Cynematik

It’s hard to take the idea of desperation seriously when we live in the richest country in the world. I go to bed every night and rest on a comfortable, soft mattress. I have plenty of good food, kind neighbors and inspiring colleagues. As I look at the photos of Iraq, Afghanistan and Bandeh Aceh, I think Thurber and Kierkegaard minimize it best.
“The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.”
    Henry David Thoreau (1817 – 1862)
    U.S. Author in “Walden”, 1854

“Nowadays men lead lives of noisy desperation.”
    James Thurber (1894 – 1961)
    U.S. Author
“Nowadays not even a suicide kills himself in desperation. Before taking the step he deliberates so long and so carefully that he literally chokes with thought. It is even questionable whether he ought to be called a suicide, since it is really thought which takes his life. He does not die with deliberation but FROM deliberation.”
    Soren Kierkegaard (1813 – 1855)
    Danish philosopher

“A dog in desperation will leap over a wall.”
    Chinese proverb

“There is nothing so desperately monotonous as the sea, and I no longer wonder at the cruelty of pirates.”
    James Russell Lowell (1819 – 1891)
    U.S. poet, editor