| Topic: |
Sociology > Depression |
| User: |
"Ilya the Bat" |
| Date: |
12 Aug 2005 11:32:02 AM |
| Object: |
Seeing things in people |
Layo told me how, when she was younger, she was seeing tremendous
things in people that she later described as being ridiculous.
My response: Those things were there all right. They were just not part
- or not completely part - of the people's conscious makeup. You
weren't being delusional; you were just seeing things that were not
normally talked about or understood or owned up to. A ballerina has
many beautiful physical qualities, and many more encoded through art in
her emotional structure, even if she is consciously not able to
understand the significance of the work that she performs.
Here is a question that's worthy of being posed. What's more
impressive: Person the creature, or contents of person's conscious
mind? I pose this question quite seriously and not being facetious. Is
what's inside any living being's - any living being's - conscious mind
anywhere nearly as complicated, as calibrated, as brilliant, as
compact, as intelligent, as is the intelligence encoded in the organism
itself, the emotional structure included? I pose this question also
because there are plenty of people whose conscious minds contain very
interesting and sometimes brilliant and even wise things. But is any
man's conscious mind as impressive as the hardware on which it resides?
Or the talents, or the emotional fractals, or all else contained
within?
Indeed it is a question that cuts to the core of the matter. I've seen
even teenagers (when I was a teenager) have tremendous talent and even
emotional richness and intellect - while being also capable of extreme
stupidity. The same indeed can be spoken about adults. Here's the
problem with the reductionistic perspective: It sees the stupidity and
uses it to reduce the rest of the being to the level of stupidity,
while claiming the intelligence and the talent and the beauty encoded
in the organism to be invalid by that token. It's not invalid; it's
still there, it just exists at a more subtle level. The person may be
able to see it and own up to it, or else they may not. But it still is
there, at one or another level, and that makes it a reality.
So it is possible to put a bullet through someone's chest. Does that
mean that the man is as cheap as a bullet? Does being able to destroy
something make one able to create (or even to fathom) something of
commensurate complexity? Does the ballerina's inability to articulate
the themes of her artwork make her movements less elegant? Socrates
said that the poets were not wise because their works were based on
inspiration instead of analysis. But that does not refute the
inspiration or what underlies it or what it comes from, now does it? Or
the quality of their work?
Based on this use of reductionism therefore, the worst in the world
seek to claim the perspective of someone who sees such things to be
pathological. No it is not; it is rather just the matter of what you
had suspected originally: A matter of more profound and cultivated
sight that reaches to the underlying potentiality. The women in whom I
saw incredible qualities all have them. And that is the case, whether
they are consciously aware of them or not; whether they are able to own
up to them or not; and especially whether or not others see in them
such qualities.
You can kill a tiger; but can you create a tiger from scratch? How much
more so a human being? Indeed it has been my observation that the most
interesting people with most of beauty and inspiration and wisdom and
goodness to offer are ones that are most intricate in their structure.
That was the case for all the women with whom I had relationships, Layo
included. And it was my goal in all such cases to let the magnificence
blossom, rather than cutting them down as would someone acting from
reductionistic perspective or from position of conquest or from
position of self-sufficiency or any other such foolishness shoved down
people's throats by the malevolent.
It is not everyone's job to haul loads. A world in which everyone does
such things is not any kind of a world that I would seek to inhabit.
Some are more sturdy; others are more delicate. And the best world is
created by having everyone do the same job, but by people doing the
tasks that are for them most natural. Which means having a civilization
in which the Layos and Julias of the world are appreciated and being
given a way to do what they do best: Create magnificent works and
impart to the world of their beauty. And in so doing take human
experience to a higher level.
Many of the most interesting things in the world are indeed the most
intricate. Which requires not breaking them but allowing them to
unfold. At which point the intricate thing can indeed impart of its
riches. And the world is made better for it.
Now that, is an attitude with which one can become a teacher.
Ilya Shambat.
.
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