A bit of Vonnegut-ing:
"It took us...long to realize that a purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved." (320)
Friday, May 25, 2012
Monday, May 21, 2012
Baby We Were Born to Run
You
walk four blocks to a nearby garage concert of a budding
singer-songwriter.
You
are entranced by the glowing sunset ambiance, the candor with which
Paul Baribeau shares his inspiration and obstacles, the raw emotion
behind these songs and lyrics--especially when he opens on his
thoughts about suicide, life, and death.
You buy
his new album--a collection of Springsteen covers in Baribeau's
signature rough-cut voice.
You
find yourself hoping it's some insane mistake that your friend
and travel buddy is reported to have died a sudden and probably never
to be completely mystified death in Thailand.
You
for the first time really see cover of that album you bought
some three days ago:
Everything dies baby that's a fact/But maybe everything that dies someday comes back
You
for the first time really hear the words of that now-gut-wrenching
song:
All
we have is time, time, time
And
someday that time will run out
And
that's the only thing we can be absolutely certain about.
You
for the first time feel this pang of loss for someone you
loved...but realize that pang mostly not for your own loss but
for the loss of a loved one of your loved ones.
You
read a book on the plane to the funeral.
Born
to Run: A Hidden Tribe, Superathletes, and the Greatest Race the
World as Never Seen b Christopher McDougall
This
book is about running...
in
a new way, a natural way,
about
evolution, about roots,
about
humanity, living in a non-automatic way, embracing each moment of
competition, collaboration, collective humanity.
And
it happens to also have a title linked to Springsteen and now
Baribeau. Coincidence...I think not.
The
thoughts that follow are about running, but also about daoing
ideally, about a way to reach a point of virtuosity where doing
something (really doing something) becomes easier than not doing it,
about truly living and creating. Running in mind mind is
no longer just running--it is a symbol, for what Adil showed us.
Here's to life:
"That
was the real secret of the Tarahumara: They'd never forgotten what it
felt like to love running. They remembered that a running
was mankind's first fine art, our original act of inspired creation.
Way before we were scratching pictures on caves or beating
rhythms on hollow trees, we were perfecting the art of combining our
breath and mind and muscles into fluid self-propulsion over wild
terrain. And when our ancestors finally did make their first
cave paintings, what were the first designs...a downward slash,
lightning bolts through the bottom and middle--behold, the Running
Man." (92)
"There
are two goddesses in your heart--the Goddess of Wisdom and the
Goddess of Wealth. Everyone thinks they need to get wealth
first, and wisdom will come. So they concern themselves with
chasing money. But they have it backwards. you have to
give your heart to the Goddess of Wisdom, give her all your
love and attention, and the Goddess of Wealth will become jealous,
and follow you." (94)
"...There
was some kind of connection between the capacity to love and the
capacity to love running. ...We wouldn't be alive without love;
we wouldn't have survived without running; maybe we shouldn't be
surprised that getting better at one could make you better at
the other." (98)
"Perhaps
all our troubles--all the violence, obesity, illness, depression, and
greed we can't overcome--began when we stopped living as Running
People. Deny your nature, and it will erupt in some other,
uglier way." (99)
"When you
run on the earth and with the earth, you can run forever."
(114) Connection, humans and their landscape, humans and each
other, and that irreplaceable awareness.
"Whenever
an art form loses its fire, when it gets weakened by intellectual
inbreeding and first principles fade into stale tradition, a radical
fringe eventually appears to blow it up and rebuild from the rubble."
(148) Creation out of destruction. Shiva would be proud.
Also stirs up a good amount of hope for humanity.
About
the importance of living in awareness, rather than automaticity:
"Feet live for a fight and thrive under pressure; let them
laze around...and they'll collapse. Work them out, and they'll
arc up like a rainbow. ...The barefoot walker receives a continuous
stream of information about the ground and about his own relationship
to it, while a shod foot sleeps inside an unchanging environment."
(177). Get outside, get dirty, get aware.
"Runners
are assembly-line workers; they become good at one thing--moving
straight ahead at a steady speed--and repeat that motion until
overuse fritzes out the machinery. Athletes are Tarzans.
Tarzan swims and wrestles and jumps and swings on vines. he's
strong and explosive. you never know what Tarzan will do next,
which is why he never gets hurt." (210)
"When
tracking an animal, one attempts to think like an animal in order to
predict where it is going...Looking at its tracks, one visualizes the
motion of the animal and feels that motion in one's own body. you
go into a trancelike state, the concentration is so intense.
...Visualization...empathy...abstract thinking and forward
projection: ...isn't that exactly the mental engineering we now use
for science, medicine, the creative arts" (235)
"Running
was the superpower that made us human--which means it's a superpower
all humans possess." (239)
"you
don't stop running because you get old. you get old
because you stop running." (240)
"It's
easy to get outside yourself when you're thinking about
someone else." (253)
"That
head of his has been occupied with contemporary society's insoluble
problems for so long, and he is still battling on with
good-heartedness and boundless energy. His efforts have not
been in vain, but he will probably not live to see them come to
fruition." --Theo Van Gogh (1889)
Tuesday, May 15, 2012
Sophie's World
A really interesting history of western philosophy told through the perspective of a young girl...complete with existential mystery story...by Jostein Gaarder, a professor from Norway.
"A philosopher knows that in reality he knows very little. That is why he constantly strives to achieve true insight." (53)
"Just as certain world religions say that people who do not believe in a personal God outside themselves are athiests, we say that a person who does not believe in himself is an atheist. Not believing in the splendor of one's own soul is what we call atheism." --Swami Vivekenanda (107)
"Love thy neighbor as thyself because you are your neighbor. It is an illusion that makes vou think that your neighbor is someone other than yourself." --Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, a former president of India (107)
A SUPER section on the Baroque and the accompanied heightened awareness of mortality and the passage of time--think memento mori--works of art that appear at first to be vibrant still lifes but contain within them some hint of death or decay (rotting fruit, flies, dead flowers), Macbeth's "Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow" soliloquy comparing life to a "poor player that struts and frets his hour on stage, and then is heard no more; a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing"...life as a theatre indicating that life has a definite "curtain call". (17six)
On Hume on the child philosopher: "The child has not yet become a slave of the expectations of habit; he is thus the more open-minded of you two. I wonder if the child is not also the greater philosopher. He comes utterly without preconceived opinions. And that, dear Sophie, is the philosopher's greatest virtue. The child perceives the world as it is, without putting more into things than he experiences." (213)
"Act in such a way that you always treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, never simply as a means, but always at the same time as an end." --Kant on the idea of a categorical imperative as moral law (257)
On Hegel: "The world spirit reaches the highest form of self-realization in absolute spirit. And this absolute spirit is art, religion, and philosophy. And of these, philosophy is the highest form of knowledge because in philosophv, the world spirit reflects on its own impact on history. So the world spirit first meets itself in philosophy. you could say, perhaps, that philosophy is the mirror of the world spirit." (285) ...a recurring motif of the mirror...of subjective vs objective, the envisioner vs the envisioned, perception and reality.
"It is ourselves that our dreams are about. We are the directors, we set up the scenario and play all the roles. A person who says he doesn't understand art doesn't know himself very well." On Freud (339)
On the artist and the subconscious: "(Freud was convinced) that we retain everything we have seen and experienced somewhere deep in our consciousness, and all these impressions can be brought to light again. When we experience a memory lapse, and a bit later 'have it on the tip of our tongue' and then later still 'suddenly remember it', we are talking about something which has lain in the unconscious and suddenly slips through the half-open door to consciousness..." interesting ideas of thresholds, the liminal state, borders and edges. (339)
And on creation: "But then suddenly it's as if all doors and all drawers fly open. Everything comes tumbling out by itself, and we can find all the words and images we need. This is when we have 'lifted the lid' of the unconscious. We can call it inspiration, Sophie, and it feels as if what we are drawing or writing is coming from an outside source." (339)
"All too frequently, reason throttles the imagination, and that's serious because without imagination, nothing really new will ever be created." (340)
"A philosopher knows that in reality he knows very little. That is why he constantly strives to achieve true insight." (53)
"Just as certain world religions say that people who do not believe in a personal God outside themselves are athiests, we say that a person who does not believe in himself is an atheist. Not believing in the splendor of one's own soul is what we call atheism." --Swami Vivekenanda (107)
"Love thy neighbor as thyself because you are your neighbor. It is an illusion that makes vou think that your neighbor is someone other than yourself." --Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, a former president of India (107)
A SUPER section on the Baroque and the accompanied heightened awareness of mortality and the passage of time--think memento mori--works of art that appear at first to be vibrant still lifes but contain within them some hint of death or decay (rotting fruit, flies, dead flowers), Macbeth's "Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow" soliloquy comparing life to a "poor player that struts and frets his hour on stage, and then is heard no more; a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing"...life as a theatre indicating that life has a definite "curtain call". (17six)
On Hume on the child philosopher: "The child has not yet become a slave of the expectations of habit; he is thus the more open-minded of you two. I wonder if the child is not also the greater philosopher. He comes utterly without preconceived opinions. And that, dear Sophie, is the philosopher's greatest virtue. The child perceives the world as it is, without putting more into things than he experiences." (213)
"Act in such a way that you always treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, never simply as a means, but always at the same time as an end." --Kant on the idea of a categorical imperative as moral law (257)
On Hegel: "The world spirit reaches the highest form of self-realization in absolute spirit. And this absolute spirit is art, religion, and philosophy. And of these, philosophy is the highest form of knowledge because in philosophv, the world spirit reflects on its own impact on history. So the world spirit first meets itself in philosophy. you could say, perhaps, that philosophy is the mirror of the world spirit." (285) ...a recurring motif of the mirror...of subjective vs objective, the envisioner vs the envisioned, perception and reality.
"It is ourselves that our dreams are about. We are the directors, we set up the scenario and play all the roles. A person who says he doesn't understand art doesn't know himself very well." On Freud (339)
On the artist and the subconscious: "(Freud was convinced) that we retain everything we have seen and experienced somewhere deep in our consciousness, and all these impressions can be brought to light again. When we experience a memory lapse, and a bit later 'have it on the tip of our tongue' and then later still 'suddenly remember it', we are talking about something which has lain in the unconscious and suddenly slips through the half-open door to consciousness..." interesting ideas of thresholds, the liminal state, borders and edges. (339)
And on creation: "But then suddenly it's as if all doors and all drawers fly open. Everything comes tumbling out by itself, and we can find all the words and images we need. This is when we have 'lifted the lid' of the unconscious. We can call it inspiration, Sophie, and it feels as if what we are drawing or writing is coming from an outside source." (339)
"All too frequently, reason throttles the imagination, and that's serious because without imagination, nothing really new will ever be created." (340)
Monday, May 7, 2012
Daniel Quinn's Providence
Some
thoughts on the biography of the author of Ishmael, one of my
top ten most philosophically influential books--mainly centered upon
the concept fact that humans in recent history have been
enacting a "Taker" story in which they take from the world
and attempt to subdue the world, rather than the "Leaver"
story of the majority of human (pre)history and the rest of living
history, in which all organisms live in interconnectivity and are of
the world, rather than over it. This wasn't my favorite of his
books--dwelled overly much, I thought, on mistakes from his
childhood--but the last third had some gems:
"The presence of the divine in the universe doesn't necessarily depend on or argue for the presence of gods." (139)
"As I say, the religion of the Leavers if "pre" because it doesn't involve the worship of anthropomorphic gods like these. you'll find plenty of gods in their mythologies, of course, but these are only local deities, not objects of universal worship or even of local worship, as we use the term. For example, the Amazulu of Africa say that Unkulukulu made all things, but they don't worship this creator the way Jews worship yahweh or the way Christians worship Jesus. And if the Amazulu were to run across a band of Ashanti, they wouldn't expect them to acknowledge the primacy of Unkulunkulu over their Onyankopon. you see what I mean; this is a sign of their religious backwardness. If the Amazulu were instead to fall upon the Ashanti and slaughter them for refusing to acknowledge the primacy of Unkulunkulu, this would represent a clear step forward on the path of spiritual development, and we'd be forced to acknowledge that the Amazulu now had a true religion." (157)
"Every life in the community is owed to the community--and is paid back to the community in death. The community is a web of life, and every strand of the web is a path to all the other strands. Nothing is exempt. Nothing is special. Nothing lives on a strand by itself, unconnected to the rest." (1six4)
On consuming an animal (or any food): "They know very well that, in consuming the deer, they're taking the life of the deer into themselves. In fact, in a very real sense, the deer hasn't died at all; the deer has simply become them, and in the same sense they have become the deer. Long before we did, the ancient hunters knew that you are what you eat." (1six5) Interesting connections to the idea of eating whole foods, holistic health, and the idea of "prana"--every living thing has this energy from the sun. The fewer steps removed from this sun-derived energy, the more powerful it is--another argument for a vegan lifestyle.
"I think maybe needy people are just people who don't feel needed. Well, I say to you: Feel needed. Feel needed, because you are." (175) One of the most powerful things about Ishmael was its proposal to humans--after spending the large part of the book talking about how humans are decidedly un-special, how humans do not have any sort of unique claim to the earth or control of it, how humans are in great part only contributing to its untimely destruction, the book proposed that humans did have one unique possible contribution--with our powers of critical and creative thinking, we could be the ones to set the example for the rest of the species of life--the ones to set the example of what to do with that power of reasoning, how to use it to better the world. Another treatise on the importance of education, and inspirational indeed.
And lastly, a sort of paean on the importance of place, and the alive-ness of the natural world, the fundamental sameness and uniqueness of all living things:
"Kindler and Rekindler of universes, the fire of life burns forever. It is the flame of life that courses through all generations from first to last, that burns without consuming, that is itself consumed and renewed inexhaustibly, life after life, generation after generation, species after species, galaxy after galaxy, universe after universe, each sharing in the blaze for its season and going down to death while the fire burns on undiminished. The fire is life itself, the life of the universe, of this galaxy, of this planet, of this place and every place; the place by the rock and the place under the hill and the place by the river and the place in the forest, no two alike anywhere. And in the life of every place if god, who is the fire: the life of the pond, god; the life of the tundra, god; the life of the sea, god; the life of the land, god; the life of the earth, god; the life of the universe, god: in every place unique, as the life of every place is unique, and in every place the same, as the fire that burns is everywhere the fire of life."
"The presence of the divine in the universe doesn't necessarily depend on or argue for the presence of gods." (139)
"As I say, the religion of the Leavers if "pre" because it doesn't involve the worship of anthropomorphic gods like these. you'll find plenty of gods in their mythologies, of course, but these are only local deities, not objects of universal worship or even of local worship, as we use the term. For example, the Amazulu of Africa say that Unkulukulu made all things, but they don't worship this creator the way Jews worship yahweh or the way Christians worship Jesus. And if the Amazulu were to run across a band of Ashanti, they wouldn't expect them to acknowledge the primacy of Unkulunkulu over their Onyankopon. you see what I mean; this is a sign of their religious backwardness. If the Amazulu were instead to fall upon the Ashanti and slaughter them for refusing to acknowledge the primacy of Unkulunkulu, this would represent a clear step forward on the path of spiritual development, and we'd be forced to acknowledge that the Amazulu now had a true religion." (157)
"Every life in the community is owed to the community--and is paid back to the community in death. The community is a web of life, and every strand of the web is a path to all the other strands. Nothing is exempt. Nothing is special. Nothing lives on a strand by itself, unconnected to the rest." (1six4)
On consuming an animal (or any food): "They know very well that, in consuming the deer, they're taking the life of the deer into themselves. In fact, in a very real sense, the deer hasn't died at all; the deer has simply become them, and in the same sense they have become the deer. Long before we did, the ancient hunters knew that you are what you eat." (1six5) Interesting connections to the idea of eating whole foods, holistic health, and the idea of "prana"--every living thing has this energy from the sun. The fewer steps removed from this sun-derived energy, the more powerful it is--another argument for a vegan lifestyle.
"I think maybe needy people are just people who don't feel needed. Well, I say to you: Feel needed. Feel needed, because you are." (175) One of the most powerful things about Ishmael was its proposal to humans--after spending the large part of the book talking about how humans are decidedly un-special, how humans do not have any sort of unique claim to the earth or control of it, how humans are in great part only contributing to its untimely destruction, the book proposed that humans did have one unique possible contribution--with our powers of critical and creative thinking, we could be the ones to set the example for the rest of the species of life--the ones to set the example of what to do with that power of reasoning, how to use it to better the world. Another treatise on the importance of education, and inspirational indeed.
And lastly, a sort of paean on the importance of place, and the alive-ness of the natural world, the fundamental sameness and uniqueness of all living things:
"Kindler and Rekindler of universes, the fire of life burns forever. It is the flame of life that courses through all generations from first to last, that burns without consuming, that is itself consumed and renewed inexhaustibly, life after life, generation after generation, species after species, galaxy after galaxy, universe after universe, each sharing in the blaze for its season and going down to death while the fire burns on undiminished. The fire is life itself, the life of the universe, of this galaxy, of this planet, of this place and every place; the place by the rock and the place under the hill and the place by the river and the place in the forest, no two alike anywhere. And in the life of every place if god, who is the fire: the life of the pond, god; the life of the tundra, god; the life of the sea, god; the life of the land, god; the life of the earth, god; the life of the universe, god: in every place unique, as the life of every place is unique, and in every place the same, as the fire that burns is everywhere the fire of life."
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)