Yesterday afternoon you took the mower in for a tune-up and a fix, then you both headed to Panera/Chipotle for your late lunch. The last couple of days you have been corresponding with Ann, Kay’s twin. You mentioned this to Carol at lunch and how you had written to Ann’s husband, Rich, as you discovered he and his brothers lived in Minerva Park and went to Westerville High just like you did. - Amorella
I did not know him in school but we shared an old elementary/junior high friend besides the twins. I’m sure he is one or two years older than I am. I cannot believe I do not remember him or his brothers when we lived Minerva Park. We both share an affection for one of our old teacher’s though, Mrs. E.
This morning you did your dumbbell exercises. Yesterday your walk and today before lunch you are taking another walk in the park. You have your continual problem with honesty and politeness but this is something you have learned to accept because it is a part of who you are.
I am grateful for friends who can accept this shortcoming. I am thinking on Merlyn this morning – a beautifully large golden moonrise last night – much like an October moon in January. Very cool. The other day next door neighbor Tim thought he saw the owl about but I have not seen it – I like to think of it as good sign as far as Merlyn is concerned. In looking over Nikolai Tolstoy’s The Quest for Merlin I find the following lines on pages 119-120.
Many people have felt instinctively that there is something ‘special’ about the Island of Britain; that there may be something in William Blake’s claim in his Jerusalem that “All things Begin and End in Albions Ancient Druid Rocky Shore”. Describing the assembly of the Gaulish Druids at their Sacred Centre in the territory of the Carnutes, Julius Caesar noted that:
‘It is believed that their philosophy (disciplina) was discovered in Britain and transferred thence to Gaul; and today those who wish to study the subject more deeply travel, as a rule, to Britain to learn it.’
A similar belief that the mantic arts originated in Britain is expressed also in the ancient Irish epic tale, Tain Bo Cuailnge. There Queen Medb of Connacht encounters a prophetess, Fedelm, who informs her that she has been to Britain to acquire her prophetic skills. This and other evidence has given rise to speculation that Druidism was adopted by the Celts from pre-Celtic inhabitants of Britain. Pliny noted in the first century A.D. that Britain was given over to magical ceremonies as was no other province in the Empire, and more than five centuries later Gildas recorded a tradition that idols proliferated in pre-Christian Britain, ‘almost surpassing those of Egypt in number.’ . . .
Behind the darkness of history and cloak of legend, we may dimly perceive a sacred place, ‘the fairest isle that is in the world’, set apart in the ocean and ‘poised in the divine balance which sustains the whole earth’. It was beneath the sun a place of rare beauty; it was also a theophany – Merlin’s precinct – with its Thirteen Treasures, archetypal symbols of Forms of Otherworld perfection and profusion. And at its Centre was Merlin: to be seen as Trickster and Master of Beasts, Lord of the Wild Hunt, psychopomp and devil; and, emerging from the wilderness chaos the Incarnation of Divinity, Guardian of the Grail, and sacrificial Saviour and Victim. (Chapter Eight, 119-120)
Lunch at Penn Station, half a chicken teriyaki and fries. Last night, watching Masterpiece Theatre’s “Downton Abbey” you thought about how terrible Somme was for the British.
The English lost 95,675 men, 350,000 were wounded. (Wikipedia) The mind conjures up matters on its own. I was reading about Steve Jobs earlier, and his trip to India and return to find enlightenment – there was a good line on finding a Zen teacher, something to the effect, ‘you go great distances in search of a teacher and you find one at your front door. The mind is a busy place but to calm it down you have to leave it or head to the periphery near the heart, at least I do. Similar to Zen, I suppose, though I think ‘satori’ can be found lying in the bathtub of hot water as easily as in a sitting position.
You are next to nothing, orndorff. When you are at that place you find enlightenment.
True, next to nothing all that is left is what I can take with me if consciousness survives physical death. That’s my intuitive sense of it. The condition is not enlightenment though, and I circle around to Sartre and self-deception. Below from Wikipedia on Being and Nothingness:
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Part 1, Chapter 2: Bad faith [from Being and Nothingness]
Bad faith or "Self-Deception", as translations vary, can be understood as the guise of existing as a character, individual or person who defines himself through the social categorization of his formal identity. This essentially means that in being a waiter, grocer, etc. one must believe that his or her social role is equivalent to his or her human existence. Living a life defined by one's occupation, social, racial or economic class, is the very essence of "bad faith", the condition in which people cannot transcend their situations in order to realize what they must be (human) and what they are not (a grocer, etc.). It is also essential for an existent to understand that negation allows the self to enter what Sartre calls the "great human stream". The great human stream arises from a singular realization that nothingness is a state of mind in which we can become anything, in reference to our situation, that we desire.
The possibility of playing is afforded by time and situation. In any light, the difference in existence and identity projection remains at the heart of human subjects who are swept up by their own condition, their "bad faith." One of the most widely discussed examples of projection (via Freud's conception of the human mind) that Sartre uses is the café waiter who performs the duties, traditions, functions and expectations of a cafe waiter.
"[W]hat are we then if we have the constant obligation to make ourselves what we are if our mode of being is having the obligation to be what we are? Let us consider this waiter in the cafe. His movement is quick and forward, a little too precise, a little too rapid. He bends forward a little too eagerly; his voice, his eyes express an interest a little too solicitous for the order of the customer. Finally there he returns, trying to imitate in his walk the inflexible stiffness of some kind of automaton while carrying his tray with the recklessness of a tight-rope-walker by putting it in a perpetually unstable, perpetually broken equilibrium which he perpetually re-establishes by a light movement of the arm and hand. All his behavior seems to us a game. He applies himself to changing his movements as if they were mechanisms, the one regulating the other; his gestures and even his voice seems to be mechanisms; he gives himself the quickness and pitiless rapidity of things. He is playing, he is amusing himself. But what is he playing? We need not watch long before we can explain it: he is playing at being a waiter in a cafe. There is nothing there to surprise us."
Sartre consistently mentions that in order to get out of bad faith, one must realize that his or her existence and his formal projection of a self are distinctly separate and within the means of human control. This separation is a form of nothingness. Nothingness, in terms of bad faith, is characterized by Sartre as the internal negation which separates pure existence and identity, and thus we are subject to playing our lives out in a similar manner. An example is something that is what it is (existence) and something that is what it is not (a waiter defined by his occupation).
Yet, Sartre takes a stance against characterizing bad faith in terms of "mere social positions"; I am never any one of my attitudes, any one of my actions. The good speaker is the one who plays at speaking because he cannot be speaking. This literally means that, like the cafe waiter, the speaker is not his condition or social categorization, but is a speaker consumed by bad faith. Thus, we must realize what we are (beings who exist) and what we are not (a social, historical, preoccupation) in order to step out of bad faith. Yet, existents (human beings) must maintain a balance between existence, their roles and nothingness to become authentic beings.
Additionally, an important tenet of bad faith is that we must enact a bit of good faith in order to take advantage of our role to reach an authentic existence. The authentic domain of bad faith, is realizing that the role we are playing is the lie. The goal of authenticity can be traced back to Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground. Dostoevsky has been called "The Grandfather of existentialism." To live and project into the future as a project of a self, while keeping out of bad faith and living by the will of the self is living life authentically. This is perhaps one of the main goals of Sartre's opus.
One of the most important implications of bad faith is the abolition of traditional ethics and morality. Being a "moral person" requires one to deny authentic impulses (everything that makes us human), and allow the will of another person to change one's actions. Being a moral person is one of the most severe forms of bad faith. Essentially Sartre characterizes this as "the faith of bad faith" which is and should not be, in Sartre's opinion, at the heart of one's existence. Sartre has a very low opinion of conventional morality, condemning it as a tool of the bourgeoisie to control the masses. Examples include a "Keep Off The Grass" sign, which derives its being from a bourgeois need but hinders the need of the masses for play and relaxation.
Bad faith also results when individuals begin to view their life as made up of distinct past events, like the "perfect moments" or "adventures" from Nausea. By viewing one's ego as it once was rather than as it currently is, one ends up negating the current self and replacing it with a past self that no longer exists (as illustrated by Anny in Nausea).
Wikipedia – from Being and Nothingness concepts [slightly edited with underline]
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Merlyn as a character must live authentically, but his past and future self still exist. That’s the crux of it. Said on a full stomach of left over Papa John pizza. Perspective adds me a sense of humor, Sartre not withstanding.
Post. - Amorella
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