Random Musing

Note: The following is a stream-of-consciousness free write. I make some (personally) valuable conclusions, but I don't contend that they are historical "truth." For example, I greatly simplified man's transition from a purely experiential existence to our current abstracted existence, attributing the shift to Classical Greece when in actuality it likely was not any single event and took many thousands of years.

Do I have anything to write? Do I ever have anything to write? I shall never be able to tell my story, because I can never step away from it. I am immersed—fully immersed in a way I am only beginning to understand. Maybe I am not as logical and methodical as I imagined. Maybe I am led by my heart, truly. Am I the only one who shudders in a sort of rapture at moments in life? At these moments an ecstasy flows through me. I want to cry but my rational mind does all it can to suppress what would otherwise be a social embarrassment. It is socially unacceptable to cry at your sister's soccer game, or during the wrong scene in a movie. But I don't want to cry when the hero dies, I cry in his moments of beauty. So why do I suppress this? Why is it so important that it isn't socially allowable? What could the reason be that my rational self tries to suppress that feeling, that raw emotion so strongly? It is a mystery to me, but one that having made myself aware of, my conscious self will try and make this suppression conscious and then quell it. Maybe I am one who follows heart and not rationality at my core. It's funny—to feel this battle between my cartesian and non cartesian self, and to see the sides so clearly! Maybe I am meant to lead this charge for balance between the mind and heart. Ah but if this is so then I must always follow my own heart...or must I have balance too? Two steps back to take three steps forward? Or is it nothing at all? Is all of it nothing and this all just a silly exercise? Am I just inventing all of this machinery, this system that has battles to be fought? Isn't it amazing? My mind is asking itself questions in order to identify what it needs to do? It's eliminating possibilities and finding solutions as if it were a computer. But which is me and which is the other? There really is a voice asking questions that my mind would know. Is it external to me? Why would my brain ask itself a question that it had the answer to? Then what the hell is it asking the questions? Is it just some algorithm that I must follow in order to process information or is it something else altogether?

Why do I think to myself in questions? Even while performing actions I ask myself—wow I just had a slight vision where I actually saw the struggle between the part of me that experiences things directly and the part of me asking the questions and I realized that they are both me, but that I am a sort of schizophrenic person, split into two. But while I prefer the non-rational part of myself, by choosing one or the other I am ensuring that harmony cannot be possible. Either extreme cannot exist without its other half but in choosing one or the other, you are ensuring imbalance. And a superposition of the two? That just seems like rubbish, not just to my rational self but intuitively too. The battle between my conscious and subconscious self cannot be won. All that can possibly exist is a balance between the two. Once a dichotomy is identified, it cannot go back to being singular—that is impossible, isn't it? That is why in Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, etc. the “good” never completely triumphs over evil, there can never be all good. And evil always fails because it seeks total victory over good. It can only fail at this. But the good side always seems to be on the non-Cartesian side of the battle, but perhaps that is only because we live in a Cartesian world. What if, for instance, we lived in a world that revered the subconscious self? Would Luke Skywalker be on the side of the masculine, rational self?

Orphic vs the Promethean... Not always in battle for not always have they been mutually exclusive. Before the dichotomization occurred the two existed not only in harmony, but they were not two but one. And then the fabrication of a barrier between the two created an actual barrier, and now they will always be locked in eternal conflict with only God, Buddha, Brahma, the Tao, Quetzalcoatl, Yahweh charged with holding the balance between the two. But what court is it the gods play in? Ah the mystery of life is a veil draped before our eyes. If only we could but lift the veil and take a peak! What wonders would we see? Ah but this mystery IS our subconscious, always just out of view.

Why do I love the Orphic so much more? Really it must be because I live in a Promethean world. If I had my wish and Orphic conquered over Promethean, humanity would lose its ability to survive. How else could we keep 7 billion people alive? Could we have invented language and technology if we were completely Orphic, with no ability to step back and observe the situation, for the Orphic experience of the world is a direct, unfiltered, unprocessed experience of the world. No—there must always be balance. If I lived in an Orphic world I would yearn for the Promethean. But my world is Promethean, so I yearn for the Orphic, I romanticize its history and dream of its future. Yet this world will never come—nor should it. This earth, this world, my life really is a battlefield between the two. Will I help bring the balance? What will my roll be?

Was Ancient Greece overly Orphic? And therefore the source of the Promethean uprising? How did that dichotomy occur? Things went from being just one, to all of a sudden dichotomous. After the dichotomy the world could be seen to be clearly much more feminine than masculine—maybe Heraclitus was the Emporer and Socrates was Luke. We now (we being the balancers of the Force!) demonize Socrates, Plato, and in particular, Aristotle as the inventors of the Promethean, masculine side, but perhaps they were the Rebellion? They were the heroes of their day, not the villains? Or perhaps they were the ones who invented the dichotomy in the first place and THAT is why they were villainized? In either case, that period proved pivotal because it marked humanity's separation from the rest of the world. That's the difference, that's where human rationality was born and it is that, the ability to step back and consider a situation, which truly separates us from animals. The invention of the dichotomy is indeed the banishment of man from eden (singularity), prior to then there was no battle and man was at rest. Man was forever forced to a life of unrest as long as their was not balance between masculine and feminine, his whole being always in conflict to bring back the balance. So the advent of agriculture was not evil on its own, but because it necessarily led to the invention of the dichotomy. Man now had material matters to contemplate of an abstract nature—surplus, future yields—and could think on a higher level than before.

But what if this banishment from Eden is not a curse after all, but is a necessary evil for our future growth. Perhaps Eden was the womb which we have been ejected from and mankind, in it's infancy, is going through growing pains? Maybe the dichotomy is necessary in order for us to meet our destiny. Maybe balance can be achieved and the two can become one again as humanity evolves. What if we aren't the thorn in nature's side but her golden child after all??