Advice? I don’t have advice. Stop aspiring and start writing. If you’re writing, you’re a writer. Write like you’re a goddamn death row inmate and the governor is out of the country and there’s no chance for a pardon. Write like you’re clinging to the edge of a cliff, white knuckles, on your last breath, and you’ve got just one last thing to say, like you’re a bird flying over us and you can see everything, and please, for God’s sake, tell us something that will save us from ourselves. Take a deep breath and tell us your deepest, darkest secret, so we can wipe our brow and know that we’re not alone. Write like you have a message from the king. Or don’t. Who knows, maybe you’re one of the lucky ones who doesn’t have to.
-Alan watts
Tuesday, May 10, 2016
Monday, January 18, 2016
Black and/or White
The following is a transcription from the chapter titled "Black and/or White" from the book "Cloud-hidden, Whereabouts Unknown" by Alan Watts. I thought sharing it might be an appropriate way to honor MLK day.
Day by day the tragic “crisis of color” between black and white peoples (or should I say colored and discolored?) moves towards a lofty and terrifying showdown. Remote and lofty as such matters may seem (thought I would call them basic), it is always important to look into the religious and metaphysical background of social disturbances which, in this case, looms rather large. Through Christianity, and to a lesser extent Judaism, the West has inherited certain associations of ideas and symbols as unique among world religions as the are absurd. Consider these two columns:
White --- Black
Light --- Darkness
Life --- Death
Good --- Evil
God --- Devil
The avowed aim of popular Western religion is to retain column 1 and to get rid of column 2. Most other religious would transcend both. We, however, have been persuaded that the white aspect of the universe can be experienced and enjoyed without the contrast of the black.
Strictly speaking, Africans are no more black than Caucasians are white, but first the Caucasians and now the Africans have adopted “white” and “black” as proud and belligerent labels, implying an opposition cruder and more irreconcilable than greyish pink versus brown. Yet if you are proud and happy to be white, how do you know you are white? But for the existence of colored people, we would never have thought of ourselves as white, for in an all-white world being white carries no distinction, and we surely like to be “people of distinction”.
A necessary part of having an effective personality seems to be membership in some elite in-group of religion, class, or race, some sect, coterie, club, gang, or secret society. Even one’s own body looks- deceptively- like an isolated in-group of cells. But just about the most basic metaphysical principle that I know is simply that every inside involves an outside, and every outside an inside. They are different, yes, but quite inseparable. The only exceptions to this rule are such topological gimmicks as the Mobius strip and the Klein bottle, though here there is neither front nor back, inside nor outside. Thus the principle is transcended, not annulled.
If then, I am to be “in,” someone else must consequently be “out,” and consequently I owe him a debt of gratitude for the realization that I am “in.” To congratulate myself, if I must, on being a white, saved Protestant, a hard-working, family-minded and solid citizen, what is more convenient that the peripheral presence of a class of black, thinly disguised heathens, of shiftless, philandering, and irresponsible fellaheen? If the description doesn’t fid, it must be made to fit. Otherwise, no congratulations. If I must, at all costs, be right I cannot discover myself in that position unless someone else is wrong, or left.
But the debt of gratitude is seldom, if ever, recognized- just as it would hardly occur to us to thank the darkness for light, sinners for saints, or the open air for being indoors. We think of the “in” situation as more energetic and even more real than the “out,” for everyone who is not right inside is left outside by default. Yet when certain outsiders “want in” by virtue of equal energy and intelligence, they are not so much left out as pushed out. However, the lack of recognition here hoes much deeper than racial prejudice.
As you read these lines, it seems obvious that the black print is more significant, more worthy of attention, and thus somehow more real, more “the thing,” than the white paper, and the same would be true if it were white print on black paper. The Gestalt theory of perception explains that in any figure/background situation, the figure captures our attention to the extent that it is relatively small and enclosed, or that it is moving against a still background. The figure is then “the thing,” and the background is more of less ignored- even though the figure would be invisible without its contrast. Yet, in the accompanying picture of a Mexican blanket, do we have a black design on a white ground, or a white design on a black? And what about a zebra? Does it remind you of a yellow horse with black stripes, or a black horse with yellow stripes?
In the case of printed words on a page, it is clear that the words and not the page are what one is supposed to notice. But when two contrasting colors are equally distributed we seem to have a choice. On the other hand, what about stars in space? Although our modern common-sense view is that the stars are “the things,” and space just inert nothingness, some of the ancients saw the sky as a firmament pierced with apertures into the light of heaven, and for a long time now astrophysicists have considered space as having “properties,” such as curvature and expansion. Furthermore, the nuclear exploration of solids suggests that even a rock contains far more space than “matter,” while “matter” itself seems to dissolve more and more into energy patterns. Suppose, for example, that space is in the same sort of relation to solids as the diaphragm of a loudspeaker to the various sounds which it produces. We attend to the sounds as such, hearing voices, instruments, or footsteps, ignoring their common source and background- the vibration of the diaphragm, which is, in this instance, the active principle, translating electrical impulses into sound. Though one must be careful of analogizing too much in these matters, I am convinced that switching attention back and forth from figure to ground, regarding each in turn as “the thing,” is a fruitful heuristic method, especially if one wants to understand the relation of contexts to individual events, of environmental processes to organisms, and of fields of force to the patterns which the contain. L. von Bertalanffy, in his “systems theory” of biology, has argued very strongly that every biological process must be understood both by microscopic analysis and in context with the physical situation in which it occurs. This should, perhaps, be obvious but scientific method has hitherto been overbalanced toward the analytic approach to nature.
When we consider energy itself, the mutual interdependence of positive and negative, of “white” ons and “black” offs, is still more obvious because all energy is a vibration or pulsation, or a propagation of waves. Unless plus and minus, on and off, wave-crest and wave-trough alternate, there simply is no energy. It is therefore tempting to assume that all negative aspects of the universe imply and involve the positive, and vice-versa, in such a way that the notion of final and absolute blackness is as absurd as its opposite. But when the white/positive is seen as “the real thing” there is always the fear that light and life may at last be overcome by darkness and death. However, the notion of plus and minus as generating one another in an eternal rhythm is far less a strain on my credulity and imagination than the idea of a brief and mysterious firing of energy occurring once, and once only, in the black waste of the void.
But the assumption that the black or negative aspect of he world is as essential to life as the white or positive is against the common-sense of Western man. He believes, in general, that life is, and should be, a relentless effort of mind and muscle against all forces of decay, dissolution, and death. “Fight the good fight with all thy might.” “Accentuate the positive.” Life is therefore seen as an intrusion into the dark emptiness of space- a darkness with which light has nothing in common, and which will engulf it forever if effort and total vigilance are not maintained. In one sense, this is a philosophy of nihilism in that it sees darkness and non-being as the truly basic and enduring reality- against which life is a magnificent though ultimately futile gesture. Unless, of course, there is some kind of God who exists necessarily and therefore effortlessly for all eternity. But if such a Go is not merely the dark void, which is supremely effortless, He (or It) must somehow comprise or transcend the dark/light polarity. It would then be impossible to engulf or annihilate God, for He/She would be the black/white whole with no opposition.
My own feeling is that the universe is just that sort of arrangement, and that it is not actually chopped up into a multitude of separate bits. It is an arrangement, or pattern, in which every so-called part is a function of the whole. Thus the Western attitude of being alive by virtue of being against death and darkness is not only naïve but also destructive and violent. Its major technological achievement is the equipment for destroying the planet. It knows nothing of judo, the gentle way of getting where you want to go by going along with the movements of nature, using, say, gravity as a sailor uses the wind.
Every object in this universe is falling, gravitationally, but there is no concrete floor under the system upon which it can crash! The expert in judo gets the feeling that all his actions are “falling,” and when he uses muscle he never strains. When he climbs a hill, he has the feeling that it is lifting him, for he takes it one step at a time and does not fight with it. He is never uptight because he is not afraid of the negative aspect of the world. He knows that it cannot destroy existence, because existence-energy is being/nothing, on/off, now you see it, now you don’t. And, since the world has no truly separate parts, the only final and fundamental “I” or “Self” that we have is the whole thing. The WASP attitude to the black world is, then, only a symptom of a state of consciousness which does not see the universe as a whole, which feels, quite one-sidedly, that the white design is the figure, “the thing,” the reality, and the black background the evil, the nothing, the denial of life. So, too, it feels the individual person as isolated and disconnected from that essential background which we call “the other” or the external world. As the in-group does not acknowledge its dependence on the out-group, the life inside the skin has no sensation of being one with the life outside the skin …but I have no self except everything which is happening, and it sees itself from all the different standpoints called sentient beings.
We must go to the roots of a problem and not invest too much energy fiddling with the symptoms. We shall never get whites and blacks, or Orientals and Occidentals, to unite by trying to tie the different branches of the human tree together with string. Attention must instead be shifted to the stem and the root, where, under the surface, we are one. It will take much less time.
Day by day the tragic “crisis of color” between black and white peoples (or should I say colored and discolored?) moves towards a lofty and terrifying showdown. Remote and lofty as such matters may seem (thought I would call them basic), it is always important to look into the religious and metaphysical background of social disturbances which, in this case, looms rather large. Through Christianity, and to a lesser extent Judaism, the West has inherited certain associations of ideas and symbols as unique among world religions as the are absurd. Consider these two columns:
White --- Black
Light --- Darkness
Life --- Death
Good --- Evil
God --- Devil
The avowed aim of popular Western religion is to retain column 1 and to get rid of column 2. Most other religious would transcend both. We, however, have been persuaded that the white aspect of the universe can be experienced and enjoyed without the contrast of the black.
Strictly speaking, Africans are no more black than Caucasians are white, but first the Caucasians and now the Africans have adopted “white” and “black” as proud and belligerent labels, implying an opposition cruder and more irreconcilable than greyish pink versus brown. Yet if you are proud and happy to be white, how do you know you are white? But for the existence of colored people, we would never have thought of ourselves as white, for in an all-white world being white carries no distinction, and we surely like to be “people of distinction”.
A necessary part of having an effective personality seems to be membership in some elite in-group of religion, class, or race, some sect, coterie, club, gang, or secret society. Even one’s own body looks- deceptively- like an isolated in-group of cells. But just about the most basic metaphysical principle that I know is simply that every inside involves an outside, and every outside an inside. They are different, yes, but quite inseparable. The only exceptions to this rule are such topological gimmicks as the Mobius strip and the Klein bottle, though here there is neither front nor back, inside nor outside. Thus the principle is transcended, not annulled.
If then, I am to be “in,” someone else must consequently be “out,” and consequently I owe him a debt of gratitude for the realization that I am “in.” To congratulate myself, if I must, on being a white, saved Protestant, a hard-working, family-minded and solid citizen, what is more convenient that the peripheral presence of a class of black, thinly disguised heathens, of shiftless, philandering, and irresponsible fellaheen? If the description doesn’t fid, it must be made to fit. Otherwise, no congratulations. If I must, at all costs, be right I cannot discover myself in that position unless someone else is wrong, or left.
But the debt of gratitude is seldom, if ever, recognized- just as it would hardly occur to us to thank the darkness for light, sinners for saints, or the open air for being indoors. We think of the “in” situation as more energetic and even more real than the “out,” for everyone who is not right inside is left outside by default. Yet when certain outsiders “want in” by virtue of equal energy and intelligence, they are not so much left out as pushed out. However, the lack of recognition here hoes much deeper than racial prejudice.
As you read these lines, it seems obvious that the black print is more significant, more worthy of attention, and thus somehow more real, more “the thing,” than the white paper, and the same would be true if it were white print on black paper. The Gestalt theory of perception explains that in any figure/background situation, the figure captures our attention to the extent that it is relatively small and enclosed, or that it is moving against a still background. The figure is then “the thing,” and the background is more of less ignored- even though the figure would be invisible without its contrast. Yet, in the accompanying picture of a Mexican blanket, do we have a black design on a white ground, or a white design on a black? And what about a zebra? Does it remind you of a yellow horse with black stripes, or a black horse with yellow stripes?
In the case of printed words on a page, it is clear that the words and not the page are what one is supposed to notice. But when two contrasting colors are equally distributed we seem to have a choice. On the other hand, what about stars in space? Although our modern common-sense view is that the stars are “the things,” and space just inert nothingness, some of the ancients saw the sky as a firmament pierced with apertures into the light of heaven, and for a long time now astrophysicists have considered space as having “properties,” such as curvature and expansion. Furthermore, the nuclear exploration of solids suggests that even a rock contains far more space than “matter,” while “matter” itself seems to dissolve more and more into energy patterns. Suppose, for example, that space is in the same sort of relation to solids as the diaphragm of a loudspeaker to the various sounds which it produces. We attend to the sounds as such, hearing voices, instruments, or footsteps, ignoring their common source and background- the vibration of the diaphragm, which is, in this instance, the active principle, translating electrical impulses into sound. Though one must be careful of analogizing too much in these matters, I am convinced that switching attention back and forth from figure to ground, regarding each in turn as “the thing,” is a fruitful heuristic method, especially if one wants to understand the relation of contexts to individual events, of environmental processes to organisms, and of fields of force to the patterns which the contain. L. von Bertalanffy, in his “systems theory” of biology, has argued very strongly that every biological process must be understood both by microscopic analysis and in context with the physical situation in which it occurs. This should, perhaps, be obvious but scientific method has hitherto been overbalanced toward the analytic approach to nature.
When we consider energy itself, the mutual interdependence of positive and negative, of “white” ons and “black” offs, is still more obvious because all energy is a vibration or pulsation, or a propagation of waves. Unless plus and minus, on and off, wave-crest and wave-trough alternate, there simply is no energy. It is therefore tempting to assume that all negative aspects of the universe imply and involve the positive, and vice-versa, in such a way that the notion of final and absolute blackness is as absurd as its opposite. But when the white/positive is seen as “the real thing” there is always the fear that light and life may at last be overcome by darkness and death. However, the notion of plus and minus as generating one another in an eternal rhythm is far less a strain on my credulity and imagination than the idea of a brief and mysterious firing of energy occurring once, and once only, in the black waste of the void.
But the assumption that the black or negative aspect of he world is as essential to life as the white or positive is against the common-sense of Western man. He believes, in general, that life is, and should be, a relentless effort of mind and muscle against all forces of decay, dissolution, and death. “Fight the good fight with all thy might.” “Accentuate the positive.” Life is therefore seen as an intrusion into the dark emptiness of space- a darkness with which light has nothing in common, and which will engulf it forever if effort and total vigilance are not maintained. In one sense, this is a philosophy of nihilism in that it sees darkness and non-being as the truly basic and enduring reality- against which life is a magnificent though ultimately futile gesture. Unless, of course, there is some kind of God who exists necessarily and therefore effortlessly for all eternity. But if such a Go is not merely the dark void, which is supremely effortless, He (or It) must somehow comprise or transcend the dark/light polarity. It would then be impossible to engulf or annihilate God, for He/She would be the black/white whole with no opposition.
My own feeling is that the universe is just that sort of arrangement, and that it is not actually chopped up into a multitude of separate bits. It is an arrangement, or pattern, in which every so-called part is a function of the whole. Thus the Western attitude of being alive by virtue of being against death and darkness is not only naïve but also destructive and violent. Its major technological achievement is the equipment for destroying the planet. It knows nothing of judo, the gentle way of getting where you want to go by going along with the movements of nature, using, say, gravity as a sailor uses the wind.
Every object in this universe is falling, gravitationally, but there is no concrete floor under the system upon which it can crash! The expert in judo gets the feeling that all his actions are “falling,” and when he uses muscle he never strains. When he climbs a hill, he has the feeling that it is lifting him, for he takes it one step at a time and does not fight with it. He is never uptight because he is not afraid of the negative aspect of the world. He knows that it cannot destroy existence, because existence-energy is being/nothing, on/off, now you see it, now you don’t. And, since the world has no truly separate parts, the only final and fundamental “I” or “Self” that we have is the whole thing. The WASP attitude to the black world is, then, only a symptom of a state of consciousness which does not see the universe as a whole, which feels, quite one-sidedly, that the white design is the figure, “the thing,” the reality, and the black background the evil, the nothing, the denial of life. So, too, it feels the individual person as isolated and disconnected from that essential background which we call “the other” or the external world. As the in-group does not acknowledge its dependence on the out-group, the life inside the skin has no sensation of being one with the life outside the skin …but I have no self except everything which is happening, and it sees itself from all the different standpoints called sentient beings.
We must go to the roots of a problem and not invest too much energy fiddling with the symptoms. We shall never get whites and blacks, or Orientals and Occidentals, to unite by trying to tie the different branches of the human tree together with string. Attention must instead be shifted to the stem and the root, where, under the surface, we are one. It will take much less time.
Wednesday, January 13, 2016
Watts on Ecstasy
Ecstasy is beyond pleasure. Ordinarily, one thinks of the rainbow spectrum of light as a band having red at one end and violet at the other, thus not seeing that violet is the mixture of red and blue. The spectrum could therefore be displayed as a ring of concentric circles instead of a band, but its eye-striking central circle would be where pale, bright yellow comes nearest to white light. This would represent ecstasy. But it can be approached in two ways, starting from violet: through the blues and greens of pleasure or the reds and oranges of pain. This explains why ecstasy can be achieved in battle, by ascetic self-torture, and through the many variations of sadomasochistic sexuality. This we call the left-hand, or negative approach. The right-hand, or positive, approach is through activities that are loving and life-affirming. Since both approaches reach the same point, it must be noted that ecstasy is always a pleasure/pain experience, as when one weeps for joy or as when there is a certain hurt in intense sexual orgasm.
Pure ecstasy cannot, therefore, be long endured, for, as the bible says, "No man can see God and live." But frequent plunges into ecstasy transform one's normal consciousness. The everyday world becomes luminous and transparent. The chronic neuromuscular tension against the world disappears, and thus one loses the sensation of carrying one's body around like a load. You feel light, almost weightless, realizing that you are one with a planet that is just falling at ease through space. It's something like the happy, released, energetic feeling one gets after a splendid experience of love-making in the middle of the day.
-Alan Watts, "Cloud-hidden, Whereabouts Unknown"
Pure ecstasy cannot, therefore, be long endured, for, as the bible says, "No man can see God and live." But frequent plunges into ecstasy transform one's normal consciousness. The everyday world becomes luminous and transparent. The chronic neuromuscular tension against the world disappears, and thus one loses the sensation of carrying one's body around like a load. You feel light, almost weightless, realizing that you are one with a planet that is just falling at ease through space. It's something like the happy, released, energetic feeling one gets after a splendid experience of love-making in the middle of the day.
-Alan Watts, "Cloud-hidden, Whereabouts Unknown"
Monday, January 11, 2016
Joanna Newsom
This morning, it is Joanna Newsom that has stolen my heart. She speaks to the deepest part of me, though I have maintained that that part cannot be spoken of or to, she does an impressive job of it. The first two verses are from "Good Intentions Paving Company", and following that is the entirety of the song "On a Good Day"
And I been 'fessing double fast
Addressing questions nobody asked
I'll get this joy off of my chest at last
And I will love you 'til the noise has long since passed
And in our quiet hour
I feel I see everything
And am in love with the hook
Upon which everyone hangs
----------------------------
Hey hey hey the end is near
On a good day you can see the end from here
But I won't turn back now though the way is clear
I will stay for the remainder
I saw a life and I called it mine
I saw it drawn so sweet and fine
And I had begun to fill in all the lines
Right down to what we'd name her
Our nature does not change by will
In the Winter 'round the ruined mill
The creek is lying flat and still
It is water though it's frozen
So, across the years and miles and through
On a good day you can feel my love for you
Will you leave me be so that we can stay true
To the path that you have chosen?
And I been 'fessing double fast
Addressing questions nobody asked
I'll get this joy off of my chest at last
And I will love you 'til the noise has long since passed
And in our quiet hour
I feel I see everything
And am in love with the hook
Upon which everyone hangs
----------------------------
Hey hey hey the end is near
On a good day you can see the end from here
But I won't turn back now though the way is clear
I will stay for the remainder
I saw a life and I called it mine
I saw it drawn so sweet and fine
And I had begun to fill in all the lines
Right down to what we'd name her
Our nature does not change by will
In the Winter 'round the ruined mill
The creek is lying flat and still
It is water though it's frozen
So, across the years and miles and through
On a good day you can feel my love for you
Will you leave me be so that we can stay true
To the path that you have chosen?
Wednesday, January 6, 2016
Doubt
In order to be able to give people the benefit of the doubt, it is first necessary to cultivate the ability to doubt your own assumptions about the other's motivations.
SW on multiple readings:
Justice. To be ever ready to admit that another person is something quite different from what we read when he is there (or when we think about him). Or rather, to read in him that he is certainly something different, perhaps something completely different, from from what we read in him.
Every being cries out silently to be read differently.
In the case of evil, as in that of dreams, there are not multiple readings. Hence the simplicity of criminals.
Charity and injustice can only be defined by readings, and thus no definition fits them. The miracle of the good thief was not that he thought of God, but that he recognized God in his neighbour. Peter, before the cock crew, no longer recognized God in Christ.
Others are slain for the sake of false prophets in whom they mistakenly read God.
Who can flatter himself that he will read aright?
We can be unjust through the will to offend justice or through a wrong reading of justice—but the second is nearly always the case.
We read, but also we are read by, others.
Interferences in these readings: Forcing someone to read himself as we read him (slavery). Forcing others to read us as we read ourselves (con- quest). A mechanical process. More often than not a dialogue between deaf people.
Public opinion is a very strong cause. People read in the story of Joan of Arc what contemporary public opinion dictates. But it has been uncertain. And Christ . . .
In fictitious moral problems, calumny plays no part.
What hope is there for innocence if it is not recognized?
SW on multiple readings:
Justice. To be ever ready to admit that another person is something quite different from what we read when he is there (or when we think about him). Or rather, to read in him that he is certainly something different, perhaps something completely different, from from what we read in him.
Every being cries out silently to be read differently.
In the case of evil, as in that of dreams, there are not multiple readings. Hence the simplicity of criminals.
Charity and injustice can only be defined by readings, and thus no definition fits them. The miracle of the good thief was not that he thought of God, but that he recognized God in his neighbour. Peter, before the cock crew, no longer recognized God in Christ.
Others are slain for the sake of false prophets in whom they mistakenly read God.
Who can flatter himself that he will read aright?
We can be unjust through the will to offend justice or through a wrong reading of justice—but the second is nearly always the case.
We read, but also we are read by, others.
Interferences in these readings: Forcing someone to read himself as we read him (slavery). Forcing others to read us as we read ourselves (con- quest). A mechanical process. More often than not a dialogue between deaf people.
Public opinion is a very strong cause. People read in the story of Joan of Arc what contemporary public opinion dictates. But it has been uncertain. And Christ . . .
In fictitious moral problems, calumny plays no part.
What hope is there for innocence if it is not recognized?
Beauty
"The beautiful is a carnal attraction which keeps us at a distance and implies a renunciation. This includes the renunciation of that which is most deep-seated, the imagination. We want to eat all the other objects of desire. The beautiful is that which we desire without wishing to eat it. We desire that it should be. "
SW
SW
potential
Is it not sin that I should fail to notice what I am capable of?
Or is failing to notice what I am capable of an inescapable part of life?
Or is failing to notice what I am capable of an inescapable part of life?
Propelled into dark, into light.
Exhilarate--->
Ex hilar--->
Former Spinning
"God cuts the thread"
God is the thread.
God cuts itself.
I cut myself.
And I return.
Cut and run.
cut and return.
It's there underneath
The strangest dreams
where you are me
and I am seeing
a Golden Thread
on everything...
This is finally happening.
What is "former" is "The Former". We are created by what we have experienced. And we are created anew each moment.
You are it. I am it. It is nothing to be chased after.
"We should not take one step, even in the direction of what is good, beyond that to which we are irresistibly impelled by God, and this applies to action, word, and thought.
But we should be willing to go anywhere under God's impulsion, even to the farthest limit (the cross). To be willing to go as far as possible is to pray to be impelled, but without knowing whither."
-Simone Weil
Ex hilar--->
Former Spinning
"God cuts the thread"
God is the thread.
God cuts itself.
I cut myself.
And I return.
Cut and run.
cut and return.
It's there underneath
The strangest dreams
where you are me
and I am seeing
a Golden Thread
on everything...
This is finally happening.
What is "former" is "The Former". We are created by what we have experienced. And we are created anew each moment.
You are it. I am it. It is nothing to be chased after.
"We should not take one step, even in the direction of what is good, beyond that to which we are irresistibly impelled by God, and this applies to action, word, and thought.
But we should be willing to go anywhere under God's impulsion, even to the farthest limit (the cross). To be willing to go as far as possible is to pray to be impelled, but without knowing whither."
-Simone Weil
Simple needs
The question of "just what exactly is necessary?" has returned to me many times, but I've never known quite how to answer it. As I advance in this journey of trying to figure myself out (which is different from but related to knowing myself), I have found much comfort and good sensibility in the writings of 20th century Christian philosopher/mystic Simone Weil. I don't always agree with all of her perspectives, but she thought deeply about things, and for that, she was supremely rewarded (I imagine). I'll quote her thoughts on necessity.
"There are cases where a thing is necessary from the mere fact that it is possible. Thus to eat when we are hungry, to give a wounded man, dying of thirst, something to drink when there is water quite near. Neither a ruffian nor a saint would refrain from doing so.
"By analogy, we have to discern the cases in which, although it would not appear so clearly at first sight, the possibility implies a necessity, we must act in these cases and not others."
"We should do only those righteous actions which we cannot stop ourselves from doing, which we are unable not to do, but, through well directed attention, we should always keep on increasing the number of those which we are unable not to do."
"In contemplation, the right relationship with God is love, in action it is slavery. This distinction must be kept. We must act as becomes a slave while contemplating with love...."
"There are cases where a thing is necessary from the mere fact that it is possible. Thus to eat when we are hungry, to give a wounded man, dying of thirst, something to drink when there is water quite near. Neither a ruffian nor a saint would refrain from doing so.
"By analogy, we have to discern the cases in which, although it would not appear so clearly at first sight, the possibility implies a necessity, we must act in these cases and not others."
"We should do only those righteous actions which we cannot stop ourselves from doing, which we are unable not to do, but, through well directed attention, we should always keep on increasing the number of those which we are unable not to do."
"In contemplation, the right relationship with God is love, in action it is slavery. This distinction must be kept. We must act as becomes a slave while contemplating with love...."
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)