Raymond Leos

It has just been announced that famed Cambodian musician Kong Nay has passed away at the age of 80. buff.ly/3zkGgBv

"Totalitarianism appeals to the very dangerous emotional needs of people who live in complete isolation and in fear of one another." — Hannah Arendt

"Woman with Poppies" --Edvard Munch, 1918

Philip Short referencing Norman Davies in his 1999 bio of Mao Zedong. Indeed.

On a personal note, on April 15, after 3 years as Associate Vice President at American University of Phnom Penh, I was appointed Vice President of Academic & Student Affairs. Many thanks to the administration for their support & trust over the past 3 years. Humbled & honored.

Approaching my 3 year anniversary at American University of Phnom Penh (AUPP). It's been a challenging, but also an exciting, interesting, and rewarding 3 years of transitioning into academic administration. 1\

After a bit of an absence, back on the air.

"To look to the past in order to find analogies by which to solve our present problems is, in my opinion, a mythological error." — Hannah Arendt

"A sickness known as hate. Not a virus, not a microbe, not a germ — but a sickness nonetheless, highly contagious, deadly in its effects. Don't look for it in the Twilight Zone — look for it in a mirror. Look for it before the light goes out altogether." Rod Serling

Hannah Arendt's syllabus for The Origins of Totalitarianism taught at Berkeley in 1955. Sections include: the decay of the nation-state, ideology, nihilism, antisemitism, revolution from the Right, propaganda, the police, concentration camps and demographic policies.

"Explain why intellectuals can be attracted by a totalitarian ideology." Hannah Arendt's final exam for Contemporary Issues taught at Berkeley in 1955.

"When a Nietzsche, a Dostoyevsky, a Kierkegaard uncovers a human universe for us, when the material universe displays [before us] the depths of the history of the earth or spaces between the stars, theological thought is obliged to broaden itself to their measure." - Jean Danielou

I am inhabited by a cry. Nightly it flaps out Looking, with its hooks, for something to love I am terrified by this dark thing That sleeps in me; All day I feel its soft, feathery turnings, its malignity. — Sylvia Plath

Jack Kerouac, 12 March 1922--21 October 1969. "I came to a point where I needed solitude and just stop the machine of thinking and enjoying what they call living, I just wanted to lie in the grass and look at the clouds." From "Lonesome Traveler", 1960.

Defenceless under the night Our world in stupor lies; Yet, dotted everywhere, Ironic points of light Flash out wherever the Just Exchange their messages: May I, composed like them Of Eros and of dust, Beleaguered by the same Negation and despair, Show an affirming flame WH Auden

Thread. I finished teaching a course on evil last Thursday. The last reading we discussed was Hannah Arendt’s “Thinking and Moral Considerations.” In the essay Arendt asks how politics can become so divorced from reality as to destroy our sense of moral judgment.

Excellent advice from Vincent van Gogh on this day in 1884. Really wish I could follow it.

"The splendor of the rose and the whiteness of the lily do not rob the little violet of its scent nor the daisy of its simple charm. If every tiny flower wanted to be a rose, spring would lose its loveliness." Happy Feast of St. Thérèse of Lisieux!