Down The Rabbit Hole

Busy post-Thanksgiving week. I hope you enjoy today’s post. I’ve included some of my favorite pieces from my current favorite artist: Boleslaw Biegas.

What I’ve read/listened/watched this week

• https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/philosophize-this/id659155419?i=1000738901331 (Amazing podcast, excellent introduction to Shakespeare—speaking as someone who has only read Hamlet).

• https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/lex-fridman-podcast/id1434243584?i=1000739024343 (A conversation with a scientist named Dr. Michael Levin on the frontiers of biological understanding and manipulation. If his theories are correct we could be living on the bring of a revolution in medicine.

• https://sarumuse.org/2025/01/26/rabbit-holes/ (This is the original essay that turned me on to an old French Friar that lives in the countryside. I spoke with him last week, and we shared a concern for the spiritual state of the world).

A Quote from Dostoyevsky I love. 

“And can it be a dream, that in the end man will find his joy only in deeds of light and mercy, and not in cruel pleasures as now, in gluttony, fornication, ostentation, boasting and envious rivalry of one with the other? I firmly believe that it is not and that the time is at hand. People laugh and ask: "When will that time come and does it look like coming?" I believe that with Christ's help we shall accomplish this great thing. And how many ideas there have been on earth in the history of man which were unthinkable ten years before they appeared! Yet when their destined hour had come, they came forth and spread over the whole earth. So it will be with us, and our people will shine forth in the world, and all men will say: "The stone which the builders rejected has become the cornerstone of the building."

Julian James: The Origins of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind

Other cuneiform texts state that a man lived in the shadow of his personal god, his ili. So inextricably were a man and his personal god bound together that the composition of his peronal name usually included the name of the personal god, thus making obvious the bicameral nature of the man. Bicameral definition: At one time human nature was split in two, an executive part called a god, and follower part called a man. Neither part was conscious. Everywhere in these texts, it is the speed of gods who decide what is to be done. A cane from Lagash reads: Mesilin King of Kish at the command of his deity Kadi... — It is not the human beings who are the rulers, but the hallucinated voices of the gods. 

Spoke with an old man in the park in the freezing rain. I told him thank you for keeping the park clean (he was picking up trash) and we got to talking. He told me about his life, mostly gardening, living in New York. Stories about sleeping on the beach on MV and hitchhiking all across New England. He spoke about getting into gardening out of an aesthetic desire, to involve himself in the crafting of the world. I also his it as an act of service, to make the world a more beautiful place. If each person just does their own little piece of good… the whole world comes together. There is a pill to swallow there, that you can’t fix everything, and that your own little piece improving is a really actually a great big help.

Boleslaw Biegas is really amazing. All of the art featured in todays issue is from him. The moods that he was able to create were like something out of a dream, a liminal space, a place I feel like I have been before but can’t place. The colors, the contrast… It is almost empowering. He didn’t get all that much attention during his lifetime, evident in the limited amount of information available on him today. But he is a really special artist and one that I hope more people discover.

That is this weeks episode of Max Depth, Down The Rabbit Hole. Thank you for joining.