The Absurd Part II
A interesting quote. The absurd is productive as a stimulus toward the creation of beauty and significance. But…………… What happens when a majority of us embrace the absurd as a intellectual and moral habitat?
Absurdity
The discussion touched upon interpreting the world as absurd. Surely this cannot mean a world that is chaotic, profoundly in contradiction, schizophrenic. The world to my observation exists as a manifold of Being in flux, a perpetual dance, adjusting to cyclical seasonal increase and diminution of temperature and light. The world just is. There…
Existentialism
I am reading material on Existentialism, a movement that emerged in post WW II Europe. Given the intense suffering, and the brutality of Nazi occupation it seems reasonable to me that an existentialist approach to life would have been persuasive. Life stripped of anchor points for humane value, — with the vantage point of…
Crescendo
Beyond Good and Evil, Prelude to a Philosophy of the Future, final section, What is Noble, concludes with a number of aphorisms which seem quite personal. It is as if the author says—“and now the heart of the matter.” I was drawn to Nietzsche from a upbringing of religious fundamentalism. Fundamentalism is both right…
Sheep Thrills
We are well into spring. I worked with a rake clearing up the debris fallen from the two old blue spruce trees, winters leavings. Two garbage containers were filled with twigs, and pine cones. Butter cups are on the cusp of blooming. The tulips will be close behind. I was reminded of the nature…
Stacked Odds, A Man, And His Will To Survive
Another day in paradise. I say paradise ironically. We live East of Eden, outside the gates of paradise. Or to put it another way with a lyric line from Hotel California, “This could be heaven or this could be hell…” I heard about the cruise missile strike on the Syrian airbase. Shortly afterward I…
Coda
Coda: the finale of a ballet in which the dancers parade before the audience. The values of a human being betray something of the structure of his soul and where it finds its conditions of life, its true need. It would follow on the whole that easy communicability of need —-which in the last…
What, In The End….
What, in the end, is common? Words are acoustical signs for concepts; concepts, however, are more or less definite image signs for often recurring and associated sensations, or groups of sensations. To understand on another, it is not enough that one use the same words; one also has to use the same words for…
Outside Of Time
Once in a while I experience time dislocation. By that I mean a disruption in my accustomed sequence of things. Time for us is a concatenation of events, causally related, more or less–that we have adapted to. Sometimes something happens to upend those expectations. If you stop to think you can imagine events that…
Transience
This weekend I heard this tune on the radio. “Have You Seen Her” by the Chi-Lites moved me. Though I’ve not personally experienced the cause of loneliness depicted in the lyric story line, — I can relate. The point is an old one, succinctly stated by Heraclitus, “Everything changes, and nothing remains.” What time…
