Well Hello There!

This is my first blog post ever, I just created my first blogger account. I'm not sure why I'm doing this except that some people who seem to know what they're talking about said I should.

I suppose I'll be writing mostly about historical, philosophical, religious and anthropological topics. The history will include a lot of art history. The philosophy will be of the sort where I mention lots of other philosophers and attempt to define my own position through my agreements with and differences from them.

My approach to religion is purely anthropological. I don't believe in God or the "supernatural." Not that that means that I regard all religions and all religious activity as equally wrong. As Nietzsche said, "Es gibt sehr nuetzliche Irrtuemer." (I'm going to be posting a lot of stuff in languages other than English, and I'm not going to translate all of it. If you find my blogs interesting, and you come across a passage in a language which is foreign to you, I hope you might take the trouble to learn a bit of that language. I hope that doesn't seem mean.) I find that the Old Testament is better written than the New, and that Homer is much, much better than either of them: more realistic, more true to the vitality and complexity of human life, just as polytheism, while no more true than monotheism, reflects much more closer the realities of human life with its inabsolutenesses and ongoing struggles between multiple powers.

I've written three books, a collection of essays and two novels, published zero. Is this blog gonna help me with that? I sure hope so. I think it's very likely I'll write at least a fourth and fifth.

Why am I The Wrong Monkey? I suppose I like the idea of monkeys and apes, who are being cruelly abused in labs and elsewhere, rising up, rebelling, evolving and eventually proving that they were the wrong monkeys to be messing with. I suppose I feel I've been kicked around and abused a bit, too. I imagine most people and many monkeys feel that way. I'm all about evolving, opposing oppression and exploitation, finding ways for us to be a little more decent to each other.

Excelsior!