The question: what to do?
Is to give chance
               to play
It is first of all to accept what is given as a game
The condition of a difficult fight, to fight on the side on which chance

seems to appear
          The same thing as freedom.

–excerpt On Nietzsche Notes by Georges Bataille p. 290

A friend and I are thinking about “the absurd.”   I realize that sounds absurd!  Those aspects of life which defy the categories of language, which are nearly indescribable, how does one find any words…  Poetry helps but inevitably falls short.  Perhaps this was/is the whole point of surrealism?

We live inside of a bubble.  The bubble is a product of culture, the layer by layer build-out of institutions, practices, the forms that give definition to our society, our region in the Fox River Valley, to our town.  If asked what does it mean “to-be-an-American?”  I’d hardly know where to start…

All of it seems so solid, so tangible even.  And yet, and yet, “what is given is a game.”   And that’s not all.  It’s also the condition of a difficult fight.

On which side ought one to enlist, ought one to sacrifice?

The side on which chance appears to engender freedom, the chance however slim, the odds however long…

Can you think of an example or two?  I think resistance to “gun fetishism” by worshipers of the 2nd amendment of the Constitution would qualify as an “against the odds” commitment.  On a more personal note, to explore one’s inner demons/conflicts with a therapist is a long fight that would qualify as a struggle against the odds for one’s personal integrity.  That fight definitely involves the well-being of those closest to us, family and close friends.

Bataille asserts such acts of commitment are another way of performing what is meant by freedom.