A new translation of Herrman Hesse’s beautiful German poem “Stufen“.

The excellent Twelve Virtues of Rationality by the even-more-excellent Eliezer Yudkowsky, simplified to fit into the Common Meter.

The first is Curiosity:
to hunger for the chance
to solve, not worship, mystery,
to go past ignorance.

Wenn du den Kopf bewahrst, den sie verlieren
und Dich beschuldigen für ihr’n Verlust,
Kannst du allein Dir selbst Vertrau’n spendieren,
Obwohl der And’ren Zweifel wohl bewusst,

A short poem, both in English…

“Your first divorce is trickiest”
my former colleague said.
“Your second’s hard, a little less.
your third is not so bad.”

“This is your first. Your time to learn
first-hand experience
of seeing all you’ve built just burn.
The pain will now commence.”

Ich hörte den geheimen Klang
von König Davids Lobgesang
Nicht dass Musik dir wichtig wäre, oder?
Vier, Fünf in Dur, dann Sechs in moll
mit B-Dur ist die Folge voll
So schrieb der König staunend Halleluja

Original English by William Ernest Henley.

Heraus aus abgrundtiefster Nacht,
aus der ich keinen Ausweg weiß,
dank ich der Macht, die mich gemacht,
für meinen unbezwungnen Geist.

John Watson went with Sherlock Holmes
on some unspecified
adventure where they had to roam
the English countryside.

They walked about the hills all day,
alone except for sheep,
then built the tent where they would stay
and quickly went to sleep.

This is Jordan Peterson‘s bestseller 12 Rules for Life, summarized in common metre lyrics so it can be sung with many melodies. I recommend the melody of America the Beautiful because it is very hymnic and Peterson is a prophet in the technical sense of the term.

Among my many theories,
there’s one of which I’m proud
that sorts the mind’s pathologies
by what one fails to doubt.

If you can’t doubt the things you think,
you will at first feel great,
then grow confused until the brink
of madness is your fate.

In the German Democratic Republic, where I was born, one of the most popular Christmas songs was Tausend Sterne sind ein Dom. It was written in the aftermath of World War 2, by the music student Siegfried Köhler.  I heard and sang it from when I was about seven, and I vividly remember being impressed with the match between its remarkably poetic lyrics and its tender and serene music. Here’s a recording you might enjoy:

I sang it again, for the first time in many years, with a large group of friends at the Secular Solstice 2013. But Secular Solstices, even in Germany, are generally held in English. So for the 2014 Solstice, I wrote a translation of the lyrics into English, and it goes like this. Continue reading →

This is a great piece by Richard Dawkins that I put in the common metre:

We’re lucky, we who have to die,
we’re lucky we can mourn.
Most people never say goodbye
because they’re never born.

Continue reading →