From That Formless Night
But the truth is
that if division and violence define war,
the world has always been at war
and always will be;
if man is waiting for universal peace
in order to establish his existence validly;
he will wait indefinitely:
there will never be any other future.
…Our hold on the future is limited;
the movement of expansion of existence
requires that we strive at every moment to amplify it;
but where it stops our future stops too;
beyond, there is nothing more because nothing more is disclosed.
From that formless night we can draw no justification of our acts,
it condemns them with the same indifference,
wiping out today’s errors and defeats,
it will also wipe out its triumphs;
it can be chaos or death as well as paradise;
perhaps men will one day return to barbarism,
perhaps one day the earth will no longer be anything but
an icy planet.
In this perspective all moments are lost
in the indistinctness of nothingness and being.
[Humankind] ought not entrust the care of his/her salvation
to this uncertain and foreign future:
it is up to him to assure it within his own existence;
this existence is conceivable, as we have said,
only in an affirmation of the future,
but of a human future, a finite future.
-excerpt The Ethics of Ambiguity by Simone de Beauvoir p. 129
These lines were written by de Beauvoir near to the conclusion of her book. The words were as if a slash of blinding white light in a dark sky, lightning. Who does not desire to assure himself or herself that “all will be well,” that an agreeable humane future is in store for one’s children and grandchildren; a future wherein justice, harmony of relations expand and prevail? Here as if the words from an oracle, the news comes that such assurance is illusion.
The natural normal condition of humankind is strife, war. Contestation, difference, “not to get what you want” is the only game, and the future is undefined, shapeless, a potential hell as well as possible paradise.
“We strive at every moment…” within the finite horizon of my life, and that of my contemporaries — the future is conceived.
“Conception” is to give birth.
Uncertain why this tune seems what we need on a austere winter’s day. Do not these lyrics echo de Beauvoir’s words? Tears or laughter?
Chain Of Fools by Aretha Franklin.
2 thoughts on “From That Formless Night”
The ancient Greeks did not have a nice clean Beginning myth of a Big Bang. Chaos (or Khaos) was a god. He was the original Void and god embedded in the Void. He was the god of the disordered state of the Universe; but from Chaos sprang all the order and disorder that followed. Chaos is the father of Tartarus (Abyss), Eros (Love), Erebus (Darkness), Nyx (Night) and Gaia (Mother Earth), as well as some more. Despite the efforts of Nature and Time, Chaos was not obliterated, but only overthrown for a time. He is still waiting.
The sad thing with many of our compatriots, who claim to be atheists devoid of mythology, is that they figure Chaos is, was, and will always be, so why bother? Some wallow happily in their depression. Others choose a life of excess partying, taking all they can. Cynical nihilism or cynical hedonism.
With other of our compatriots, one recalls the mythology of the “Trickster,” present in many cultures from the American Indian Coyote to the Norse Loki. Not exactly evil but causing a big mess for everyone else. Launching “tweets” into the Cosmos, with ambiguous titles, having no intention to support or defend any premise. Simply a gleeful passion for “Owning the Libs.” How many Coyotes, or more accurately, little yapping Pekinese, are needed to pull down Asgard?
For now Asgard stands.
The future is unforeseeable. How many “yapping” barbarians are needed to pull it down remains to be seen. I hope that we will never know. Still, there is immediate purpose to be found in “fighting on” especially as none of us fights alone. There is good company.