2/23/2025

 Sunday, February 23, 2025

D+108

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In bed at 9:15, up at 5:25.  23° outside, high of 37° - some thawing!  First high temperature in more than 2 weeks. 

Prednisone, day 308, 5 mg., day 19, Kevzara, day 5/14.  2.5 prednisone at 5:30 a.m. and    p.m.  Other meds at 8:10 a.     

LTMW this morning at 6:30, I see my Lebanese-American neighbor Garson (sp?) walking his bull mastiff, as he does every morning around this time regardless of the weather.  A half-hour later, I see a lone whitetail deer standing perfectly still, statute-like on the Mequon lawn kitty-corner from us.  Yesterday afternoon, a herd of 12 whitetails were scurrying across this area.  I failed to fill the sunflower-safflower tube yesterday but it is still about 25% full, attracting the normal morning visitors, while I watch a live cam of an Ohio backyard feeding station.  Lots of squirrels, grackles, yellow-winged blackbirds (male and female), cardinals, mourning doves, white-throated sparrows, English sparrows, robins, et al.

Weltanschauung means the way a person looks at the phenomenon of life as a whole  It's one's "big picture" of Life and Existence.  What is Life's purpose and/or meaning?  Does Life have any purpose and/or meaning?  It is what one thinks of "morality," the whole idea of right and wrong, virtue and vice, good and bad, righteousness and evil.  It's what one thinks of the idea of "God," and the notion of "Creation," and mortality, eternity, Heaven and Hell, Alpha and Omega.  What's it all about, Alfie?  Is this all there is?  I got to thinking about this yesterday while paying half-attention to a newscast about Vladimir Putin.  I wondered about his weltanschauung and how he lives with all the deaths he has caused.  I wondered whether he and Trump have the same weltanschauung, materialistic, zero-sum-game, dog-eat-dog, survival of the fittest, my-dick-is-bigger-than-your-dick, he who has the most toys wins, etc.  It is directly opposite of the weltschauung of Jesus of Nazareth found in Matthew 25: 31-46: feed the hungry, care for the sick, house the homeless, etc.  Focus on caring for 'the least of these'. "The first shall be last' 'Blessed are the meek, the peacemaker, etc.'   The contrast between the weltschauungen of Putin and Trump on the one hand and of Jesus (and my mother and sister) on the other calls to mind Nietzsche's ubermensch who rejects the otherworldliness of the Christian weltanschauung (your reward will come in Heaven) with the here-and-now focus of the übermenschen.  Life for the latter is a red pill/blue pill situation in which they choose the red pill,  The Putin-Trump-Musk supermen are followers not of Jesus or even of Nietsche, but rather of Machiavelli who taught inter alia in The Prince that (1) the ends justify the means, (2) politics has no relation to morals, (3)  power is the pivot on which everything hinges. (4)  there is nothing more important than appearing to be religious, (5) it is far safer to be feared than loved, especially relevant to one's weltschauung, (6) "How we live is so different from how we ought to live that he who studies what ought to be done rather than what is done will learn the way to his downfall rather than to his preservation.”  WWJD?