27 Comments
User's avatar
Alex Renko's avatar

This is the finest sermon I’ve heard in years. Bravo and amen!

Shelah Horvitz's avatar

Brilliant. I was satisfied with how you had me laughing out loud but then you dug and analyzed and came up with a proper prescription. And I realize that your prescription is not new, it's nothing like new, but you served it up in such a way that I could hear it and that was a huge kindness.

Thank you.

Teddy R's avatar

Just wonderful. Mansour is not just a great thinker but surely the most important moral teacher of the new right.

Hervé Eulacia's avatar

Reading you is an adrenaline rush, like holding on tight behind a fearless motorcyclist at top speed.

Rachel wahba's avatar

Wow

love this

And

The TEXTURE of TIME

DECAY

YES very Zen

Hopkins Stanley's avatar

As always, the richness leaves much to consider which personally makes me remember the horror of learning, at least in German, how gifts are usually entangled with a certain darkness. Such knowledge made me wary of giving gifts, then the question of how to give a gift without giving – or acknowledging that a gift is even being given?

Pierre Levy's avatar

Not only good, but also funny 🥹

Lost and Found's avatar

I love the tongue-in-cheek Pynchon-esque resurrection of 18th century punctuation, wedded to the sensibility of Dostoevsky’s Underground Man. This one has studied well.

Ella Ben Emanuel's avatar

Love the anchor anecdote. I'd definitely rather get a rusted anchor than an Amazon shiny plastic thing any day.

Michael's avatar

Thank you, very insightful. I would add a perspective; There are psychological conditions that make gratitude spontaneous. There are so many people out there who read something philosophical, of some «should» and then start practicing this should and they end up suppressing their emotions. Ressentment needs to be understood for what it is, and then processed. If you dont know what those ressentments are, or what your needs are, or how to get them met, gratitude is just a cope. Psychology comes before philosophy

Reuven's avatar

It takes a lot to open up your soul.. we will go on and work to become more deeply human

Daniel Seligson's avatar

You might consider having your book about decay published on the worst possible paper, loaded with acid, pre-yellowed, foxing and all the rest. The subject of decay more generally, decay is at the center of the only theory of economic development, here … https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/journal-of-institutional-economics/article/coevolving-institutions-and-the-paradox-of-informal-constraints/CE95D185B7EA557C5D0066FA7D785BCB

Aron T's avatar

Reb Mansour, Ir hot gezogt a tiefer vort! Gevaldig! Yasher Koach!

This truly resonated, since a few months ago I re-started a practice from my childhood and say “Modeh Ani” every morning when I awake. Far more effective than any therapy!

Gabriel Sommer's avatar

i wonder if you might like Dieter Wieland's series "Topography." Wieland (1937–2015) was a documentary filmmaker and architecture critic who spent his life fighting against the "cleaning frenzy" and sterile modernization of villages and landscapes. The series ran from 1972 to the 1990s on Bavarian Radio.

I particularly recommend the episode "Das saubere Dorf" (The Clean Village, 1990), in which Wieland criticizes the manic order and cleanliness that robs villages of their soul—precisely the sterile convenience that you describe as "spiritual strangling." Instead, he celebrates the rusty, the heavy, the grown. Your anchor gift fit seems to fit with this

https://youtu.be/VeY98dFfZtY?si=3dDxRHdYMC0_Dfhb

Adina's avatar

Ach Hussein. It looks like you will continue to be called to bravery in this life, and that you're up to the task. I admire and and respect that you turned your unsparing lens and exceptional writing to your own psyche. This is not something that narcissists or other cluster b sufferers can typically do. (I grew up with such a mother, and so my heart is soothed by your insight, which I so desperately wanted her to have) This will serve you and your loved ones well. Mazel tov

David  Kalisch's avatar

Wonderful! Thank you Hussain.