CONTRADICTIONS, PARADOXES, IRONIES
* * *
1.
Others have access to how each of us really looks. We do not know how we appear to others; meanwhile others do not perceive our silent thoughts.
2.
We need to cooperate with others, as well as to feel or be recognized as exceptional, which is the mother of jealousy and all social ills.
3.
We torment and envy those with only slightly more than we, yet worship and fear those with vastly more.
4.
We need to feel important and have influence, as well as be at liberty to do what we like. The more important one becomes, the more one loses one’s freedom. The more freedom one exercises, the less important one will be.
5.
Satisfaction occurs only after overcoming an obstacle, outdoing ourselves, or transcending our previous limitations. The child of privilege is miserable in spite of her material comfort. To be born into wealth, fame, or accomplishment is a curse, nearly as bad as being born into poverty, except no one feels sorry for the child of privilege. The curse of living in the shadow of one’s family tends to produce an individual who will undermine her physical comfort and self-destruct so as to provide the conditions spiritually necessary for achieving satisfaction.
6.
Society is made up of a great many persons, yet the bigger the city, the more one feels anonymous among the crowd. The larger and more populous a city, the more specialized its people’s occupations and the more people seem to be estranged from one another, not to say from the products of their labor. Society is as a fortress protecting from the hazards of the natural world, except large cities have also produced rigid social hierarchies, the most wretched of their inhabitants suffering a quality of life far beneath that which is found in nature.
7.
When we fear that a threat is in our midst, we look for it. And when we do not find it, we are initially disappointed.
8.
It is a fallacy to suppose that all who feel entitled to power are in some way nobles, or masters. While a great interest in power suggests an affinity for mastery, the fact remains that the power instinct is terribly pedestrian. What makes for real mastery is a genuine belief in what ought to be, independent of considerations of a self-interested nature, independent of what others might make of it. The courage to envision a world is what separates mastery from mediocrity. Genuine confidence in one’s vision is what enables one to withstand solitude, poverty, and drops in status. It is paradoxical, then, in this case, that neglecting considerations of worldly power can lead to having more of it.
9.
It is often said that science is beautiful or that mathematics is beautiful, or that scientists, mathematicians, and philosophers are not merely like artists, but fundamentally artists themselves. In abbreviating reality via abstraction, science and philosophy end up producing sensuously beautiful, satisfying—even seemingly spiritual—models and representations of reality with the appeal of sacred geometry or music. All of which leads to our frequently mistaking science for art, even if art is the intensification of reality by sensuous means, and science the abbreviation of reality via abstraction. While the intentions of art and science are much the same, their means are very different, and yet they sometimes manage to resemble one another in outward aspect. It is ironic in that science must deny the sensuous as well as the irrational in order to achieve the theoretical clarity for which it strives. Yet since scientific representation tends to have the “look” of art, archetype, and religious symbol, it lends itself to idolatry by capturing the imaginations of those hungry—indeed starved—for divine transcendence in a disenchanted moment.
10.
Consciousness is trapped, the body’s hostage. We try to tell others what we think, we can talk endlessly, provoke others to feel how we feel—all of it is in vain. Art has the ability to enable others to feel last night’s dream, with its complex texture and its subtlety amid blatancy, its atmospherics. Not the expression of emotion or the conveyance of information, poetry does its work by using language to emphasize similarities rather than differences. It reconciles tensions, makes love out of war. In its deepest intention it is nothing less than telepathy via the word. Long ago it could be magic as well: telekinesis achieved through word-sympathy aided by rhythm (which is a kind of hypnosis), hidden or overt resemblance. The poetic consciousness yearns to make what is outside inside, what is inside outside. It cannot understand why it should be prevented from merging with alien matter or with the thoughts of others. It seeks to bring the world of dream to that of conscious daylight. It seeks wholeness—unity—in heterogeneity. It makes variousness musical rather than chaotic.
. . .
1.
Others have access to how each of us really looks. We do not know how we appear to others; meanwhile others do not perceive our silent thoughts.
2.
We need to cooperate with others, as well as to feel or be recognized as exceptional, which is the mother of jealousy and all social ills.
3.
We torment and envy those with only slightly more than we, yet worship and fear those with vastly more.
4.
We need to feel important and have influence, as well as be at liberty to do what we like. The more important one becomes, the more one loses one’s freedom. The more freedom one exercises, the less important one will be.
5.
Satisfaction occurs only after overcoming an obstacle, outdoing ourselves, or transcending our previous limitations. The child of privilege is miserable in spite of her material comfort. To be born into wealth, fame, or accomplishment is a curse, nearly as bad as being born into poverty, except no one feels sorry for the child of privilege. The curse of living in the shadow of one’s family tends to produce an individual who will undermine her physical comfort and self-destruct so as to provide the conditions spiritually necessary for achieving satisfaction.
6.
Society is made up of a great many persons, yet the bigger the city, the more one feels anonymous among the crowd. The larger and more populous a city, the more specialized its people’s occupations and the more people seem to be estranged from one another, not to say from the products of their labor. Society is as a fortress protecting from the hazards of the natural world, except large cities have also produced rigid social hierarchies, the most wretched of their inhabitants suffering a quality of life far beneath that which is found in nature.
7.
When we fear that a threat is in our midst, we look for it. And when we do not find it, we are initially disappointed.
8.
It is a fallacy to suppose that all who feel entitled to power are in some way nobles, or masters. While a great interest in power suggests an affinity for mastery, the fact remains that the power instinct is terribly pedestrian. What makes for real mastery is a genuine belief in what ought to be, independent of considerations of a self-interested nature, independent of what others might make of it. The courage to envision a world is what separates mastery from mediocrity. Genuine confidence in one’s vision is what enables one to withstand solitude, poverty, and drops in status. It is paradoxical, then, in this case, that neglecting considerations of worldly power can lead to having more of it.
9.
It is often said that science is beautiful or that mathematics is beautiful, or that scientists, mathematicians, and philosophers are not merely like artists, but fundamentally artists themselves. In abbreviating reality via abstraction, science and philosophy end up producing sensuously beautiful, satisfying—even seemingly spiritual—models and representations of reality with the appeal of sacred geometry or music. All of which leads to our frequently mistaking science for art, even if art is the intensification of reality by sensuous means, and science the abbreviation of reality via abstraction. While the intentions of art and science are much the same, their means are very different, and yet they sometimes manage to resemble one another in outward aspect. It is ironic in that science must deny the sensuous as well as the irrational in order to achieve the theoretical clarity for which it strives. Yet since scientific representation tends to have the “look” of art, archetype, and religious symbol, it lends itself to idolatry by capturing the imaginations of those hungry—indeed starved—for divine transcendence in a disenchanted moment.
10.
Consciousness is trapped, the body’s hostage. We try to tell others what we think, we can talk endlessly, provoke others to feel how we feel—all of it is in vain. Art has the ability to enable others to feel last night’s dream, with its complex texture and its subtlety amid blatancy, its atmospherics. Not the expression of emotion or the conveyance of information, poetry does its work by using language to emphasize similarities rather than differences. It reconciles tensions, makes love out of war. In its deepest intention it is nothing less than telepathy via the word. Long ago it could be magic as well: telekinesis achieved through word-sympathy aided by rhythm (which is a kind of hypnosis), hidden or overt resemblance. The poetic consciousness yearns to make what is outside inside, what is inside outside. It cannot understand why it should be prevented from merging with alien matter or with the thoughts of others. It seeks to bring the world of dream to that of conscious daylight. It seeks wholeness—unity—in heterogeneity. It makes variousness musical rather than chaotic.
. . .
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