In our last section we caught a vision of the perambulating ape walking away from his ordinariness. I made a mistake with that. I meant to say he was embracing his ordinariness, but in an abject or profane mode and not with respect to the sacred.
I used to think it my moral responsibility to wake up all bipedal apes and inform them there were other modes of travel available, but they kept informing me with solemnity: "No, can't you see? We are bipedal!" It was their fate to travel only by foot as nature had ordained it. So let no man put a biped and his nature asunder.
You may as well just try splitting an atom. Or spitting gum.
I took a jet from one side of the Earth to the other and I kept hearing a refrain that was the same: "Humans are creatures of instinct, nothing can change that."
I agreed when I heard that, but the triumphant tone with which this was proclaimed confused me. If you walk away from yourself like that, you will spend the rest of your life in the modality of the profane. I know that can seem easy, natural, even good, but isn't it a trifle? I mean you'll never get to be a soft porn star in a typical French movie.
Worse than that, you will be under the thumb. Something is enticing our fellow -- a banana perhaps? -- and he is moving further and further from himself. "It's my nature!" starts to sound a little hollow at this point. More like a desperate drive to prove something to others who aren't even listening or capable of paying attention.
This hair-coated figure moves further and further away because he must. He doesn't require a justification that this is "human nature", but he wields it as a stick just incase. That this is human nature in its natural or organic state is not to be denied, but it is trivally true. It's harder to turn back on oneself when one is lost or disgusted or driven by a need to revolt against internal emptiness. Embrace the realm of the profane as if it were an offer of redemption.
But if you do not return to yourself, you'll never be my gargantuan fellow. Well that's okay, but you will be someone else's dummy. What you mistake for nature is just stuff the ruling class has put into your head. If you like it -- good. Embrace. But it is put there not by you and not by nature. It's in the order of the profane.
The sacred is a return to oneself, but that is difficult, like science.
I used to think it my moral responsibility to wake up all bipedal apes and inform them there were other modes of travel available, but they kept informing me with solemnity: "No, can't you see? We are bipedal!" It was their fate to travel only by foot as nature had ordained it. So let no man put a biped and his nature asunder.
You may as well just try splitting an atom. Or spitting gum.
I took a jet from one side of the Earth to the other and I kept hearing a refrain that was the same: "Humans are creatures of instinct, nothing can change that."
I agreed when I heard that, but the triumphant tone with which this was proclaimed confused me. If you walk away from yourself like that, you will spend the rest of your life in the modality of the profane. I know that can seem easy, natural, even good, but isn't it a trifle? I mean you'll never get to be a soft porn star in a typical French movie.
Worse than that, you will be under the thumb. Something is enticing our fellow -- a banana perhaps? -- and he is moving further and further from himself. "It's my nature!" starts to sound a little hollow at this point. More like a desperate drive to prove something to others who aren't even listening or capable of paying attention.
This hair-coated figure moves further and further away because he must. He doesn't require a justification that this is "human nature", but he wields it as a stick just incase. That this is human nature in its natural or organic state is not to be denied, but it is trivally true. It's harder to turn back on oneself when one is lost or disgusted or driven by a need to revolt against internal emptiness. Embrace the realm of the profane as if it were an offer of redemption.
But if you do not return to yourself, you'll never be my gargantuan fellow. Well that's okay, but you will be someone else's dummy. What you mistake for nature is just stuff the ruling class has put into your head. If you like it -- good. Embrace. But it is put there not by you and not by nature. It's in the order of the profane.
The sacred is a return to oneself, but that is difficult, like science.
1 comment:
What a great post.
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