“In regard to these jottings, I considered burning them; they weigh on my mind if only because they are incomplete. A sense of inadequacy casts a shadow on my existence both as a historian and as a man.”
In regard to this blog, I considered deleting it. It does neither me nor anyone else much good — although just a few days ago I was surprised to see a lawyer in a listserv I’m on refer another lawyer to a post I wrote here on jury nullification in Indiana. Indeed, what I’ve written here is likely only to close doors for me.
If I leave the blog up for now despite that, it’s not because I feel I have any duty to the Truth, much less any duty to suffer for or martyr myself to the Truth. I may have felt that a decade or two ago, but now I’ve largely washed my hands of all such sentiment, and limit myself to the kind of occasional half-hearted efforts recorded in my last two blog posts. I’ve slowly learned that what seems to me intensely interesting is unimportant to most other people. I don’t care any less about what is important to me as a result; rather, I simply care less and less about most other people.
“That widespread penchant for gratuitously making oneself unpopular is not found in Stirner. He would say: ‘Truth? None of my business.’ It remains his own property. He does not accept it, he does not want to serve it; instead, he disposes of it freely.”
. . .
“Nevertheless, the destruction of a manuscript is a kind of spiritual suicide — whereby I am not putting down suicide.” Just as I don’t regret resigning from the U.S. Naval Academy when I was 20, and don’t regret my vain attempt to set fire to the world when I was 30, so I don’t disown any of my writings here — even though they are incomplete, and always will be incomplete.
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