This perpetual revolution of the mind is a
revolution of becoming; it cannot be finally won.
For one thing, revolutionary thought is always
co-opted by the prevailing power structures de jour
and corrupted to further entrench tyrannical moguls,
institutionalized, fixed and static and feeding on
the collective labor of faceless media suckling
piglet children, freed effortlessly and unwittingly
of freedom, quarreling against each other for
strategically insufficient teats. The mass man
is like blocks of dry cheese, luxury-soaked and
brainwashed and ripe for the pilfering.
But beyond that lamentable (but empirically
demonstrable) truth, the human mind is not
an archer's missile aimed at final perfection.
Rationalism and science can remake the physical world
to such and such a degree, but these days who reads
Karl Jaspers? It's all senile economic theories
and devitalized computer models steered down
the slaughterhouse chutes under flesh-scourging whips
wielded by bankers and judges who pretend
not to notice that, if you want to do
an unthinking machine's job, it's best to get
a machine to do it; but if you desire creativity
and unpredictability, those true human métiers, then
always prefer an authentic human being. But these
terminally conservative lucre vampires, sucking out
the penny-quantified souls of men, loathe the horrific
threat inherent in wild, creative insight. Still:
any machine constructed from human cogs must
eventually explode. Life is a mutating dance, not
a frozen sculpture or a quadratic equation
with finally reducible roots.
So if you seek happiness, then espouse those tides
or prefatory trickling currents that affirm the human spirit;
the beat of the warm heart; the lover's breath
on the cheek at night; shirk those doctrinaire firebrands
with their codes of revealed regulations that enslave
the soul in cruelty, in blood sacrifice to ravenous,
gluttonous iron idols. And know that such cruelty is
all around us, always, lurking in the shadows,
whether you suspect it or no. Let humanity itself
be your guide.
Can we move beyond good and evil? No; and therefore:
viva la revolución! And know kindness still remains
the only proper response to evil: kindness,
and that rarest of all tender commodities,
love.
20091111
An Epistle on the Spirit
Copyright © 2009 Ernest Bloom.
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Much like Huxley in his earlier works, you draw away from the poetica and the belletristic and into the realm rather of politics, philosophy and science all served rather in a doctrinal form rather than by the good old method of exampla. Thankfully, you still hold the figment of that humanity you profess, E.B, and this piece for the instance ranges from the scientific to the passionate in a swing-mood, helter-skelter pattern. I read this with passion, mind you, as I might read any good philosphical work or rather like one reads Nietzsche's Thus spoke... for quite alike you, Nietzsche struggled to reconcile his scientific ego and his muses in a uniform creation.
ReplyDeleteThe phrase: "The mass man
is like blocks of dry cheese, luxury-soaked and
brainwashed and ripe for the pilfering."
however is bomb, good sir, a bomb indeed and something to quote time and time again.
Perfection is indeed merely a goal to propel the individual and the whole of mankind _towards_ salvation without any realistic prospect of attaining the goal anytime soon.
I'm always ambiguous about your long live the soul moods. Partly, I can't help but agree. The modern world is becoming automatic, stagnating and we are becoming indeed almost like the thousands of factory machines constructed and set to perform a limited set of tasks every day, every hour with a staggering efficiency but little or no prospect of developing one's computer circuits, GPUs, CPUs and firmware to a more sublime level, allowing us to enrich the daily schedule and perhaps, with time, develop something like free will. In that, I agree. But sometimes you sound like the Luddite, almost calling for the total break with science for the sake of the soul and the heart. I on my own part believe that science sufficiently developed can merge or reconcile with our spirituality and act as the final catalyst of our full and emotional understanding of the intricacies of the universe as in- creating a bond with the world that we knew not ever existed.