The missing link, and all the work that has to be done if Western man is to entertain himself in this philosophical business is to get at the phenomenology of the fall of man from Eden. I am pointing out here that the fall of man was lamented by even a statist like Plato. Why was that? It is a smoking gun insofar as man, in all his progress and glory, still thinks he has done something wrong when he sees nature and animals. Why would an ex-futures trader and truck-driver (Moraline), a small farmer and son of a sailor (Hesiod), and an aristocrat (Plato) all say the same thing? (Namely, why would they all lament the fall of man from Eden)?
Also, note the contradiction between Hesiod's philosophy--currently my central philosophy as well-- and your explanation for the fall from grace: that of claiming possession. What it reveals is how entrenched man already was that private property was a far lesser evil than government. Seen in another light, perhaps it is premature to point back immediately the the hunter-gatherers before we have addressed the more immediate and menacing problem of the state. This is Hesiod's point, although he spends plenty of time on the fall of man from the golden age, to the silver age, to his current age, in which he says he wishes he were never born. So, like Moraline, he is an unabashed pessimist of the current age, but believes the pessimism is warranted, and without such pessimism, there would be philosophical illusion rather than clarity--in other words, a sugar-coated view would be mendacious and cause more harm than a candid and critical viewpoint. His poetry about the golden age might also offer a mystical solution to again finding the path of the hunter-gatherer. Not transcendent, where one meditates and believes one is an Inuit, for example, but one in which there is an indirect attitude which leads to a lessening of legibility, conflict, and possession. But for Hesiod, there is an overarching pragmatism that, no matter how terrible the loss of the golden age, it can only get worse if man loses autonomy. This means enforcing the great sin of property and self-sufficiency. I myself learned this the hard way in Alaska: if you have no roots in Alaska, you will starve, freeze, and die, at which point noting is possible. I found my own plot of land, marked it off, pounded nails into trees with the sign: No Trespassing, Private Property. I would carry a fire arm with me as I walked my property. Kevin said that you'll never be able to look at an animal the same once you look down at him on your plate.
Kubrick surmised in 2001: Space Odyssey that it was man's increase of protein through killing other animals that made him more aggressive, and this led to his killing and enslaving other men. I wonder if it was the hunting aspect of hunting-gathering that was a potential cause of vortex.
I don't believe we find illumination by merely saying that the fall of man happened when he first said "this is mine." Much had to happen before that could happen. First, he had to have language. Second, he had to know the land well enough to pick out one piece and say it was his. This meat tat he had to stop moving. Did he stop moving because the climate changed, or because there was a tribe who was so different from his own that they didn't get along? (New languages, customs, competition for women.)
Second, if we are claiming that this man delineated a piece of land for farming, then we have to travel far back and get at the origin of farming. Did that happen by accident or by a radical, new project, and break with man, animals, and earth?
The screaming, blaring, hot-coals-under-feet question is WHY DID MAN LEAVE HIS GOLDEN AGE BEHIND? If he was happiest under ideal conditions, why on earth would he pursue that which makes him unhappy and sick? Everyone skips the essential questions, the essential phenomenology. Either there was no golden age, and man progressed, and continues to progress, or there was a golden age, and something bad happened to end it. What was the bad thing that happened that ended the golden age? That is the question of philosophy. I wrote the above article to draw attention to the modern reader that your questions of surplus are continuations of perennial questions of literate men, going back at least 2,700 years. In other words, the men who founded the current way of living still lamented a loss of an older, and better way of living. Why didn't Plato say that the present is better, and the past was inferior?
Sunday, August 2, 2015
Hesiod versus Plato
One of Hesiod's central messages is to work very hard, not necessarily because it regulates the mind or is good for the soul, but because it ensures autonomy. Without autonomy, a man can't regulate his own affairs, he can't raise his family. His actions are dependent on others who rule him. He will be petty in his affairs, and appeal to the state to accomplish things for him that, if he were otherwise autonomous, he would do for himself. The only person mentioned in Hesiod's Works and Days is his brother, Persius, who is suing Hesiod for some of Hesiod's assets (the assets comprising his grain farm). Hesiod tells Persius that he wouldn't be having any trouble if he just got to work and managed his farm properly. Instead, Persius is using the local government to force Hesiod to give up his assets, the product of his own hard work. Persius has created, in Hesiod's mind, a false problem, a false dispute, to excuse him from getting to work on his own farm. The local "gift-eaters," the local government, are more than happy to help Persius, as they work for bribes.
Hence much of Hesiod's 'philosophy' is a field manual for farming: when and what to plant, what animals to use, what personnel, how to store grain, how and when to sell grain, etc.. There is also a brilliant account of the gods and the poetry has no comparison.
According to Karl Popper in his Open Society and its Enemies, Plato used a term "banausic" to describe middle-class pursuits of money. Both Plato and Aristotle were patently against such pursuits. They were writing for the land-owning aristocracy, and from this perspective and to this audience, they condemned banausic (technical, money-making) activity. They believed society exists for the purpose of leisure, and men's interacting with other men of leisure class. Leisure exists only for the landed, noble ruling class, which is not to farm the land, but reap the benefits of the slaves who farm the land. Hunting, warfare, and athletics were worthy activities. Philosophy was a worthy activity.
Yet, like Hesiod, who wrote 3 centuries before Plato, Plato also spoke of a more perfect way of being of the nomad or the hunter-gatherer--the golden age of man.
I find it very interesting that Moraline's whole lament about the loss of the hunter-gatherer society is the same damn script as a guy who wrote in 7 B.C and another guy who wrote in 3 B.C.
I will go further. Moraline has it out for the aristocracy--the billionaire class, the hedge fund managers. His feelings for the hedge fund crowd are similar to Hesiod's feelings for Persius--both Hesiod and Moraline claim that such activity lacks nobility and honor and is self-deceptive and will result in future trouble and misery.
Moraine, like Hesiod, associates physical labor with autonomy. The problems of the state go away when men have the strength to take care of themselves (and their family) and settle their own affairs. Moraline might carry the role of physical labor further, glorifying the activity itself. How seriously this glorification is to be taken seriously is a matter of scholarship and speculation. The glorification can be seen as a taunt to the aristocracy. They believe themselves to be the power holders, they believe themselves to be holding privileged, rarified positions, creating great amounts of what they consider to be 'wealth.' Yet Moraline claims that man can be a heroic god without having to bow to authority, without being forced into one system. A man can create his own adventure, and find glory and satisfaction in what is seemingly mundane and lowly. Moreover, he claims that the rarified and ostensible power the aristocrats believe themselves to possess is in fact illusory. They are slaves in a system, the eventual 'good' to be had a transcendent fantasy. They are unwatched by the gods.
Incidentally, if it is true that the nomads and hunter-gatherers are the gods (as Hesiod may be, at times, claiming), it is interesting to note the gods would not disdain the hedge fund crowd, but would rather ignore them.
I don't know what Plato would say about these hedge fund guys. They are neither middle-class tradesmen, nor landed men of benevolent leisure. They are not intellectual. They are not spiritual. They are not great explorers or conquerors. They are not landed aristocracy, but they do indeed reap the 'benefit' of significant 'assets,' jittering 0s and 1s guarded by nuclear weapons. The question I believe Moraline raises is: what, indeed, is this benefit? What is the asset? The 'product' received by these hedge fund guys is big and powerful, no doubt, but what is it?
Hesiod warned that a man should never lose his autonomy. It will sink man lower than he already is. Hesiod believed the nomads and hunter-gatherers to be no less than gods, immortal men who never suffered, never died, and lived in a manner far elevated and inconceivable to the men of his time. In essence Hesiod was telling men two things: First, that they are wretched compared to what they used to be. Second, to not get worse and far more wretched. If men lost their autonomy, they would create bad habits that would destroy the freedom of all men through the growth of government (gift eaters). Interestingly, to Hesiod it was implicit that the bad behavior resulting from the loss of autonomy or the use of gift-eaters was the default behavior of women. Recall that Pandora's Box, a story first introduced by Hesiod, was a vessel of evil spilled by a woman that decimated the happiness of man and was the origin of man's sorrows. Of course, this raises the critical question. What was the downfall of man for Hesiod, the loss of hunter-gatherers or the spilling of Pandora's Box? Or did one cause the other?
A glaring question then arises: Is Plato no different than Persius? There are certain similarities but also certain crucial differences. The similarities: Plato believes the manual labor of farming to be beneath him. But in place of this labor a man should fill his life with hunting, war, and intellectual pursuits.And of course a man should never use the state to sue another man and take his assets. He does not believe it is noble for one man of land to use the state to rob another man of his grain, land, slaves, or farm implements (that is to say, his wealth). What did Persius do in lieu of farming? Was he a man of leisure?
Initially it may seem that these questions are irrelevant. But if we are asking questions about the growth of surplus (and not the origin of surplus, which we can agree began with the fall of nomadi or hunter-gatherer society), we have to ask how we get from small-scale farms with only a few slaves and at most 1-2 years of stored grain (in other words, almost no credit, which is the modern manifestation of Moraline's concept of surplus) in 700 B.C. Greece to enormous farms, credit, currency, and big government by the time of Plato. (I ignore here civilizations in India, China, Syria, etc. which predeceased but probably didn't influence Greece at the time, and which had reached greater sophistication and size before the time of Plato). Were these large farms and large governments only possible through the organized theft and monopoly of violence of government?
Plato would perhaps imagine he and his culture had advanced a long way since the time of Hesiod. But what if it is the case that Plato's culture was only possible through engaging in the very conduct that Hesiod condemned?
It is only a theory, of course, as it is possible that the large farms and large governments simply grew out of advancing farm technology, that the technology and growth happened without the state and growth of the strength and size of its gift-eaters. But my question is: was this technology advanced through credit growth--Moraline's surplus--that had its genesis in organized petty theft? The implication is that the mystery of surplus arises from a violation of at least two of the ten commandments: coveting thy neighbor, and theft.
Plato's landed aristocracy and their leisure class gave way to immersion of the aristocracy in banausic activity--surplus eventually destroyed the leisure of the landed class--surplus destroyed a bastion of autonomy.
In conclusion, I have noted that Hesiod, Plato, and Moraline have lamented the fall of man from Eden, the golden age of mankind. Hesiod's solution has some similarities with Moraline, insofar as Moraline advocates independent hard work as a solution to some philosophical problems. The similarities end there however as Moraline would look for a way of life more primitive than Hesiod himself.
Here is where we have an interesting similarity between all three strange bedfellows--the small farmer, the aristocratic philosopher, and the blue collar truck driver: all three lament the loss of the nomadic hunter-gatherer and all three agree that man's life worsened, and his problems began, with the fall of the nomadic or hunter-gatherer life. I point this out because there is a common tendency to discredit those who long for some idealic golden age of man. What is fascinating is that there is growing evidence that such a golden age did in fact occur (see Wietzel's Origin of Human Mythology). It is also interesting to understand that Plato--considered one of the pillars of Western civilization, and by no means a lunatic--offers the same lamentation as the farmer and truck-driver.
Hence much of Hesiod's 'philosophy' is a field manual for farming: when and what to plant, what animals to use, what personnel, how to store grain, how and when to sell grain, etc.. There is also a brilliant account of the gods and the poetry has no comparison.
According to Karl Popper in his Open Society and its Enemies, Plato used a term "banausic" to describe middle-class pursuits of money. Both Plato and Aristotle were patently against such pursuits. They were writing for the land-owning aristocracy, and from this perspective and to this audience, they condemned banausic (technical, money-making) activity. They believed society exists for the purpose of leisure, and men's interacting with other men of leisure class. Leisure exists only for the landed, noble ruling class, which is not to farm the land, but reap the benefits of the slaves who farm the land. Hunting, warfare, and athletics were worthy activities. Philosophy was a worthy activity.
Yet, like Hesiod, who wrote 3 centuries before Plato, Plato also spoke of a more perfect way of being of the nomad or the hunter-gatherer--the golden age of man.
I find it very interesting that Moraline's whole lament about the loss of the hunter-gatherer society is the same damn script as a guy who wrote in 7 B.C and another guy who wrote in 3 B.C.
I will go further. Moraline has it out for the aristocracy--the billionaire class, the hedge fund managers. His feelings for the hedge fund crowd are similar to Hesiod's feelings for Persius--both Hesiod and Moraline claim that such activity lacks nobility and honor and is self-deceptive and will result in future trouble and misery.
Moraine, like Hesiod, associates physical labor with autonomy. The problems of the state go away when men have the strength to take care of themselves (and their family) and settle their own affairs. Moraline might carry the role of physical labor further, glorifying the activity itself. How seriously this glorification is to be taken seriously is a matter of scholarship and speculation. The glorification can be seen as a taunt to the aristocracy. They believe themselves to be the power holders, they believe themselves to be holding privileged, rarified positions, creating great amounts of what they consider to be 'wealth.' Yet Moraline claims that man can be a heroic god without having to bow to authority, without being forced into one system. A man can create his own adventure, and find glory and satisfaction in what is seemingly mundane and lowly. Moreover, he claims that the rarified and ostensible power the aristocrats believe themselves to possess is in fact illusory. They are slaves in a system, the eventual 'good' to be had a transcendent fantasy. They are unwatched by the gods.
Incidentally, if it is true that the nomads and hunter-gatherers are the gods (as Hesiod may be, at times, claiming), it is interesting to note the gods would not disdain the hedge fund crowd, but would rather ignore them.
I don't know what Plato would say about these hedge fund guys. They are neither middle-class tradesmen, nor landed men of benevolent leisure. They are not intellectual. They are not spiritual. They are not great explorers or conquerors. They are not landed aristocracy, but they do indeed reap the 'benefit' of significant 'assets,' jittering 0s and 1s guarded by nuclear weapons. The question I believe Moraline raises is: what, indeed, is this benefit? What is the asset? The 'product' received by these hedge fund guys is big and powerful, no doubt, but what is it?
Hesiod warned that a man should never lose his autonomy. It will sink man lower than he already is. Hesiod believed the nomads and hunter-gatherers to be no less than gods, immortal men who never suffered, never died, and lived in a manner far elevated and inconceivable to the men of his time. In essence Hesiod was telling men two things: First, that they are wretched compared to what they used to be. Second, to not get worse and far more wretched. If men lost their autonomy, they would create bad habits that would destroy the freedom of all men through the growth of government (gift eaters). Interestingly, to Hesiod it was implicit that the bad behavior resulting from the loss of autonomy or the use of gift-eaters was the default behavior of women. Recall that Pandora's Box, a story first introduced by Hesiod, was a vessel of evil spilled by a woman that decimated the happiness of man and was the origin of man's sorrows. Of course, this raises the critical question. What was the downfall of man for Hesiod, the loss of hunter-gatherers or the spilling of Pandora's Box? Or did one cause the other?
A glaring question then arises: Is Plato no different than Persius? There are certain similarities but also certain crucial differences. The similarities: Plato believes the manual labor of farming to be beneath him. But in place of this labor a man should fill his life with hunting, war, and intellectual pursuits.And of course a man should never use the state to sue another man and take his assets. He does not believe it is noble for one man of land to use the state to rob another man of his grain, land, slaves, or farm implements (that is to say, his wealth). What did Persius do in lieu of farming? Was he a man of leisure?
Initially it may seem that these questions are irrelevant. But if we are asking questions about the growth of surplus (and not the origin of surplus, which we can agree began with the fall of nomadi or hunter-gatherer society), we have to ask how we get from small-scale farms with only a few slaves and at most 1-2 years of stored grain (in other words, almost no credit, which is the modern manifestation of Moraline's concept of surplus) in 700 B.C. Greece to enormous farms, credit, currency, and big government by the time of Plato. (I ignore here civilizations in India, China, Syria, etc. which predeceased but probably didn't influence Greece at the time, and which had reached greater sophistication and size before the time of Plato). Were these large farms and large governments only possible through the organized theft and monopoly of violence of government?
Plato would perhaps imagine he and his culture had advanced a long way since the time of Hesiod. But what if it is the case that Plato's culture was only possible through engaging in the very conduct that Hesiod condemned?
It is only a theory, of course, as it is possible that the large farms and large governments simply grew out of advancing farm technology, that the technology and growth happened without the state and growth of the strength and size of its gift-eaters. But my question is: was this technology advanced through credit growth--Moraline's surplus--that had its genesis in organized petty theft? The implication is that the mystery of surplus arises from a violation of at least two of the ten commandments: coveting thy neighbor, and theft.
Plato's landed aristocracy and their leisure class gave way to immersion of the aristocracy in banausic activity--surplus eventually destroyed the leisure of the landed class--surplus destroyed a bastion of autonomy.
In conclusion, I have noted that Hesiod, Plato, and Moraline have lamented the fall of man from Eden, the golden age of mankind. Hesiod's solution has some similarities with Moraline, insofar as Moraline advocates independent hard work as a solution to some philosophical problems. The similarities end there however as Moraline would look for a way of life more primitive than Hesiod himself.
Here is where we have an interesting similarity between all three strange bedfellows--the small farmer, the aristocratic philosopher, and the blue collar truck driver: all three lament the loss of the nomadic hunter-gatherer and all three agree that man's life worsened, and his problems began, with the fall of the nomadic or hunter-gatherer life. I point this out because there is a common tendency to discredit those who long for some idealic golden age of man. What is fascinating is that there is growing evidence that such a golden age did in fact occur (see Wietzel's Origin of Human Mythology). It is also interesting to understand that Plato--considered one of the pillars of Western civilization, and by no means a lunatic--offers the same lamentation as the farmer and truck-driver.
Sunday, July 26, 2015
I am thrilled Scott has something new--I haven't heard of it and it's good the old-timer is still putting out the good word.
Austin
might be the best place.There had been much development and
urbanization, but the geography and ecology of the area is god-awful
beautiful. All the young folks are hipsters, but it doesn't bother me.
There are old rivers, old buildings, and brutal hills, tarantulas, and
fire ants, ancient oak trees, and dry river beds. I speak Spanish here
when I can. In the late 1830s two fellas lived in a small cabin and raised cattle. It was a potentially lucrative thing, but dangerous, because you had the Mexican threat and he Indian threat. The Mexicans invaded San Antonio and all but 12 families stayed in Austin. Not soon after, one of the two fellas went from town to check on the cattle. It was bad timing: an Indian tribe killed him. The other fella didn't give up and kept working that land. Much of it was later donated, and you can ride your bike up and down Shoal Creek still. Tuesday, July 21, 2015
Reponse to comment on Who Where the Gods?
My comment was "too many characters," and so must be published as a post.
I agree with "The nature of his connection to the earth remains the question." As the earth is being destroyed, perhaps the question goes away or a new question emerges, or man no longer asks questions, and then man goes away, either silently, or violently. Perhaps humanity marches towards a great Jante's parade, and yawns itself to one genderless, emotion-free death.
The use of the term surplus is diverse, perhaps diverse among cultures and the context in which the term is used. If I understand the way the word is being used, it is used in the economic, mathematical sense. It is also identified as a problematic: surplus is a bad thing, and has led men astray, changed them in a bad way: it started with farming and has led to the creation of New York City (the epicenter of some force that without a doubt is destroying earth--I only need to recall how close a huge damn was to being built in Patagonia. If it had been built, it would have destroyed the river I had seen. The epicenter in that context was Santiago, but Santiago is Chile's New York City.)
But the term to me is perplexing, and I wonder if the criticism or description of surplus is really just a criticism of an *attitude* or tendency rather than an actual thing. Is your description of surplus a criticism of the Western methodology of making legible and transforming the earth (and men and women with it), an attitude that could be described by using the word "technology," insofar as technology could be described as man's relationship to the earth, as you point out?
I point out my confusion with the term surplus because I have had two completely opposite feelings about surplus: times when I see to much of something that has spoiled, retarded, and corrupted man (malls, fast food, suburban isolation, excessive use of automobiles in lieu of walking or bike riding, destruction of forests for newspaper), and an abundance of something that has enriched man--such as a lake in Patagonia that is full and abundant of glacier-fed water, or a bakery full of hot empenadas, or an abundance of bicycle inner-tubes.
For there should be no guilt or shame in abundance--whether the abundance occurs naturally in the earth (a lake of drinkable water in Patagonia, for example), or whether it is an abundance of food that man has cultivated, or an abundance of things man has made.
If there is a guilt or shame--if we have identified a problematic--if we say that surplus is a problem, what we are saying is that we are doing something wrong, we are not living correctly, we have a bad technology which is destroying us and the earth.
Understood as a problematic, the term 'surplus' is an attitude of legibility which measures the earth in order to exploit, dominate, and control the earth, and exploit, dominate and control man. It is an *adversarial* relationship to both earth and man, a desire to dominate and transform, rather than an attitude to work with the earth and learn from the earth.
The term has great irony, because man is making and *storing* his abusive transformation of the earth. Seen as a negative economic 'good,' the products of this transformation are not surpluses, but vortexes. Hence the last sentence should read: "I believe it is the notion of vortex that is missing."
If you can successfully identify and describe this problem of vortex, you will enlighten all human beings about their destiny. You will provide an ontological foundation for man's teleology. You will be given a fine cabin in the Black Forest.
Man is damaging the earth and producing things of inferior quality to the earth (for example, the suburban divisions you speak of, the Ikea furniture I just assembled made from Brazilian rainforest wood--I find it strange that I never made it to the Amazon, but I am directly responsible for destroying the Amazon before I have a chance to visit). If I am to correctly understand the import of your use of the concept of surplus, I am going to replace the word "surplus" with "damage" or "earth-cancer" or "earth-attack."
If you want to conduct an anthropological study of man's attack on the earth, look no further than what I am doing: living in a city, riding my folding bike 21 miles to an Ikea, and buying items from China, India, Pakistan, and Brasil. I am certain that most of the 'goods' that I have purchased have further entrenched the matrices which I criticize.
Saturday, July 18, 2015
Who were the gods?
The modern view point makes this clear: Don't ask this question.
The gods represented a world that limited the domination of one sort of 'class' or type of humans. By asking about the gods, we revisit a time the the current dominant class was subordinate.
To limit the world to one God, or to say God is dead, or the gods are dead: this is the the dominate world view. We allow a folksy, whimsical reminiscence of the gods, but only as an accessory to a materialistic world-view that has denounced the gods, made a mockery of their value.
The mono-theistic, materialist God, is the spirit of the state. Scott speaks of the organically flowing garden, how a garden flourishes when each small plot of land is cultivated to its special uniqueness. The time of the gods was the same thing: we had millions of feelings of spirit, and people were free to express these feelings. At some point came coercion on a wide-spread scale. This is where the human race got in trouble.
The struggle, now, is between human freedom and its diversity, and a distrust of human freedom, and a desire to coerce, control, and cull humanity to one shape and form.
The gods are man's way of speaking to his earth on his own terms, in the many ways man landed on his specific place on earth, and freely made best of his surroundings. The earth is large and diverse, and men and women have a unique way of speaking to their earth wherever it may be.
The gods, for any man or woman, should be obvious. If they're not, there is coercion, and where there is coercion, there is an attack on the gods, and, what I think is the same thing, an attack on the earth.
The gods represented a world that limited the domination of one sort of 'class' or type of humans. By asking about the gods, we revisit a time the the current dominant class was subordinate.
To limit the world to one God, or to say God is dead, or the gods are dead: this is the the dominate world view. We allow a folksy, whimsical reminiscence of the gods, but only as an accessory to a materialistic world-view that has denounced the gods, made a mockery of their value.
The mono-theistic, materialist God, is the spirit of the state. Scott speaks of the organically flowing garden, how a garden flourishes when each small plot of land is cultivated to its special uniqueness. The time of the gods was the same thing: we had millions of feelings of spirit, and people were free to express these feelings. At some point came coercion on a wide-spread scale. This is where the human race got in trouble.
The struggle, now, is between human freedom and its diversity, and a distrust of human freedom, and a desire to coerce, control, and cull humanity to one shape and form.
The gods are man's way of speaking to his earth on his own terms, in the many ways man landed on his specific place on earth, and freely made best of his surroundings. The earth is large and diverse, and men and women have a unique way of speaking to their earth wherever it may be.
The gods, for any man or woman, should be obvious. If they're not, there is coercion, and where there is coercion, there is an attack on the gods, and, what I think is the same thing, an attack on the earth.
Wednesday, July 8, 2015
The Golden Age of Everything
"...Mary chose the better part.
What is the better part? It is God, and consequently everything, but it is called the better part because it must be chosen; one does not receive everything as everything, that is not how one begins: one begins by choosing the better part, which is, nevertheless, everything."
Kierkegaard, The Journals
For one man, it may be his claim to his piece of frozen ground on an abandoned park in the middle of a city afraid of its own cold as he runs in the deep ruts in pitch black, or up a mountain in great hunger, only to find God's nourishment laid there for him in the Summer. For another man, it may be his claim both against the wind and for each piece of a map he turns down, inch by inch, as he fights the barren Ruta 3, each spot of shade a salvation, each sip of water an anointment against death, which for him would mean no more movement. For another man, it might be a small hill not really close to anything, but that he can call his own.
But none of these men 'received everything as everything." No, all of these men began "by choosing the better part, which is, nevertheless, everything."
What is the better part? It is God, and consequently everything, but it is called the better part because it must be chosen; one does not receive everything as everything, that is not how one begins: one begins by choosing the better part, which is, nevertheless, everything."
Kierkegaard, The Journals
For one man, it may be his claim to his piece of frozen ground on an abandoned park in the middle of a city afraid of its own cold as he runs in the deep ruts in pitch black, or up a mountain in great hunger, only to find God's nourishment laid there for him in the Summer. For another man, it may be his claim both against the wind and for each piece of a map he turns down, inch by inch, as he fights the barren Ruta 3, each spot of shade a salvation, each sip of water an anointment against death, which for him would mean no more movement. For another man, it might be a small hill not really close to anything, but that he can call his own.
But none of these men 'received everything as everything." No, all of these men began "by choosing the better part, which is, nevertheless, everything."
Tuesday, June 23, 2015
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)