Thinking requires freedom to question, it is a necessary prerequisite.
Hence, there is no such thing as “right thinking”.
There is either free thinking or no thinking at all.
That is why people who think always end up outside any establishment –
whatever it is attempting to establish.
Sunlight entangled in accumulation
of spider webs –
more palatable, softer,
but half-dispersed;
as reason and perception –
caught in the web of history,
enriched,
but also limited…
“To them, I said, the truth would be literally nothing but the shadows of the images.”
(Plato, The Republic)
Perception is but shadow, forsooth,
both images and thoughts – reflected glow;
You cannot tell illusion from the truth.
Choose prettiest, sit back, enjoy the show.
“Ultimately our moral sense or conscience becomes a highly complex sentiment – originating in the social instincts, largely guided by the approbation of our fellow-men, ruled by reason, self-interest, and in later times by deep religious feelings, and confirmed by instruction and habit.”
(Charles Darwin, Descent of Man)
“On the whole, every new aesthetic reality makes man’s ethical reality more precise. For aesthetics is the mother of ethics; The categories of “good” and “bad” are, first and foremost, aesthetic ones…”
(Joseph Brodsky, Nobel lecture)
Out of respect for life and beauty individuality of culture grows. Like old trees, it takes thousands of years to develop, but minutes to destroy…
We grow up.
We move on.
We leave behind ruined shells that used to contain us.
We think them sad.
We feel justified yet guilty about walking away.
We lock them up.
Truths, formerly cast in stone;
truths, that shaped and confined us;
truths, that gave purpose and comfort,
that lead to pain and murder,
to greatness and gore…
now ephemeral and poignant,
like dead birds on the side of the road –
road-kill.
The world taken apart by the next generation
and put together in a slightly different pattern,
to form a new truth cast in jigsaw,
to await the next player.
“All the world’s a stage…”
(W. Shakespeare)
Sit still and look.
The play develops.
It grows from the root of common knowledge.
The vessels form and fill with blood and bile.
Sighs, screams and whispers fill the air.
You run headlong into the wall of pain
and, winded by the force of impact,
stop,
doubled up,
just breathing.
You cry and laugh in turn and in-between.
Pain, imperceptibly, becomes a habit
but so does the joy –
both dulled by usage.
The actor’s voice,
still raised in imprecation,
commands attention
and, of course, you listen…
But now mostly listen to the silence
that is to come.
The play will soon be over.
Our shadows –
passing over the shadows of dreams and aspirations of our ancestors,
fleetingly reflecting them and disappearing into the void,
the void where ancestral dreams will join us eventually…
which is absolutely unimportant.
Black and white thinking –
a useful evolutionary short-cut for quickly reacting in an emergency,
an extremely dangerous tool that simplifies experience into lies.
