What are we?
Life, when you look at it dispassionately, can be a terrible thing. Not withstanding the various pains of disease, injury, trauma, emotional losses and finally, inevitably, death, the everyday processes and performances for the vast majority of us are dour, repetitive and uninspiring.
Most of us trawl through this morass knowing that it will not get better, knowing there is no other option and well aware that, except for the precious few, there is just another dull, repetitive tomorrow.
We reward those that convince us to forget for a few moments with riches and largesse beyond our ability to comprehend - sportsmen, actors, models and the like - yet we forget that they do relatively little. The emancipation lies within us all: we free ourselves when we find joy, happiness, love, friendship, humour.... whether through them or elsewhere.
So, given that we have the means to free ourselves - even if only briefly - why do we consent to remain trapped within the tedium? The world has been building up the myths of society for hundreds, thousands of years, and the few - the precious few - that can influence the situation easily would like to keep us that way, in order to remain in their privelege.
It is this ennui that divides man from beast, that draws a line between sentient and otherwise - not merely boredom, but the understanding that the structure could be different, that there are better possibilities. Animals have memory, but we have imagination to know that tomorrow is coming.
Imagination, at its core, has the property of creation - it is the conclusion without concept or precept, spontaneous generation of thought, which gives rise to an understanding of purely conceptual ideas. A dog may understand a list of poor behaviours, but does not intrinsically comprehend 'bad' however; it simply learns to associate undesirable acts - undesirable to its owner - with punishment, and therefore desists. Man, on the other hand, can empathise, can sympathise, and can predict a given response judging an action from an arbitrary point of view. This dispassionate perspective, this idea of 'justice' is the benchmark - that which can look at its own situation and decry 'this is not fair' is sentient, and that which cannot, is not.
Given that, then, it is this tedious life that reveals our nature, should we not accept it? Sentient nature is revealed not just in despair, but in all abstracts - Justice, honour and equality, perhaps, but art, creativity, hope... Sentience should not be a consolation to be driven to, but a nature to be held up to the light and admired for the wonder it is.
Most of us trawl through this morass knowing that it will not get better, knowing there is no other option and well aware that, except for the precious few, there is just another dull, repetitive tomorrow.
We reward those that convince us to forget for a few moments with riches and largesse beyond our ability to comprehend - sportsmen, actors, models and the like - yet we forget that they do relatively little. The emancipation lies within us all: we free ourselves when we find joy, happiness, love, friendship, humour.... whether through them or elsewhere.
So, given that we have the means to free ourselves - even if only briefly - why do we consent to remain trapped within the tedium? The world has been building up the myths of society for hundreds, thousands of years, and the few - the precious few - that can influence the situation easily would like to keep us that way, in order to remain in their privelege.
It is this ennui that divides man from beast, that draws a line between sentient and otherwise - not merely boredom, but the understanding that the structure could be different, that there are better possibilities. Animals have memory, but we have imagination to know that tomorrow is coming.
Imagination, at its core, has the property of creation - it is the conclusion without concept or precept, spontaneous generation of thought, which gives rise to an understanding of purely conceptual ideas. A dog may understand a list of poor behaviours, but does not intrinsically comprehend 'bad' however; it simply learns to associate undesirable acts - undesirable to its owner - with punishment, and therefore desists. Man, on the other hand, can empathise, can sympathise, and can predict a given response judging an action from an arbitrary point of view. This dispassionate perspective, this idea of 'justice' is the benchmark - that which can look at its own situation and decry 'this is not fair' is sentient, and that which cannot, is not.
Given that, then, it is this tedious life that reveals our nature, should we not accept it? Sentient nature is revealed not just in despair, but in all abstracts - Justice, honour and equality, perhaps, but art, creativity, hope... Sentience should not be a consolation to be driven to, but a nature to be held up to the light and admired for the wonder it is.
posted by Moghal at
12:42 PM
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