Pulled from old website Aug 14 2007; published here Nov 30 2007
It’s Saturday afternoon, and I’m avoiding Plato while watching a friend’s house. I’m typing on a Mac for the first time, and with an entirely different keyboard. Monitors are on, and we’ll be analyzing results. If I can figure out how to get Otto here without driving or walking, he’ll be by for a visit.
Monitors are also on regarding my speech, thought patterns, and general behavior. I have to be mindful, I have to acknowledge out loud that maybe my brain isn’t the best guy for the “Philip” job right now (and I have to let go with a laugh the notion that if I can even fuck THIS job up…nah I start doing that and my next band will be called Nebula).And I know the peril of thinking about it all too much and not doing enough of it, and I catch myself doing that a lot. The biggest challenge often is remaining on the single course and not let the next interesting thing or notion that pops in my head be the thing I then focus on But it seems I can because each next thought and next idea – when I don’t have to slow the fuck down and type these exact words and explain it all – but at least this time I’m plowing forward without care to correction for the first time ever more than anything because I’m in front of this new system and it’s interesting but it doesn’t do ANYTHING the way mine does and I can’t flit and flat (?) across the keyboard and screen, fixing errors and such so I can look back and read it – BUT ANYWAY (sorry – it happens) I was explaining that the reason each subsequent spontaneous notion, iin its moment, has intrigue and possibility and an opportunity for insight if presented properly, but the more time you taker to try and craft the one idea, you have to leave two or three behind, and you’re so arbitrary – so you feel, but again YOUR BRAIN, hellew – that you’re never convinced the idea you’ve chosen is one of “the ones” and that the ones you’re letting pass by will be okay. (And they will, actually, but it’s a missed opportunity nonetheless, is it not?) So the challenge is, as always and with everyone all the time (I’ll keep on saying it, folks) choices and fears. For me, specifically, focus, consistency, and action.
But I’m drawn again to the keyboard and work to get back to the idea that drove me here. I’m still avoiding Plato. Actually, I’m not sure what it is – whether I’m choosing not to read Plato or choosing Origins of the Gods because it is speaking to me more. I suspect the latter.
– BRIEFLY: Saturday was the morning’s post, the afternoon games, eye stroll to the Hilton, jazz at the Hilton with Mike, and then we bopped (how else would you go from one jazz club to another?) over to 405 to listen to more jazz until they shut down. (“I like the idea, but no smoking in a jazz club?” – Banks) And I’m back now in front of the strange keyboard, and again on the edge of two eternities. And, as with everything it seems these days in some fashion or another, these two things congealed.
I’d read one sentence in Origins, and it reminded my why I’m drawn to this book. And I knew Plato wasn’t saying the same things. Just yet – have to be fair, still in the translator’s introduction – it could well begin to spout out its version of all the same thing
(I should catch this one, too – every now and then, as I have this little ZING! About something, I wonder whether I’m in fact the last one to know…)
BUT!!!!! Even as it was speaking to me, I had to stop after that one sentence and set the book on my lap and looked at it and said, headly, “Well, Jesus H. you didn’t have to say all that to say THAT!!”
Indeed, we have yet to begin to understand why humans are so constituted as to be bedeviled by the corrosive influences of a perceived lack of fairness in the disposition of fates. (p.48)
And I stop and I think of a different way of approaching things. As Lee Anne was willing to be a second head for me momentarily (which will segue into the congealment) on our way to Mike’s, I said to her that I felt a difference between the goal of articulation and enlightenment maybe falls a step short. It lacks application.
What can I DO with the knowledge that I’ve not yet begun to understand why humans, etc.? – I’m not in the mood for typing practice.
And maybe the idealistic questions are precisely the ones we might do well not only to pose but also strain and stress ourselves to find answers which we can apply to our future, our role on this planet, and celebrate and value life versus each tiny little ego trying to assert its own value.
If we’ve not yet begun to understand, etc. – then what have we been doing in the meantime?
We each discover at some point that fate will deal itself out without a whit towards the individual, or even the collective.
We perceive it only as a “lack of fairness” because we create the expectation of fairness. We create that expectation because we each think we’re important and worthy of being valued and being treated fairly. Since “fate” (which I must say is distinct from ‘destiny’ – all of which is not preordained. See the Time Travel Thoughts on the Abstracts Top Page) is decidedly NOT fair, this rubs against our sense of fair play. Fate holds you in no contempt, it’s just indifferent. There is an undefinable amount of beauty in the world and the world will continue to pump out its beauty regardless of whether you get hit by a bus. But because you expect fair play – because you’re so godammed amazing and wonderful and existent and all that (so you elect to tell yourself) you are challenged in attempting to resolve this beautiful indifference.
So what do you do? There’s a very good chance you may not even have had those thoughts, though your behavior is still motivated towards them. What do you DO when you keep on insisting that you are worthy of being treated fairly yet deep down know that the beautiful world that surrounds you will NOT in fact do so?
You want. It’s that simple. You want because you deserve what you want.
That’s what we’ve been doing all the time because we’ve been too reluctant to accept the contrary.
And, to testify that, as of now, this Sunday, I am NOT avoiding Plato, but still moving very slowly through it because each sentence or paragraph has a lot loaded in it. Plus they’re all written in that “why humans are so constituted…” kind of manner. Interestingly enough, as I’m still moving through the Translator’s Introduction, one nugget that made the trip worthwhile:
There seem to be to approaches to consideration of social and political issues. One, remembering the importance of order and coherence in society, stresses the need for planning and cventral authority. The other, remembering the diversity of human beings, stresses the need for a variety of institutions and a diversity of pattern. Plato was a centralist…and he had, perhaps, a touch of the ruthlessness which this kind of approach often engenders. You only have to be determined enough to realize heaven on earth to be sure of raising hell. (p.53)
Adding later:
Socrates was a conversationalist, not a lecturer.
Why do you think they’re TALKING? Why didn’t Plato and Socrates sit in little holes by themselves scribing, scribing, scribing, scribing???
It is the interaction that is missing today, in as many contexts as you’re willing to consider it. NO ONE and NO THING is telling you that you are important and to be valued and worthy, and you’re so goddamed insistent about it that you’ll define yourself in as many fashions as possible. Your everything will be your engine, you will surround yourself with that which defines you, wear it, cut it into your skin, tell all your friends over and over (“Oh, I’m like this…” you tell everyone over and over, and maybe you even have a couple “boilerplate” statements that you can trot out over and over to each new person you meet for the first time and use all of those to define you and value yourself and prove yourself worthy and give yourself allowance to do exactly what you want to do and pull your happiness out of your life as you define it and as you expect it to be which is why you’re making all that effort in the first place. You expect it, the world does not accommodate you (it is indifferent to you) so you do what you must tgo assert your importance, worth, value, existence.
And I do it, too. And we’re dead wrong.
Thanks for listening.
Philip
One Perspective 