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Tuesday, December 16, 2014

Living Large In The Villa Dei Pisoni

I have started reading the report on Human Trafficking issued by the United Nations Office On Drugs And Crime (UNODC) issued in February, 2009.
I suppose that it is still timely. I mean, I don't think things have gotten much better. They may have deteriorated. Probably have. Human trafficking has probably gotten worse along with other areas of worldly things: wars, drugs, etc.

Villa dei Pisoni - Piso's Pompeiian Villa

I was talking to someone this morning about this modern form of slavery, and I was shocked at the scale at which it exists. I mean, it made me feel like Lucius Calpurnius Piso, Julius Caesar's father-in-law, taking in the sun at his villa in Herculaneum on the outskirts of Vesuvius...  probably stuffing wedges of oranges into his mouth and chasing the grandkids around the garden while the subterranean caverns trembled all about.


I knew that there was a large percentage of the populace that abused women and children. I knew that there was a segment that seemed to hate women and children and saw them as little more than the unwilling objects of whatever impulses drove them.

Some say that the amount of evil in the world is the same, that there is an average to which evil tends.
I disagree. I think we are in the Devil's Bull Market, and I feel like an ancient Roman looking about and feeling the winds of change steal the breath from his mouth.

Piso's villa was known as the Villa of Papyri because of the large amount of papyrus scrolls found there.
We have no guarantee against the storm, the deluge, the hurricane, the volcano of a world in love with evil. We find it the fondest expression of the Sublime to feel the fear of our own disintegration, and deny the drudgery of integration.
We stand on the edge of the cliffs, shunning the monotony of the low planes.
We seek the thrill of mountains to climb, ignoring the drabness of the "Meals On Wheels" lives of those who toil for the Good.

 The Rakekniven, Antarctica

We have looked at Greatness and seen ourselves. What else remains?

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