La Lotta Continua
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 mounds of 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”.
2 thoughts on “La Lotta Continua”
Yes, the struggle goes on, as seemingly it always has. My question: With all of the struggling over centuries are we making headway or just spinning our wheels? Reading Plato or Marcus Aurelius or David Hume or Frederick Nietzsche or Ranier Rilke or anyone who makes rational sense, is actually quite depressing for me. We humans have had ample opportunity to reach for a better future, and yet here we are. Still spinning our wheels while solutions to our problems stare us square in the face and our species and our planet are flushed down the toilet of ego and greed.
Depends upon what you mean by ‘reaching for a better future.’ All is change as Heraclitus is said to have said, entails that the future is a moving target.
Moreover the future is always in contention because humans cannot agree upon what qualifies as a ‘better’ future. We are vulnerable to the after effects of various trauma that a majority of us have suffered as children. The echo(s) of history resonate within us entangling our ability to work together. Forgiveness is simply hard.
It also occurs to me that the inherited written words of the best of us, are inaccessible when one is not fortunate to have the discipline, and the linguistic skill to understand the messages which they have left for us. To read Plato, to hear Socrates voice in a Platonic dialog sparking thought about what we humans might make of ourselves, is my job and your job. Not everyone can do this work, and it is ‘good’ work.
Ego and greed are givens, among the tragic extremes to be avoided. I do not think we are spinning our wheels.