Yearning for temporary,
transient release from the
nihilistic maelstrom, during which time
he can leave the tragedies
and tempests of the carnivorous
world behind, the aesthetic man
remains mired in the
quicksands of time, no matter
the depth and passion of his
passive and evanescent appreciation
for beauty. Ah, but that rare bird,
the ethical man, reaching into
aesthetics ‑‑ and beyond! ‑‑ tangles
with questions of right and wrong, heads
boldly onto battlefields of
moral ambiguity, blazes
a new trail freely, every man
for himself, and if he knows any success,
he shines like a beacon for others to follow.
The ethical man is becoming; he is
forever evolving, reaching up
out of the darkness of despair
to the true promise of the shining stars.
Only one in five hundred achieves
an aesthetic sense; of these, only
one in five hundred can be said to be
morally-concerned, not merely reacting
to quandaries of conscience according to some
dim recollection of a Bible reading
from childhood, or some other form
of punishment. Preconceived notions
don't count for much when one
heads out into the unknown
wilderness alone.
Spiritual transcendence as the perilous journey to the New Land where the preconceived notions of civilization and facilities no longer function, where cooperation and focus are the sole survival tools and every false movement or thought drives you back into the bowels of the earthly limbo or worse? Interesting. But I fear sometimes that morality in its purest form is limiting. Ethics seem like a very earthly affair and much detached from the higher plane. I believe a certain Oneness is something we all struggle to achieve but it's a Oneness of a pure, almost physical nature, not one of superficial ethics which work on a very low, almost subconscious level in many regards.
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