Never Mind The Stench
The sky is a uniform gray, the traffic moves silently, on the far side of the Starbucks window on State Street here in Geneva. Snow is predicted for the late afternoon or early evening. Forecasters are almost apologetic for uncertainty. They’re unable to predict how much snow will fall. Computer models for weather much improved, generating graphical representations as colorful, as entertaining as a child’s kaleidoscope still have limitations. Shouldn’t we be ok with the concept of a limit? Discomfort is triggered when I am reminded implicitly of my personal limit. I too have a finite future. I cannot say when, or exactly how.
Is it not salutary, humanizing to recognize and bow before the unknown, what may be unknowable? That is, up until the last microsecond, the denouement of the matter is shaped by so many factors. The mind is boggled, everything is expressed by a tiny push, meaningful nudges…
Press on, let’s press on!
I viewed the Barbie movie last night. I continue to think about, to process the premise of male hegemony, and many sub-thesis of the film. We in the West, are pining for the “lost” Barbie World, where everything, and everyone is sanitized, idealized in pure light, in pastel colors, another origin-myth of Paradise. For Americans, Barbie World is a California-esque idyllic, manicured place. The indigenous occupants are erased.
If you are Israeli, your Barbie World includes the West Bank and Gaza, leveled, almost sanitized. If you’re Russian, …
The madman jumped into their midst
and pierced them with his eyes.
“Whither is God?” he cried;
“I will tell you.
We have killed him–you and I.
All of us are his murderers...
Do we hear nothing as yet
of the noise of the gravediggers who are burying God?
Do we smell nothing as yet
of the divine decomposition?
Gods, too. decompose.
God is dead. God remains dead.
And we have killed him…
-Nietzsche, The Gay Science, Book 3, Section 125
2 thoughts on “Never Mind The Stench”
Apparently whatever is present before us, whichever novel, movie, poem, event, podcast, etc., that occupies the immediacy of our consciousness colors what we might say moment to moment. I see this at work in your blogs (not a criticism, but an observation). I see it in my own day to day routine and in how I perceive the world. This input, which we willingly and almost gleefully subject ourselves to, not only colors our POV, but if we’re lucky, expands our view as well. For you, at least today, so it is with both Nietzsche and Barbie, two icons we rarely think of as being juxtaposed, but here they are in all of their splendor.
From the window my own cell, I write this response after recently reading a few pages Camus’s, The Fall, and a podcast I listened to this morning about our sensory input and the misconceptions about the world we make because of our limited ability to interpret that sensory input.
As you noted, “The Unknown” to which we pay homage is made up of all of the things which we either don’t know or cannot know. Still, even intellectually knowing our time is limited, we live as if immortality were just around the corner. We forget that every entity has a limit, an end. Even Barbie, who will eventually fade into the annals of history as a blip, will have made little or no difference in the course of humankind.
My words may sound dystopian and dark, but they aren’t meant that way. Pragmatism can sometimes be confused with cynicism. Again, from my cell’s window, I note that the world is made up of WYSIWYGs (what you see is what you get) and our course has been charted even with all of the unknowns. This doesn’t mean that we can’t still enjoy the ride or go through the motions of attempting to alter our direction. We are compelled to do whatever we believe in our hearts is the “right” thing to do, regardless of the potential success or failure of our efforts.
I’ll leave it at that for today. Too much gobbledygook already and only more will follow if I keep going. Have a wonderful, albeit chilly, January day.
Seems that we are situated on the same cell block. That’s a good thought, that one is not alone, that company is a satisfying aspect of being alive. Your comment about the influence of exposure to materials eg. the Barbie movie, or a novel by Albert Camus qualifying our consciousness is undoubtedly the case. How could it be otherwise? Words and images make us slowly, inexorably over time. Nietzsche was a proponent of the WYSIWYG concept, that we ought to take what experience presents with a deadly, but deft seriousness. Laughter is serious. My sense of Nietzsche is that of an insurrectionist attempting to undermine the conventional interpretations of all that is experienced.
I agree that the awareness of the totality of our embed, how we are made, shaped by “how the cards were dealt” need not be dispiriting, an impediment to joy and celebration. After all, to show up at all, is to win the lottery of being/existence.
Appreciate your mindful comments.