Search
Latest Blog Posts
-
November 17th, 2017 @ 9:17 am by Kevin
“Hellrazed?” is now available for purchase! -
February 5th, 2014 @ 8:28 am by Kevin
My new documentary is now available for purchase -
January 29th, 2014 @ 8:39 pm by Kevin
Here’s where you can watch my new documentary -
January 29th, 2014 @ 8:35 pm by Kevin
52-minute version of “Hellbound?” now available -
November 21st, 2013 @ 5:18 pm by Kevin
Black Friday DVD sale!
Categories
Archives
- November 2017
- February 2014
- January 2014
- November 2013
- October 2013
- September 2013
- August 2013
- July 2013
- June 2013
- May 2013
- April 2013
- March 2013
- February 2013
- January 2013
- December 2012
- November 2012
- October 2012
- September 2012
- August 2012
- July 2012
- June 2012
- May 2012
- April 2012
- March 2012
- February 2012
- January 2012
- December 2011
- November 2011
-
1January 25th, 2012 @ 5:46 am by admin
I’ve been a fan of Frank Herbert’s Dune saga since I was a teenager, but I’ve never read it all the way through. So I was pretty excited when my seven-year-old son Zeph gave me all six books for Christmas this year. (Truth be told, I actually found the books in a thrift store and then secretly gave them to my wife and suggested that she have Zeph give them to me for Christmas…)
At any rate, I’m nearly finished the second book, Dune Messiah, Each chapter begins with a quote from a fictional history of Dune. One of those quotes struck me as particularly apropos to some of the dynamics we encounter when talking about hell:
The convoluted wording of legalisms grew up around the necessity to hide from ourselves the violence we intend toward each other. Between depriving a man of one hour from his life and depriving him of his life there exists only a difference of degree. You have done violence to him, consumed his energy. Elaborate euphemisms may conceal your intent to kill, but behind any use of power over another the ultimate assumption remains: “I feed on your energy.”
[The convoluted wording of legalisms grew up around the necessity to hide from ourselves the violence we intend toward each other.]
_This intended violence, is it a “natural” tendency which afflicts everybody? What makes us want to hide it from ourselves?
[Between depriving a man of one hour from his life and depriving him of his life there exists only a difference of degree.]
_Perhaps a category mistake here. “one hour from his life” I understand here one hour of freedom, very different from “depriving him of his life”.
[You have done violence to him, consumed his energy.]
_I can see “consumed’ in the sense of destroyed, but not in the sense of absorb.
[Elaborate euphemisms may conceal your intent to kill, but behind any use of power over another the ultimate assumption remains: “I feed on your energy.”]
Here he is repeating the idea of the first sentence and the idea of the third sentence.