liviu librescu

Who should take action ~ who can take action? The common man believes that the government can act, and in his apathy, his laziness, his shirking of responsibility, he does not act in its stead. But there is no "government" - as individual, as force, as source of action - that can act, there is only the slow, emergent response of individuals. In the moment, when faced with crisis, no man can say how he will act. But if the response of individuals is to coalesce into a whole, then some individual must act. There are none who will come to our rescue, there is only us. To he who, when faced with the maelstrom, did act, when all around could only cower paralyzed in the hope that others would act, we owe not just respect, but also gratitude. It is from such exemplars that we can learn what real freedom is. It is from such exemplars that we can learn how to live.

assaults of madmen

How can society protect itself from the unprovoked assaults of madmen? There are two questions here: 1) how can such be prevented? 2) who should do the prevention? As for the latter, surely the answer is those at blame? But we are a jointly-imagined whole, jointly-responsible. Each of us contributes his part to an atmosphere which breeds behavior of an "antisocial" nature. Even fiction still has a cause; even the drunken careen of mad imagination cannot arise without external catalyst. We provoke the disturbances of the susceptible, and through our ignorance encourage them. So "society" is to blame for its internal detractors, but also "society" is a mere intangible epiphenomenon, laid upon the noise of individual behavior. How then can we address the former; how then can we act? We each must succor the potentially estranged separately, as jointly there is no we, but merely a collection of Is. We cannot trust a mere fantastickal apparition, but each separately must carry the load of all. The duty of the individual cannot be foisted upon the shoulders of an imaginary giant.

"Ismail Ax"

Man cannot help but seek meaning in chaos. A hurricane, a tidal wave, a swarm of locusts: man asks, "Why! Why! What is the meaning of this? Is it my fault?" He makes offerings to his false gods in the vain hope that they will help him imbue the meaningless with meaning, and thereby satisfy his selfish desire to be at blame. But when the source of chaos is not capricious nature but another man, how much more compelling we find this drive. Surely, despite the chaos in his actions, he must, deep down, be like me. Surely, there is a kernel of humanity in him, a soul which reflects myself, a reason which can be understood? But the "reasons" of the mad are by their very nature without reason. These are the same folly: "what is the meaning of this shape within the clouds?"; what is the meaning of the writings on a madman's arm?