion controlled the politics.  These provided humanity with extreme cases of genocide, mass-murder, and the infestation of violence.

Violence was so pervasive in our past that people writing contemporaneously did not seem too bothered by public torture, public executions, and the display of endless gore and violence.  Every ancient culture had blood-sports, from the Romans and their gladiators, to the British and their bear-baiting. (Bear baiting is when a bear is chained up and then feral wolves or dogs are dispatched to attack the bear, and everyone had a blast watching dogs and bears get ripped to shreds in horrible ordeals of pain and gore.  The British LOVED this, and they were all very religious!)

What Steven Pinker has done here is provide factual, well-researched data to help spread the enlightenment and humanist ideas that have managed to make our current time the least violent of all.  It is a heavy book, and quite depressing at times, but the knowledge that we humans seem to be heading towards a less violent and more constructive existence is something that lifts my spirits.

(This book is available for purchase here: THE BETTER ANGELS OF OUR NATURE  )

Schopenhauer, where have you been all my life?

Essays & Aphorisms – Arthur Schopenhauer (1851)

            Philosophy, as a field of study, is fascinating to me.  Ideally, it is pure thought/reasoning, utilized to explore and understand ourselves, the world around us, and the workings of existence, providing answers that empirical data cannot.  This is the purported goal of philosophy, yet too many philosophers undercut themselves right off the bat by assuming certain basic truths to be unquestionable, and proceeding to extract their philosophical thought from this basis.  This error results in whole streams of thought that are easily discounted by anyone who does not assume their initial postulates are verboten.  It also makes it very easy to justify horrible things, such as the subjugation of women, the superiority/inferiority of this or that race or people, or the idea that the state of being alive is a punishment meted out by a vengeful creator deity and which, if we suffer through the horror with dignity and the proper rituals/beliefs we will be rewarded with everlasting joy and happiness once we die.  Schopenhauer was the first philosopher to start off his work without the crutch of pre-existing, non-verifiable beliefs, and man, does it make for extremely interesting reading!

            I feel that the field of philosophy is one where the individual great thinkers should be studied, not for the truth they uncovered about the world, but for how they saw the world they inhabited.  Too many pedantic people get fixated on one philosopher whose ideas about existence so mirror their own ideas that other philosophers are neglected.  This is the sign of a closed, simple mind, one that cannot comprehend that it is in their best interest to read widely,  think deeply, and then to come up with their personal ideas about existence.  This is the best way to read philosophy.  It is a map to human thought, not a set of rules to live by.

            I had heard the name Schopenhauer mentioned in much of my reading over the last 20 years.  Many of the writers I admire see him as a crucial point in their own development.  In his life he wrote extensively but the book he published early on, his masterpiece The World As Will & Representation, is really the definitive statement of all of his extremely well-thought out ideas.  I will read that one day, but for an introduction I am glad I found this book which collects many different writings under various subject headings, such as religion, ethics, women, the arts, psychology, and writing itself. 

            Schopenhauer is described as an atheistic, philosophical pessimist.  This description is due to where Schopenhauer chose to begin his exploration of philosophy.  He did not start from the tenets that any specific religion’s ideas were a priori truth.  His philosophy was the first that took all of the recent scientific advancements for its basis, instead of the theological arguments that most philosophers use as a crutch when creating their thought.  Schopenhauer saw through the lies inherent in organized religion of any kind, and because of this, his philosophy is truly a humanist one.  The supernatural is never evoked as the cause of anything, nor as the redemption of anything.  This does not mean that he did not find beauty and value in the ethics and wisdom found in religious texts.  Not at all.  He was widely read on the Christian texts, Buddhists texts, and was the first major European philosopher to read and understand the value of the India Vedas, mythological tales which preceded most of the monotheistic religions by thousands of years.  He was a world thinker in the best sense, and understood the deep correlations between the Buddhist philosophies (Buddhism being an atheistic religion) and the Christian philosophies that Jesus preached in the New Testament.  He understood the warped desecration of these ideas by the organized church. 

            Some of the greatest writers and artists are ignored in their lifetime and only praised and championed once enough time has passed to allow the indignation to die down and the work to be seen honestly for what it is.  The list of greats that were directly influenced by the philosophy of Schopenhauer reads like a who’s who of the greatest minds of the last 150 years.  These include Friedrich Nietzsche, Richard Wagner, Leo Tolstoy, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Erwin Schrödinger, Otto Rank, Gustav Mahler, Joseph Campbell, Albert Einstein, Carl Jung, Thomas Mann, Jorge Luis Borges, to name but a few.  I am so glad I finally dove into Schopenhauer’s world.  It is a world I will keep returning to and exploring my entire life.  I wish I could just quote endless passages from Essays & Aphorisms but perhaps a few will do.

            On Ethics: “Every good human quality is related to a bad one into which it threatens to pass over: and every bad quality is similarly related to a good one. The reason we so often misunderstand people is that when we first make their acquaintance we mistake their bad qualities for the related good ones, or vice versa: thus a prudent man will seem cowardly, a thrifty one avaricious; or a spendthrift will seem liberal, a boor frank and straightforward, an impudent fellow full of noble self-confidence, and so on.”

            On Philosophy and The Intellect: “If you want to earn the gratitude of your own age you must keep in step with it.  But if you do that you will produce nothing great.  If you have something great in view you must address yourself to posterity: only then, to be sure, you will probably remain unknown to your contemporaries; you will be like a man compelled to spend his life on a desert island and there toiling to erect a memorial so that future seafarers shall know he once existed.”

            On Thinking For Yourself: “A truth that has merely been learnt adheres to us only as an artificial limb, a false tooth, a wax nose does, or at most like transplanted skin; but a truth won by thinking for ourself is like a natural limb: it alone truly belongs to us.  This is what determines the difference between a thinker and a mere scholar.”

 (This book is available for purchase here:  AMAZON  )