Tag Archives: terror

Have you seen “The Shelter”?

It’s a Twilight Zone  episode that is philosophically interesting. I think of Rod Serling’s “The Shelter” as a profound meditation on Nietzschean v. Christian ethics, Darwinian survival of the fittest, zero-sum games, and living in a world where the civic culture … Continue reading

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The New Bolsheviks?

Is nuclear armed Pakistan on the verge of collapsing to a band of revolutionary Islamic militants? The New York Times today reports on a “shaky” Pakistan being targeted by Al Qaeda: “They smell blood, and they are intoxicated by the … Continue reading

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Word of the Day

Waterboarding. Here’s how Jonathan Kirsch describes waterboarding in his excellent and troubling 2008 Harper-Collins book, The Grand Inquisitor’s Manual: A History of Terror in the Name of God (p. 4): Among the first and favorite forms of torture used by medieval inquisitors … Continue reading

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From Greenpeace Man to Neoconservative Man: Enkidu, in the Gilgamesh Epic, Gets Religion

In the Epic of Gilgamesh, Enkidu is a hairy Dionysian wild man whose power, and ability to instill terror in lesser mortals, is equal to that of his civilized Apollonian opposite, Gilgamesh. At least that’s how his story starts. In Book … Continue reading

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Euripides’s “Bakkhai”: Is Dionysus Jesus?

Euripides’s “Bakkhai” is an extraordinary play, and functions on many fascinating levels. At one level it can be read as an indictment of rationalism, and a warning to the audience against atheism. Toward the beginning of the play, for example, … Continue reading

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