For what if man was doomed. The aliveness that is, is its own journey and destination. So the nihilist believes.
To be free is to have no contradiction inside. The discontent of civilization is its force within oneself which prevents total freedom. Civilization is within. Total freedom can exist only in death.
To be torn is simply the fact of being alive to others.
To collect seeds and see them blown away by the wind. To see one's offspring devoured by a predator. Who says birds don't suffer.
In the midst of all this incoherence and chaos, there is absolute stillness. To center oneself and to be still while the storms, including in one's own mind, rage, is what man is capable of. And this stillness can be felt in great joy as well as in great suffering.
The self might be a construct, a useful mechanism built by eons of strange twirls of evolution. The essential suffering of the self is that of feeling that there are vistas of experience which it has not experienced. To be aware of inexperience and simultaneously, of mortality, is the tragic sense.
"Life is to be lived" is not a meaningless statement, but aliveness can be lost in the cacophony of everyday life. One of the authentic depictions of death is white noise. Michael Haneke knew that when he showed the television playing "The Power of Love" and then to meaningless pixel-snow in Der Siebente Kontinent.
The feeling of direction can keep alive those who are trudging through inhospitable terrains. But a vision of absurdity, of the futility of it all, can strike at times of elevation. At lower elevations, everything is going somewhere. At higher ones, there is no destination and no movement. What shall you fix as the journey's end if you have gone around the world?
Chain gangs still exist in this world. To respect the chains requires that one admits the larger goodness and worth of the roads, the homes, the fields, the children, the cycle of life.
"The bigger you build the bonfire, the more darkness is revealed." (Terence McKenna)
To be free is to have no contradiction inside. The discontent of civilization is its force within oneself which prevents total freedom. Civilization is within. Total freedom can exist only in death.
To be torn is simply the fact of being alive to others.
To collect seeds and see them blown away by the wind. To see one's offspring devoured by a predator. Who says birds don't suffer.
In the midst of all this incoherence and chaos, there is absolute stillness. To center oneself and to be still while the storms, including in one's own mind, rage, is what man is capable of. And this stillness can be felt in great joy as well as in great suffering.
The self might be a construct, a useful mechanism built by eons of strange twirls of evolution. The essential suffering of the self is that of feeling that there are vistas of experience which it has not experienced. To be aware of inexperience and simultaneously, of mortality, is the tragic sense.
"Life is to be lived" is not a meaningless statement, but aliveness can be lost in the cacophony of everyday life. One of the authentic depictions of death is white noise. Michael Haneke knew that when he showed the television playing "The Power of Love" and then to meaningless pixel-snow in Der Siebente Kontinent.
The feeling of direction can keep alive those who are trudging through inhospitable terrains. But a vision of absurdity, of the futility of it all, can strike at times of elevation. At lower elevations, everything is going somewhere. At higher ones, there is no destination and no movement. What shall you fix as the journey's end if you have gone around the world?
Chain gangs still exist in this world. To respect the chains requires that one admits the larger goodness and worth of the roads, the homes, the fields, the children, the cycle of life.
"The bigger you build the bonfire, the more darkness is revealed." (Terence McKenna)
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