Becoming A Dancer
It is Monday. Am I “in the groove” of a first work-day of the week? “Work” in my case no longer involves customers, employees, contractors, scheduling and profit. Where has destiny, the complicated twists and turns of circumstance, and of people led me, – what is “on my plate,” what I must do? That is my work. What will become of the effort, to what extent the future will be altered by my activities today – cannot possibly be told. I must resist temptation to worry about that.
I responded to an old friend earlier today. There seems little if any common ground between us with respect to politics, and by extension, a shared vision of the future. The differences between us are significant.
Without a doubt we’d agree upon the palatable excellence and visual presentation of a well prepared Chicago dog. Is such agreement, the estimation of immediate taste and visual standards, more fundamental, more important – than our wide disagreement about “human nature?” Is our disagreement, a mere misunderstanding, a consequence of our inept, inadequate mastery of vocabulary, that he and I are unable to develop conceptual nuance into a common ground verbally, one strong enough to support continued dialog? Or is the difference of vision, a rock-solid contradiction, a diametric opposition?
I decided to revisit again, Thus Spake Zarathustra, written by Friedrich Nietzsche between 1883 and 1885. Nicholas Davey had this to say in his introduction to Thus Spake Zarathustra:
‘How much truth can a spirit endure,
how much truth does it dare?’ – Ecce Homo Preface, section 3That which Nietzsche always knew and felt in the innermost core of his being was that human experience was a seething chaos of oppositions, contradictions, tensions, and disruptions. The issue this question awakes is: how possible is it for us to live in a realm of perpetual and seemingly meaningless flux? It is as if this issue throws us off center, reawakening an ancient anxiety.
Was Silenus perhaps right after all?
Is it the case that ‘what is best of all is utterly beyond…our reach: not to have been born, not to be, to be nothing…(and that) the second best is to die soon.’ – The Birth of Tragedy, aphorism 3
…key questions ‘from very far away and long ago’ have not left us.
As I often suggest, a song will be our lifeline today. This tune by the Beatles covered by U2 seems a suitable expression of this topic of focus: Helter Skelter.
3 thoughts on “Becoming A Dancer”
Nietzsche’s chaos is not too far from our own, coming soon after what is referred to as the Industrial Revolution where thousands were left unemployed by the onset of mechanization. There was a time in our shared ancestral past when the culture you were born into changed little during your lifespan. This desire for a consistency of life experience is hard-wired into our brains, so when we are faced with constant change, I believe we can easily short-circuit and end up babbling about delusional conspiracy theories.
Rapid change reminds us incessantly that there is a division within the psyche of the human mammal. We are outsiders, self-aware observers. Concurrently we’re involved, caring and nurturing our families, tribe, and even our nation. This stress inducing imposition of having to play both roles at the same time is unnerving. We abide change in small doses. Too much, too fast breaks us. Then I fantasize groups, races, outsiders to blame for my discomfort and confusion. Everyone knows that a sacrifice ought to be made to “put things aright.” Go ahead and wield the knife, while I watch…
There are tens of millions cheering on the use of the knife to obliterate the perceived enemy (us and all those like minded who long for sensibility, inclusion, and kindness). I’m reminded of the elder women who would sit and knit as they watched the guillotine do its dirty work on the French aristocracy.