Jury Duty
Today I received a summons to be on a Grand Jury. Now, what they do, if you weren't already aware, is rather than actually decide the case in court, the Grand Jury decides instead whether or not the evidence is sufficient in a case to even bring things to that point. What struck me here was that I've been doing this personally for years, and, incidentally, I can think of almost no grounds to ever bring a thing to trial. But this is only speaking of personal sovereignty. Certainly the law is the law... and that's somewhat of a shame.
Life, and indeed everything human, is strange. I find myself repeating this these days, and have even ventured to write it down on my pants. So far as mantras go, I feel I could do worse; for this sort of maxim not only validates anything I do, but also exonerates everybody else. It's a strange combination of laughter and resignation, although one might argue that that resignation is always inherent in laughter.
This is likely the last livejournal entry I'll ever write. For the record, this is the 700th one I've written since December of 2003. 700 things to say. 700 mistakes. 700 outpourings of a human heart. Looking back, what Dostoevski's saint says holds true: "It's the great mystery of human life that old grief passes gradually into quiet tender joy.". And so, with no small amount of inward humility, I look back upon whatever sort of body of work this whole thing constitutes.
I refuse to be a slave anymore, either to my ego, which as of a week ago, I have been taking serious pains to mortify as often as possible, or to Babylon. Perhaps I sound trite now, but what of it? No man may serve two masters (this is also written on my pants). This mortification of the ego, this monster I was forced to create, this is what makes me so serene just now. This is humble. This is well and good. More importantly, this is progress.
Speaking of progress: twenty four years. Twenty four silly, incoherent, and perhaps misused years. But this depends on who you ask.
Resolution is strange, and the discovery of life that one is not able to be anything, but, rather, only what they are, is the sort of knowledge that does not translate itself immediately into action. Indeed, this problem of the translation of knowledge into action is a great one, and only itself possible in cases wherein said thought truly reflects what we are. Thus Kierkegaard perhaps spoke truly, when he said that the sober man strolls across the square openly, while the drunkard slinks along by the building, head lowered in a prudent brand of shame.
Experience also would lead me to believe he is correct in his assertion that freedom is only possible in a true sense when in line with duty. What is duty though? It is precisely what I stated above: to act in accordance with thyself. Could anything be a duty to us personally if it did not thoroughly reflect the goals of our deepest self? Just so, could anything be a freedom that did not fall in line with the wishes of this same deepest self? Were we faced with obligations out of line with our innermost being (every day, for most everybody, for instance), wouldn't they seem unbearably tyrannical?
Love, incidentally is a universal duty, and verily, I have undeniably observed love in all beings; good and evil alike. Love, as quite possibly, the most human quality, is therefore the one which, in most human society, we are most horribly ashamed of. Here lies a mystery, which, at bottom perhaps, negates all coolness. This thing of Love, the ultimate humanity, can it be that our shame lies in the fact that to truly call all people brothers and sisters is to mention too great of a commonality between each individual human? But, verily, this too is nonsense and horrible vanity. Is it more meaningful and worthwhile to climb a mountain, or to be dropped at the peak by helicopter? Love is the earth itself; the base upon which all is built, and nobody ought to be ashamed of having their feet on the ground before ascending the steps of the Temple. We are not children, and the floor is not hot lava that one avoids by hopping between pieces of furniture. To act in such a way is a brand of folly, surely, although it must be mentioned that we all are liable to act like children in society, and certainly such games are generally agreeable. Just so, perhaps there is a greater novelty and gain to be had in follies that involve rolling about in the dirt, eh?
A course of action in one's life, looked at from a certain point of view, is little more than the solidification of an extended plan of follies. Enough though! If I must be nothing, fair enough. Being nothing, I find myself happy. Money has hitherto only given me cause for illness. A salary is a horrible thing to make. For myself, poverty is a matter of health.
This brings me back to Justice (capital J). Nietzsche (of course he had to come up in the last Livejournal I post, it's like a cast reunion in this bitch.), in his Zarathustra, wrote a long series of chapters entitled "On the Old and New Tablets", wherein he goes to great lengths to discuss the arbitrary nature of codes of laws that the people of many lands hold. What is implicit here is the idea of Justice as a personal quality and therefore necessarily perverted once written down.
Perhaps this isn't novel to make apparent, but, Justice is not a matter of laws, but a universal principle. It is the aspect of life that binds us to cause and effect. In Plato, it is pointed out that without Justice, even a band of robbers could not exist, for isn't there a bit of Justice necessary for these men to hold together in fellowship? Without Justice, would they not simply fall upon each others throats, like a pack of wild dogs? This is why there is Justice, given certain circumstances, in any and every act. Yes, even in murder, there is perhaps a situation wherein this ultimate act of violence is admissible. Justice, like Love, is not limited to the side of Good, Evil, Law, or Chaos.
Each individual brand of Justice is it's own organism, with it's own power. Like the branches and vines of a great tree, these concepts of a greater whole are in continual struggle to climb over one-another, ever upward towards the sun. But there are common roots to these tendrils no less: these struggles with the organism against itself all the action of a greater system, utilizing them for a higher purpose than the parts involved are aware of. So too of Love, for who among you can attest to not noticing loves of a hundred varieties? Ah, but who among you are noble enough to see the virtue in the love of the wealthy man for his wealth? Or of the rapist for the love of his crime? Verily, such loves are often opaque, and many a person dares not reach in their hand for fear of what may be found in the depths.
Here, however, a question of economics is raised. Value is directly related to scarcity and utility. That said, a rare commodity with low usefulness is optimally able to fill a niche. But if there is no niche, alas! This holds true for all things, although the above examples of Love and Justice come to mind particularly. Also prominent in my thoughts is the universal principle of suffering, which, perhaps, is a meta-sort of principle, although a strictly subjective one, in the same way joy is. Love and Justice are active and observable in all the manifestations of reality; suffering and joy are the conscious modes of experiencing these more objective concepts. And so, perhaps more important than debates about the nature of Love, Justice, and Truth, are the ones about the human experiences of suffering and joy.
All of this may lie in simple aesthetics, but what of it? Can it not be said the most desirable aesthetic is one of rare and surpassing beauty, from the inside out? Is it not one wherein the object perceived, upon first impression, is at once understood, it's flaws forgiven as necessary for the greater effect, it's communication of some aspect of the human sphere completely illuminated, and all the while whilst revealing to us the splendor of whatever in it is of pure, divine provenance? I digress, however. There are degrees of beauty, and a perfect aesthetic is blind hope and an intoxicating dream.
Over what does one suffer? Over what does one become joyful? These are the true questions to root out value. This is misleading though. It is tempting to think here that the common sorts of maladies and happiness are somehow meaningless in this scheme, but oh, no, quite the contrary, for such an ocean of feelings resulting from the processes of common forms of existence are essential to the existence of the more rare brand of feeling, and vice-versa. More specific than a degree of feeling, suffering and joy are degrees of ecstasy.
Thus, due to the inevitable nature of being affected by these universal things, such as: Love, Justice, etc, it therefore follows that the tree shall be known according to it's fruit, and the fruit shall be weighed in the marketplace.
Some days I am thoroughly saddened by the extent to which my soul belongs to this culture of the west, and how I cannot help but know that my duty is to this tradition, and not that of the east. Happily, however, I am comforted by the thought that these distinctions of east and west are everyday disappearing.
It's hard for me to say exactly what it is I intend to do with this life of mine, but I know what I can't do anymore, and this is what is important. Every -ism I've ever explored has made me ill. Verily, I cannot help but suspect that every -ism in the world is a building block of the Tower of Babel. May they live to complete it! For, oh, how beautiful it shall be to see it reduced to dust.
How free I feel! How in love with everything! How resolved! Oh, what a pile of ashes I have; how beautiful it, and every new horizon is. 'To be', oh unhappy Hamlet. Most certainly, 'to be'! Life once again, and God willing, I shall no longer curse, but bless the nostalgic mementos I couldn't bring myself to destroy; at the least they shall serve to remind me of the importance of loving properly, and damn my ego.
How absurd! But wouldn't it really be better for everyone to ignore all this? Perhaps the correct reaction to everything I do is to act like that typically American juror in 12 Angry Men who, when confronted with a true feeling of Justice walks away, causing Henry Fonda to so empathetically declare to the one who ventured to confront: "He can't hear you. He never will. Sit down."
I'm raving just now, drunk on new wine, and so, regardless of how horribly stupid I may sound, I still proclaim: Those who have ears! Let them hear! If I look ridiculous, so much the better. I should rather be Diogenes than Alexander, for a light in search of Truth is, perhaps, more to be feared than an army of a million soldiers. And so I finish this whole thing with the quote Camus used to summarize the fate of Sisyphus, and indeed, all absurd "heroes":
"Despite so many ordeals, my advanced age and the nobility of my soul make me conclude that all is well."
~Oedipus
Life, and indeed everything human, is strange. I find myself repeating this these days, and have even ventured to write it down on my pants. So far as mantras go, I feel I could do worse; for this sort of maxim not only validates anything I do, but also exonerates everybody else. It's a strange combination of laughter and resignation, although one might argue that that resignation is always inherent in laughter.
This is likely the last livejournal entry I'll ever write. For the record, this is the 700th one I've written since December of 2003. 700 things to say. 700 mistakes. 700 outpourings of a human heart. Looking back, what Dostoevski's saint says holds true: "It's the great mystery of human life that old grief passes gradually into quiet tender joy.". And so, with no small amount of inward humility, I look back upon whatever sort of body of work this whole thing constitutes.
I refuse to be a slave anymore, either to my ego, which as of a week ago, I have been taking serious pains to mortify as often as possible, or to Babylon. Perhaps I sound trite now, but what of it? No man may serve two masters (this is also written on my pants). This mortification of the ego, this monster I was forced to create, this is what makes me so serene just now. This is humble. This is well and good. More importantly, this is progress.
Speaking of progress: twenty four years. Twenty four silly, incoherent, and perhaps misused years. But this depends on who you ask.
Resolution is strange, and the discovery of life that one is not able to be anything, but, rather, only what they are, is the sort of knowledge that does not translate itself immediately into action. Indeed, this problem of the translation of knowledge into action is a great one, and only itself possible in cases wherein said thought truly reflects what we are. Thus Kierkegaard perhaps spoke truly, when he said that the sober man strolls across the square openly, while the drunkard slinks along by the building, head lowered in a prudent brand of shame.
Experience also would lead me to believe he is correct in his assertion that freedom is only possible in a true sense when in line with duty. What is duty though? It is precisely what I stated above: to act in accordance with thyself. Could anything be a duty to us personally if it did not thoroughly reflect the goals of our deepest self? Just so, could anything be a freedom that did not fall in line with the wishes of this same deepest self? Were we faced with obligations out of line with our innermost being (every day, for most everybody, for instance), wouldn't they seem unbearably tyrannical?
Love, incidentally is a universal duty, and verily, I have undeniably observed love in all beings; good and evil alike. Love, as quite possibly, the most human quality, is therefore the one which, in most human society, we are most horribly ashamed of. Here lies a mystery, which, at bottom perhaps, negates all coolness. This thing of Love, the ultimate humanity, can it be that our shame lies in the fact that to truly call all people brothers and sisters is to mention too great of a commonality between each individual human? But, verily, this too is nonsense and horrible vanity. Is it more meaningful and worthwhile to climb a mountain, or to be dropped at the peak by helicopter? Love is the earth itself; the base upon which all is built, and nobody ought to be ashamed of having their feet on the ground before ascending the steps of the Temple. We are not children, and the floor is not hot lava that one avoids by hopping between pieces of furniture. To act in such a way is a brand of folly, surely, although it must be mentioned that we all are liable to act like children in society, and certainly such games are generally agreeable. Just so, perhaps there is a greater novelty and gain to be had in follies that involve rolling about in the dirt, eh?
A course of action in one's life, looked at from a certain point of view, is little more than the solidification of an extended plan of follies. Enough though! If I must be nothing, fair enough. Being nothing, I find myself happy. Money has hitherto only given me cause for illness. A salary is a horrible thing to make. For myself, poverty is a matter of health.
This brings me back to Justice (capital J). Nietzsche (of course he had to come up in the last Livejournal I post, it's like a cast reunion in this bitch.), in his Zarathustra, wrote a long series of chapters entitled "On the Old and New Tablets", wherein he goes to great lengths to discuss the arbitrary nature of codes of laws that the people of many lands hold. What is implicit here is the idea of Justice as a personal quality and therefore necessarily perverted once written down.
Perhaps this isn't novel to make apparent, but, Justice is not a matter of laws, but a universal principle. It is the aspect of life that binds us to cause and effect. In Plato, it is pointed out that without Justice, even a band of robbers could not exist, for isn't there a bit of Justice necessary for these men to hold together in fellowship? Without Justice, would they not simply fall upon each others throats, like a pack of wild dogs? This is why there is Justice, given certain circumstances, in any and every act. Yes, even in murder, there is perhaps a situation wherein this ultimate act of violence is admissible. Justice, like Love, is not limited to the side of Good, Evil, Law, or Chaos.
Each individual brand of Justice is it's own organism, with it's own power. Like the branches and vines of a great tree, these concepts of a greater whole are in continual struggle to climb over one-another, ever upward towards the sun. But there are common roots to these tendrils no less: these struggles with the organism against itself all the action of a greater system, utilizing them for a higher purpose than the parts involved are aware of. So too of Love, for who among you can attest to not noticing loves of a hundred varieties? Ah, but who among you are noble enough to see the virtue in the love of the wealthy man for his wealth? Or of the rapist for the love of his crime? Verily, such loves are often opaque, and many a person dares not reach in their hand for fear of what may be found in the depths.
Here, however, a question of economics is raised. Value is directly related to scarcity and utility. That said, a rare commodity with low usefulness is optimally able to fill a niche. But if there is no niche, alas! This holds true for all things, although the above examples of Love and Justice come to mind particularly. Also prominent in my thoughts is the universal principle of suffering, which, perhaps, is a meta-sort of principle, although a strictly subjective one, in the same way joy is. Love and Justice are active and observable in all the manifestations of reality; suffering and joy are the conscious modes of experiencing these more objective concepts. And so, perhaps more important than debates about the nature of Love, Justice, and Truth, are the ones about the human experiences of suffering and joy.
All of this may lie in simple aesthetics, but what of it? Can it not be said the most desirable aesthetic is one of rare and surpassing beauty, from the inside out? Is it not one wherein the object perceived, upon first impression, is at once understood, it's flaws forgiven as necessary for the greater effect, it's communication of some aspect of the human sphere completely illuminated, and all the while whilst revealing to us the splendor of whatever in it is of pure, divine provenance? I digress, however. There are degrees of beauty, and a perfect aesthetic is blind hope and an intoxicating dream.
Over what does one suffer? Over what does one become joyful? These are the true questions to root out value. This is misleading though. It is tempting to think here that the common sorts of maladies and happiness are somehow meaningless in this scheme, but oh, no, quite the contrary, for such an ocean of feelings resulting from the processes of common forms of existence are essential to the existence of the more rare brand of feeling, and vice-versa. More specific than a degree of feeling, suffering and joy are degrees of ecstasy.
Thus, due to the inevitable nature of being affected by these universal things, such as: Love, Justice, etc, it therefore follows that the tree shall be known according to it's fruit, and the fruit shall be weighed in the marketplace.
Some days I am thoroughly saddened by the extent to which my soul belongs to this culture of the west, and how I cannot help but know that my duty is to this tradition, and not that of the east. Happily, however, I am comforted by the thought that these distinctions of east and west are everyday disappearing.
It's hard for me to say exactly what it is I intend to do with this life of mine, but I know what I can't do anymore, and this is what is important. Every -ism I've ever explored has made me ill. Verily, I cannot help but suspect that every -ism in the world is a building block of the Tower of Babel. May they live to complete it! For, oh, how beautiful it shall be to see it reduced to dust.
How free I feel! How in love with everything! How resolved! Oh, what a pile of ashes I have; how beautiful it, and every new horizon is. 'To be', oh unhappy Hamlet. Most certainly, 'to be'! Life once again, and God willing, I shall no longer curse, but bless the nostalgic mementos I couldn't bring myself to destroy; at the least they shall serve to remind me of the importance of loving properly, and damn my ego.
How absurd! But wouldn't it really be better for everyone to ignore all this? Perhaps the correct reaction to everything I do is to act like that typically American juror in 12 Angry Men who, when confronted with a true feeling of Justice walks away, causing Henry Fonda to so empathetically declare to the one who ventured to confront: "He can't hear you. He never will. Sit down."
I'm raving just now, drunk on new wine, and so, regardless of how horribly stupid I may sound, I still proclaim: Those who have ears! Let them hear! If I look ridiculous, so much the better. I should rather be Diogenes than Alexander, for a light in search of Truth is, perhaps, more to be feared than an army of a million soldiers. And so I finish this whole thing with the quote Camus used to summarize the fate of Sisyphus, and indeed, all absurd "heroes":
"Despite so many ordeals, my advanced age and the nobility of my soul make me conclude that all is well."
~Oedipus