The Origin of the Specious

Salut.
Many people have asked about the whole JdSilentio name thing, and usually I'm patient enough to go through the whole long and painful story before my listener erupts with a sudden "That's it?" Thus, in order to diminish expectations, increase clarity, and preclude redundant inquiries, I'll lay the story down as quickly and as simply as possible.
Our story opens with Søren Kierkegaard, the Danish philosopher and existential thinker. Søren had a bit of a nasty habit of pointing out various hypocrises and theological inconsistencies in the teachings and structure of the Danish State Church of the day. This incurred a not-inconsiderable amount of enmity from his fellow Danes, and he began publishing his work (after ditching his fiancée, more on that later) using noms de plume so that those who were convinced he was a dangerous kook might accidentally read some of his thoughts, and to Kierkegaard's hopeful mind, see some sense. One of his books in particular, "Fear and Trembling" was published under the pseudonym of Johannes de Silentio.
"Fear and Trembling" is a very searching book which tries to come to terms with the spiritual aspects of the biblical story of Abraham and Isaac. Kierkegaard eventually corners the situation morally and concludes that if one is to use a Hegelian moral and ethical method of evaluation, Abraham's actions cannot be justified, and he provides no spiritual guidance or insight. Basically, God ordered Abraham to sacrifice Isaac. The situation is a logical paradox. If Abraham defies God, he violates an ethical principle, but if he commits murder in a particularly socially injurious way, he becomes morally damned. How then, can this great leader of multiple religions be upheld as a moral, religious paragon? The tricksy bit about Kierkegaard is that he considers the capacity for sin to be held in the intent. Did he intend to kill Isaac and hope that God comes down to save the child? Did he intend to go through the motions until the very last second, waiting for the proverbial telephone call from the governor? Either way, he's failing to create an adequate moral and ethical situation. Does he trust God absolutely? If so, does that make him want to kill Isaac, and thus a murderer at heart, if not deed?
Kierkegaard's solution was that Abraham made a movement of infinite faith. Kierkegaard looks at spirituality in three stages: the material or empirical - where the person is prepared to demonstrate faith (through sacrifice) but only conditionally. The next stage is what he called the knight of resignation, who can make enormous sacrifices with no promise of reward or compensation. Beyond that stage, says Kierkegaard, lies Abraham - the knight of infinite faith. At that stage, reason and rationality themselves are sacrificed, and decisions can be made on the basis of the absurd. Abraham's attitude, then is that he honestly he believes simultaneously that God can be obeyed, morality followed, and sacrifice offered all at once. He can hold in his mind the concept of sacrificing Isaac to God's command and God somehow changing the situation so that the whole moral context shifts.
Now, Kierkegaard, speaking as Johannes de Silentio, writes that he can appreciate the enormity of the faith required to make those "movements", but that he himself can only aspire to be a knight of infinite resignation. Next.
Why does he use that pen name? Answer: it's the Latin translation of the name of the title character in an old Brothers Grimm Fairy Tale called (depending on the translation)"Silent John", "Faithful Hans" (short for Johannes), or simply "The Faithful Servant". In that tale, a faithful servant swears to a dying king that he will not forsake the prince and heir nor allow any harm to come to the new king, even at the cost of his own life. Later, after an adventure involving kidnapping a beautiful princess from a land across the sea, John is above decks as the young couple are getting acquainted below. John overhears three ravens talking about the obstacles that will come between the king and a happy marriage. There are three obstacles, only one way to deal with each, and if anyone were to reveal the nature of the obstacles, they would be turned to stone.
The first is a beautiful horse. If someone doesn't hop upon it and kill it as soon as the ship touches the pier, the king will mount it, and it will carry him off, never to return. The second is a wedding garment which will appear to be cloth-of-gold and silver, but it in fact sulphur and pitch, and it will burn and kill the king unless someone grabs it with asbestos gloves and throws it straight into the fire. The third is that at the wedding reception dance, the new queen will faint and die, unless someone draws three drops of blood from her breast and spits them out onto the floor.
So of course, John does all of the protective things to serve his king. At each obstacle, the king becomes more and more exasperated, and finally flips out when he sees John at his new wife's breast. He orders John to be hanged. As John stands at the gallows, for his final speech, he tells the king of the perils that he had navigated for the royal highness. The king, relieved that something finally makes sense, orders John to be brought back down, but John has become merely a stone statue.
Over time, the king and queen have twin sons who are the joy of the castle. As the king passes the statue of Silent John, he finally cracks and weeps at the feet of the statue that he would to anything to right the injustice he has caused. The statue whispers that John can come back to life if the king will cut off the heads of the two princes and wipe the blood on the statue. (Ha - ha! Now you can start to see where I'm going with this...) The king does, and John comes back to life, and magically puts the heads back on the children. The king hides John and the boys in a closet, waits for his wife to come home, and asks her if she would sacrifice her children to bring back the faithful servant. She blanches a bit, but finally stammmers out a yes. The king yanks the boys and John out of the closet, and everybody celebrates and goes to Boston Pizza afterwards. And extra jalapeños on the sombrero pizza.
So there we go again. Themes of sacrifice without hope of reward that are requited because they are done by a noble heart.
Now, as I aspire to knight of infinite resignation-dom, and frequently experience situations where to speak would be to diminish others and elevate myself, I thought it appropriate that I try and reflect constantly on the nature of sacrifice and hope. Hence the name: JdSilentio. And I've had it for so long, that now it's in all of my systems. It's my username on a bazillion sites, webmails, e-mails, admin logons, passwords, work ID, even some of the work I printed off in Africa. I can't even drop jdsilentio any more because it's become intrinsic to my whole computerized identity, even though I suspect that someone else in North America has been using it. Some weirdo named Bryan in Washington State. Oh well. Maybe he'll become despondent over the loss of a pickle fork and take his own life with a deck of playing cards.
Right. I think that's quite enough rambling for now. Excelsior.