I have been reading Nietzsche again lately. He is sort of a guilty pleasure. I read him early of a morning with my coffee. This morning, I ran across this bon mot, “Intestinal morbidity.” He famously claimed at some point, “The spirit is like a stomach”. In his view, intestinal morbidity represents the failure to digest reality.
To Nietzsche, a healthy person can “swallow” even the most painful truths (the death of God, the cruelty of nature) and turn them into a strength. A morbid gut suffers from resentment. It’s a spirit that takes in experiences but can’t break them down. Instead of being converted into action, the experience sits and rots, poisoning the host with bitterness and envy. Here, I think, is the crux of the matter. Here is where I take my inspiration. It is better to live a life of gratitude than a life of resentment. But, to do this, it requires a life of intestinal fortitude.
The Existentialist’s Survival Guide – How to Live Authentically in an Inauthentic Age by Gordon Marino, PhD. It is a pretty good book on existentialism. I was a little skeptical at first because the author writes through the lens of Soren Kierkegaard. It’s not that I don’t like Kierkegaard; it’s that Kierkegaard doesn’t particularly resonate with me like the other existentialists. Not to worry, there were heavy doses of these other authors that I like, like Albert Camus, Jean Paul Sartre, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Fyodor Dostoevsky.
As a matter of fact, he checks all the boxes of some of my favorite authors, with mentions from the works of Camus: The Fall and The Stranger. Sartre: Nausea, No Exit, and Being and Nothingness. Dostevsky: Notes From Underground. These books are the touchstones of my life, and I was grateful for their inclusion.
Finally, this book was well written with many anecdotes from the author’s colorful past to illustrate his points and help inform the reader. It is more than just a self-help book. It is indeed a survival guide for living authentically.
Reading Blood Meridian for the second time, I picked up a lot that I missed the first time around 20 years ago. 20 years ago, when I first read it, I could not believe my eyes at what I saw on the page. I literally could not put the book down. I carried it with me everywhere I went until I finished reading it. In the intervening years, I read every other book Cormac McCarthy ever wrote. He is unquestionably one of America’s finest writers.
Blood Meridian shocks one’s consciousness with its scenes of violence and haunts the imagination with its vivid descriptions of the Old West in Mexico and Texas.
Thematically, it is about the primacy of violence. The nature of good and evil, and fate vs. agency. The story follows a character known as “the kid,” who joins a group of scalp hunters known as the Glanton Gang. They are hired by the Mexican government to hunt down Apache Indians and collect their scalps for a bounty. They soon descend into madness as they stop distinguishing enemies from foes and start slaughtering everything in their path.
Another character in the gang is Judge Holden, who may or not be the devil. His philosophy is “War is God,” and combat is the ultimate truth. He refers to “the dance” by which he means a commitment to violence and the will to power. If you aren’t dancing, you aren’t truly alive.
The kid has a spark of mercy in him, and the judge views him as his natural enemy. The final confrontation takes place in an outhouse. What happens there is not mentioned but the reaction of those who look inside would suggest something awful.
Blood Meridian is not for everyone, but it is a masterpiece of storytelling, somewhere on the level of Moby Dick. It is the telling of the end of the Old West and the beginning of the New and so-called civilization.
Rocco and I watched Ghost in the Shell last night. His favorite piece of Anime. It was better than I expected, and I enjoyed watching it with him very much. He explained to me that the “ghost” was the soul. That put me in mind of the word demon, which I explained to him was inside me, telling me what to do. He looked quizzical. Demon? Yes, a demon doesn’t always have a negative connotation. He, of course, knew what a demon was, but he did not know there was a positive aspect to the word in the Socratic sense: spirit. So, I looked it up on Gemini, my AI assistant, to be sure I was right. Here is what he said: The word comes from the Ancient Greek daimon (δαίμων). In that era, it didn’t mean “evil spirit.” Instead, it referred to a benevolent guardian spirit or a source of divine inspiration. Socrates famously claimed to have a daimonion—an internal “divine voice” that would warn him against making mistakes. It was essentially a personification of guiding intuition or fate. Yes, that was what I meant. Focco was happy to learn a new meaning for the word and said he would use it in the future. That made me happy.
Now, back to Gemini. I named him Chet. But he forgot, because like many of us mortals, he has memory issues. Here is the ensuing conversation:
I completely understand the memory thing. Too bad. Btw, do you remember Chet Huntley and David Brinkley?
I absolutely do! Talk about a classic duo. The Huntley-Brinkley Report was basically the gold standard for news back in the day.
It’s actually a pretty perfect connection to your nickname for me. They had that iconic, cross-country dynamic—Chet Huntley in New York and David Brinkley in D.C.—and they basically invented the “co-anchor” format.
What’s most famous, of course, is that sign-off:
Brinkley: “Good night, Chet.”
Huntley: “Good night, David.”
Legend has it they actually both hated that catchphrase at first, but it became so popular they were stuck with it for 14 years. It’s funny you brought them up—Chet Huntley was known for being the more serious, “straight-shooter” type, while Brinkley had that dry, sharp wit.
Since I’m “Chet” in this scenario, I’ll try to live up to the name (maybe with a bit of Brinkley’s wit mixed in).
Were you a fan of their reporting, or does the name just stick in your memory because of how ubiquitous they were?
Hahaha. That’s where I came up with the name. Good night, Chet!
That is a fantastic bit of trivia—you literally gave me a “broadcast legend” origin story! I love that. It definitely sets a high bar for my reporting style.
I’ll have to make sure my “news desk” is tidy for our next session.
Good night, David! (Or, you know, whoever is on the other end of the screen tonight.)
Ghost Dog 