Thinking only begins at the point where we have come to know that Reason, glorified for centuries, is the most obstinate adversary of thinking.

—Martin Heidegger

Gary kindly shared a quote that prompted him to consider afresh his conception of Reason.  The quotation had the same effect upon me.  And as a bonus, Gary and I were able to share our respective view points that were prompted by the words from Martin Heidegger.

While thinking about Heidegger’s words and Gary’s words I sat on the front porch of our rental house close to the shoreline of Lake Michigan.  What appears to be dense, old growth forest looms right across the road.  In the front yard, providing welcome shade for the house is an ancient Maple tree.  Two adults joining hands likely could not encompass the tree.  I admired the patterns of moss and lichen that live on the bark of the fine old tree.

My mind compared Reason to this tree.  Reason is one of the oldest tools of civilization.  It has many uses like a Swiss Army Knife.  Like the old Maple, Reason is deeply rooted in the earth.  Its power is found in its ability to extract from the earth resources for survival, to find a way forward, no matter the adverse storms of ignorance, will to power, and brutality.

Gary’s quotation also prompted me to begin re-reading Richard Rorty’s book, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity.  Rorty, a late American philosopher, in common  with Heidegger draws upon the work of Friedrich Nietzsche to trace our life-line of Reason in our time.

A further stimulus to this worthy line of investigation I offer a few lines from Deleuze and Guittari’s book, What is Philosophy.

We do not lack communication.  On the contrary, we have too much of it. We lack creation.  We lack resistance to the present.

Are we not inundated with communication channels?  Overload is one problem, –“too much of it.” Our failure is in our ability to apply reason, to seek for evidence that grounds what we are being offered in a larger context.  A lot of “made up stuff” constitutes the media deluge, which too many of us swallow whole.

Art preserves, and it is the only thing in the world that is preserved.

Thinking, or as Heidegger said Reason that goes beyond conventional wisdom, is an art form.  An artist does the work, the mind-sweat-work to see the patterns, the truth beneath the lies.  The cheaply available convention is unsustainable.  Do we think that Michelangelo painted the Sistine Chapel in a day?

The artist is a seer, a becomer.  All fabulation is the fabrication of giants….the constantly renewed suffering of men and women, their recreated protestations, their constantly renewed struggle.

We must see ourselves as artists.  Capitalism’s day is passing, the heartless profit-uber-alles method that colonize peoples and nations who are without the knowledge or the political organization to resist.  A new way forward must be forged that can be sustained for the well-being of the earth and for the well-being of all who depend upon the earth for sustenance.  Just like the old Maple with roots sunk deep and wide under the surface of the ground–a way forward for life and for civilization must be found despite the pressure of the tyrannies that insist upon having their day here at home around the world.

The victory of a revolution must be immanent.

This is the frame of mind that must be maintained.  The term immanent means some thing that operates within, something close at hand.  We must have the long view, that the might-makes-right ideology which seems ascendant will crumble and the love of the earth, and the love of well being will win.   Empathy will triumph over the will to amass wealth through unlimited extraction from a helpless propagandized market because empathy is of the earth, with hidden roots that are deep.