the error-making organ, a human strategy, 412

412

Looking down on a valley from a restful state, one that required no sacrifices, is not the same as looking down on that same valley from a height acquired through sacrifice ... from a distance of exhilaration.  One viewer never fully understands the other, yet each presumes to share the same wonder or boredom.

Along these same lines, within a single human, the error-making organ is incapable of leaning on its next state ... does not even believe in its existence.  From one moment to the next, one can pass through tremendous leaps of the “spirit” ... a single letter in the mail, for example, can send one floating toward bliss or sinking into despair.  This current frame of reference, filled or emptied of the stuff of life, is both the beginning and the end.  That we are in a new room is certain, but we fail to find a door.


There must have been times when a human has, out of despair, decided to end life by leaping from a tall building.  By the time he reached the uppermost floor, however, his metabolism … his exhilaration had risen to such a degree, his reasoning powers had been operating at such a higher level that he had in fact become a different species ... for whom the original problem was no longer relevant.  He was suddenly happy and secure ... since in this room too he found no doors.

Popular posts from this blog

A valuable book, A Human Strategy, aphorism 387

387 A valuable book may be torn to pieces without diminishing the human spirit, just so long as the words have already been read and understood.  To feel the loss of the book — at its material destruction, even though one had already digested its contents fully and had aligned oneself toward its overall direction — is evidence that one values the non-human being over human becoming , the static thing over the dynamic process .  In response to the fear of our unknowable future we would rather freeze ourselves into a single stage of growth at the expense of the entire metamorphosis. A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism
Read more
A benefactor's Moral Guide: what do you want that will not result in your ultimate dishonor?      ****    Meditation: "How do I get back to where I want to be?"
Read more

A theory of art

Interest is not in what you see. It’s in what you don’t see. It is sensed incompleteness completed reflexively by the spectator. It is a conflict in the otherwise imperceptible feeling that a sensory organ is “inadequate” … a mastery of scratching irritations, an “I” … “the” I. We love art the most when we scratch ourselves with what we view.  Art is valued at the interest that the passion from the incompletes in the work is instantly and successful satisfied by what the lover needs to sense … every time it senses the art.  A Human Strategy ** The Mechanics of Virtue ** Post-Atheism
Read more