optimisms in progress (!)
personal identity is the enemy of personal progress.
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we are already responsible for ourselves long before we are able/allowed to take responsibility for ourselves.
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"progress" (of the (hegelian?) historical variety) is defined meaningfully only in hindsight. the work that is worth doing now always appears as a catching-up, as (perhaps) repaying a debt or mending a wound--as a healing of damage-already-done.
this is because what is necessary now is always what will-have-already-been necessary before, due to some prior event, but which (because of the very nature of the event) could not possibly have been foreseen. this is, if it is, why guilt is the "original" state of human existents. (guilt being that SNAP! of significance, coupled with realization of personal responsibility, that (by definition) always-only happens after-the-fact.)
the problem with realizing this may come down to a simple question of humility. how to keep from wanting to be the one who sees, the one who foresees? or, rather, from letting the desire to have foreseen from interfering with not-having-foreseen, i.e., with being (psychologically) prepared for hindsight and the (guilty) responsibility to act that inevitably accompanies it? how to prepare for not-having-been-prepared?
perhaps it is a cliche. but the question is, perhaps, how to (ancticipate, prepare for) expect the unexpected (without robbing it of its properly surprising unexpectability)?
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we are already responsible for ourselves long before we are able/allowed to take responsibility for ourselves.
-----
"progress" (of the (hegelian?) historical variety) is defined meaningfully only in hindsight. the work that is worth doing now always appears as a catching-up, as (perhaps) repaying a debt or mending a wound--as a healing of damage-already-done.
this is because what is necessary now is always what will-have-already-been necessary before, due to some prior event, but which (because of the very nature of the event) could not possibly have been foreseen. this is, if it is, why guilt is the "original" state of human existents. (guilt being that SNAP! of significance, coupled with realization of personal responsibility, that (by definition) always-only happens after-the-fact.)
the problem with realizing this may come down to a simple question of humility. how to keep from wanting to be the one who sees, the one who foresees? or, rather, from letting the desire to have foreseen from interfering with not-having-foreseen, i.e., with being (psychologically) prepared for hindsight and the (guilty) responsibility to act that inevitably accompanies it? how to prepare for not-having-been-prepared?
perhaps it is a cliche. but the question is, perhaps, how to (ancticipate, prepare for) expect the unexpected (without robbing it of its properly surprising unexpectability)?