Saturday is yet another gift. Sunshine, mild and comfortable outside. A day of rain would be helpful for vegetation, including vegetables. No matter that everyone is aware of such matters, still I have a background of concern for growing things, in particular those in my backyard. 

I just finished reading The Ethics of Authenticity by Charles Taylor published in 1991. These words sum up Taylor’s assessment, what is called for in our time, if the slide toward a raw instrumentalism, the atomistic shattering of solidarity with others – is to be turned.

What our situation seems to call for
is a complex, many leveled struggle,
intellectual, spiritual, and political,
in which the debates in the public
arena interlink with those in a host
of institutional settings,
like hospitals and schools…

where attempts to define in theoretical
terms the place of technology and the
demands of authenticity, and beyond that,
the shape of human life and its relation
to the cosmos….

Ethics of Authenticity, by Charles Taylor, chapt. Against Fragmentation

I confess feeling disappointment because I wanted more. I was hopeful that Taylor would suggest some archimedean point, from which our accelerating slide toward totalitarian domination could be flipped, a judo-move… No doubt the author prefers to tell the truth, instead of adding to the piles speculation surrounding all of us. The last sentence of his book references Blase Pascal who wrote that modernity is characterized by grandeur and by misère.

Our location is exactly where we’ve always been. – paradox. To be human is to a mammal bearing the benefit and the curse of language. Out of that Pandora’s Box emanates the entanglement of beauty and horror. Isn’t that what we mean by morality?

I returned to Amazon on screen where I ordered: Cosmic Connections: Poetry in the Age of Disenchantment by Charles Taylor.

I am gratified that there’s more to come.

*la lotta continua: the struggle goes on, and on… is adopted from the Italian Red Brigades.

Who would think of continuing on without a song?! Jackson Browne’s song, The Pretender is just right for our musings, for continuing “the fight”. Rest in peace Jackson Browne…