Talking of Which, 24.04.24
Talking of Which, 24.04.24
Rocks, Modesty, Clumsy Androids
More baubles from my secret mitten…
Yes to the End
I turned fifty this month. YES! The world is getting darker, and my body is getting weaker. YES! Flu has knocked me to my knees. YES! There are people being killed in unjust wars. Children starving. Animals dying. Forests felled. YES! Culture is dead. YES! All my loved ones will die, and sooner than I think. YES! I still have to work for money and spend pointless, spirit-crushing hours in the company of morons who openly detest me. YES! The things I own that I cherish will fall apart, decay, get broken or I’ll have to sell them to keep going. YES! Strange pain, ugly mood, troubling thought? YES! YES! YES!
Not that I like these things, that would be monstrous, not that I don’t want to do something about them, and am not working to change those of them I can… The point, the whole point, is that, ‘by the side of the everlasting why, there is a yes and a yes and a YES!’
Advert on the Tube
Talking of which…
The Rocks Are Watching
Do Not Possess Truth, Strive For Her!
Not the truth in whose possession some human being is or thinks he is, but the honest trouble he has taken to get behind the truth is what constitutes the worth of a human being. For it is not through the possession but through the search for truth that his powers expand, and in this alone consists his ever growing perfection. Possession makes tranquil, indolent, and proud.
If God held in his closed right hand all truth and in his left hand only the ever live drive for truth, albeit with the addition that I should always and evermore err, and he said to me, Choose! I should humbly grab his left hand, saying: Father, give! Pure truth is after all for you alone!
Ephraim Lessing, Rejoinder.
Lessing, in this famous and influential passage, is speaking to men, which is why truth here is a thing, not a quality. Nevertheless, if this kindles flames under your cauldron, it’s because truth in life comes not from the thing you have learnt, or earnt, but from the life you have lived for it. Great people want to live truthfully, not merely know truthful things.
This is why so much art and literature is so shallow and weightless, because there’s no life behind it, it’s just a series of clever things. And it’s why so many artists and writers, equally shallow and weightless, speak, dress, move, sit and eat without elegance, decisiveness and colour. They too are just clever things.
Clever things fear and hate strong feelings and bold actions. They wish to be left in decorous peace, not reminded that their feelings, which they are ashamed of, are suppressed. They prefer not to engage in a lively joust, withdrawing instead to a nice, safe, silent chin-stroking distance. Prod them, and they wilt, or crumble, or go running to the authorities.
April’s Aphorisms
Laws that don’t die are favoured by minds that don’t live.
Somebody must have infected Josef K., for one morning, without having presented any symptoms, he was admitted…
An orgasm without laughter is like a forest without birdsong. It’s either dead, or it’s midnight.
‘Freedom of thought’ is a contradiction in terms. It’s like saying ‘freedom of prison’. There is only freedom from thought.
When you see a tuft of chickweed pushing its way between wall and pavement, or a nettle stalk forcing its way through tarmac, remember the same is happening in the macadamised heart of modernity. The tomb world of human culture looks dead, but there are cracks…
Angels won’t bless you if you don’t look in their eyes, devils will only damn you if you do.
Great ideas do not spontaneously appear in the mind like rabbits jumping into your pocket. They must be tracked, pursued, over long, long distances, then, with a tenacious leap, captured.
My suggestion, if you don’t like people, is this; don’t be a person.
Nobody is ever going to write to you again, or like one of your social media posts, or even think about you. You are alone and abandoned forever. Lovely!
You can’t mime reality.
The mountain of wanting is infinitely high, but, as with any other mountain, it is so formed that the peak seems to be at the top of the slope one is currently labouring up. ‘I’ll get there you soon,’ thinks the wanter, but ‘there’ just turns into another dissatisfying ‘here’.
The King of the realm demands mediocrity, familiarity, security, reassurance of his pride, justification for his fears and constant stimulation. He fears freedom, he hates responsibility, he is blind to originality and he is deaf the truth. The name of the King is ‘The People’.
Modesty is the most effective form of pride.
Heaven is agony, but nobody minds. Hell is painless, but everyone is concerned.
So easy to compliment someone on what they do or say. Not so easy to complement someone on what they refrain from doing or saying. So easy to see truth and beauty, not so easy to see absence of cant and posturing. So easy to find things, not so easy to rediscover nothing.
More aphorisms in Ad Radicem, and in my cheerful little book, coming soon, The Fire Sermon.
Talking of Which…
The Fire Sermon…
My new book, a friendly guide to the unbelievable, unacceptable truth, will be released on 4th September. Advance copies are available to reviewers. As usual, getting the word out is going to be absurdly difficult, so if anyone has any ideas on how to do that, do let me know. This is my most accessible non-fiction book. The sentences are short. The typeface is big. There are cartoons.
