My schedule is opening.
After 8 May, I can work on this.
Comments:
May I ask why
you want to?
Let me ask...
Is there something you know that I do not?
In some sense, I have already joined a “rosicrucian” society, but I am not very active in it. There is a constellation of factors why I have an interest. The first is Klein. The second is a series of advertisements once common in American magazines. The third is how the organization may handle a prophecy. The fourth concerns an enigmatic monument about which I would like to know more.
In a word, curiosity. In three words, silence and circumspection.
I am well aware of the difficulties inherent in organizations. (By nature, I tend a bit anarcho-collectivist, though.) My wife has a great antipathy towards organizations, but I tend to have more of a curiosity. What purpose do they serve? What determines who may become a member? These questions are more clearly answered from within an organization.
Please, tell me what you know, though.
I asked just because I know nothing
about rosicrucians, and was curious about it. I’ve heard a bit about Free-Masons – just enough to know I really don’t understand Masonry, but nothing about Rosicrucians, and seeing you mentionning it gave me the opportunity to ask. Thank you for your explanations, then.
In some ways, France is better.
If you have an interest in (free/franc)-masonry, and I must admit I know you but very little, I would suggest Le Droit Humain. I really went to bat for a friend in Amsterdam a few years back. She expressed an interest, and I did a fair amount of work putting her in touch with the right people. That was rather difficult from America and given my ties to a rival organization. However, my work there will be done on 8 May, and I may be willing to take up another labor. Admittedly, it’s hard to tell what initiatory organizations do from outside and once you’re in, you can’t really talk about it. In short, I would say that they present you with a cryptic situation and an opportunity to analyze it. The Grand Oriente de France has a fascinating museum at 16 rue Cadet. You can piece together a fair amount of masonic lore there.
(This comment was deleted.)
Another Foucault...
... wrote about secrets. Nothing stays secret for long. Perhaps the most important question regarding secrets is not what is secret, but why it is secret. Why tends to be public and only rarely interesting. The only value of a secret is in revealing it.
I’m still thinking about your style advice.
I'm sure
... you read Eco’s Foucault’s pendulum, didn’t you?? :)
Surprise, surprise...
No. I don’t read fiction.
Fiction is as fiction does
But we’re not talking about fiction here. Well, unless you want to consider fiction a literary work where the characters quote from thousands of essays, and - incidentally and amazingly enough - create a fictionary plot…
(REALLY? no fiction at ALL? is there a cure??) :)
Aliteracy.
Doesn’t Eco claim authorship? Perhaps it is an interesting book. Perhaps it would be a more useful opportunity to exercize my poor abilities in Italian. It seems such a commitment, though.
Really, no fiction. Well, some amount of children’s literature. I have a copy of Piccoli Brevidi I bought in a train station. Hardly literature, though.
When I was a young child, I was what Americans call a “reluctant reader.” I could read and I could read well, but I was uninterested in reading. This meant that educators would take any opportunity to advance me lurid and sensational literature in hopes of sparking an interest. It did—I have an interest in the lurid and sensational. (I still get my news from the seamiest and most excitable of sources.)
Much of this literature was of low quality. Most of it represented fictional tales of crime or war, but some of it focused on the supernatural. I believed anything I read for many years, but eventually I learned that the bulk of these books were lies. Or, fiction. I spent several years fascinated with things that are fiction but presented as fact—Velikovsky, van Daniken, etc.
The odd thing is that I am a reasonably verbal person who takes little joy in reading. I like to memorize speeches, and I learned German through the memorization of German poets. When I was single, I could be hopelessly ensnared by a woman if she would read aloud to me, but I do not have the patience to stare at pages. I write better than I read and I dread reading aloud myself because I lose control of my accent and I sound miserable.
I have chosen to call this position aliteracy. I could read, but I can’t see how it would profit anyone.
