Reflections on the New Year
The New Year is upon me, ready to fall on my head.
I have immersed myself in reading over the past year. The matters that are important to me have to do with the ultimate questions of life. I managed to read all of Plato in 2016, and lately I have been studying ancient near eastern religions. I am very interested in the roots of western thought.
I would like to write about these things. Sometimes I think I should have been an academic. But the great thinkers I have been studying were not all linked to the institutions of their day. Heraclitus, Socrates, Jesus – they refused to fit into the mold that society tried to impose upon them.
I am not about seeking position, wealth, or status. I am in search of truth, beauty, understanding, order. But the world wants money, and you have to pay the piper. It all seems incongruent with higher values.
Maybe I should give in and play the game. Greed. Avarice. Materialism. Ah, the choices we make.