No need to be frightened by these robots from Asia who seem ready to conquer our place, because the robot is in us and it is watching us; he watches for this point of no return where the man stripped of all humanity will exhibit his corpse believing he has defeated his worst enemy. The loss of know-how vis-à-vis death has gone hand in hand with the loss of the rite: almost nothing any longer accompanies the dead to Hades, almost nothing any longer frees the living from the dead and the dead from living. The gravediggers of humanity grant importance to the rite only to mock it or harm it without grasping the liberation it procures through the meaning it reveals.
Month: April 2016
Antigone, rebellious and intimate (6/7. The vocation)
So many stories about identity! The word does not appear in Greek epic or tragedy. Identity at the time of Antigone is based on lineage and belonging to a city. Identity was impregnated with rootedness. The family and the city brought together under a virtual banner all of what the other was to know about himself during a first meeting. During antiquity, no one proclaimed his identity or promulgated it, and no one decided on his identity. It wasn't about putting on a costume. Men depended on their identity. Identity was like a charge, we had to be worthy of it. It established being and becoming. The modern era has made it an issue, because it has transformed identity into having, a sort of asset which one can dress up or discard. In its modern fantasy of believing that we can choose everything all the time, the modern era has relentlessly replaced being with having. Yet this logic, this ideology has its limits: some things cannot be acquired, among them: otherness. Living one's identity, being what one is, inhabiting one's name , allowing intimacy and therefore knowledge and deepening of one's being, these are the sine qua non conditions for an encounter with the other. The first difference between Creon and Antigone is located in this precise place, the ground on which the fight is built, Antigone preserves anchored in her this gift of the elders, of the gods, this rootedness which defines the authority to which she leans for stand up to this man, his relative, the king, who espouses the will to power and finds himself blinded by it to the point of hearing only his own voice, its echo. Continue reading “Antigone, rebellious and intimate (6/7. The vocation)”
Relativism is the horse dealer!
Relativism proves to be a sweet companion. Relativism is the horse dealer of the Abbé Donissan. You can travel with him. He is not boring, he stays in his place and shows unfailing empathy. However, he does not know compassion. Is it a problem ? Rather an advantage, he does not contradict, he agrees with me. With precision, he anticipates my agreement, sometimes he even conceives it before I have thought about it. Relativism gives the impression of dominating all certainties and has thus become the religion of the time, it is an emanation of the Republic which is itself an emanation of the Monarchy. Relativism is therefore a natural child of secularism, for this reason — it is its duty! — he keeps almost all religions on guard, a little less those who can blackmail him, with force those who would like to reconnect with a lost past. Relativism does not come to help, it is satisfied with its role of witness; he acts and acquiesces, he is a technician, an administrator, a statistician. He is not docile, he does not feel the need. He is not humble even if he sometimes manages to pass himself off as humility, but unlike the latter, relativism does not require questioning. It is certainly comforting, based on egotism and immediate satisfaction. When humility pushes to confess one's faults, relativism finds an excuse for all infractions by claiming the rule of double standards which, as its name suggests, can serve the goat and the cabbage. Where humility is an apprenticeship in the law to gain access to the spirit, the horse dealer proposes to forget law and spirit in order to live . To live with fullness or to live a kind of fullness. Relativism thus provokes death, slowly and gently, because it will erase even the presence of ideas in us, it will dehumanize us with absolute certainty. And we will agree with him. We will become robots. We will agree with him because he offers us immediate comfort, the one we well deserve, that of the impression, the one where the impression conceals the image that Narcissus fell in love with while looking at it, forgetting himself, without knowing himself, hypnotized until the death of himself. The death that befalls us.
Become yourself...
Isn't becoming oneself always becoming another? What can become of someone who does not walk towards who he is? We must constantly bridge the gap between who we are and who we think we are. What can someone who does not know who he is be? A wreck, an eternal drift, a grounding? This one can sink into all forms of submission, in particular the will to power; There is nothing that can temper it, caress it or control it. It is a question here of having the same requirement as in writing: joining as closely as possible, as closely as possible, the style and the subject. Succeed in uniting to become one. Operate and accomplish the metamorphosis to get out of oneself, to be oneself. Contrary to what is often said or believed nowadays, the perpetual encounter with the other, also called interbreeding or diversity or the next fashionable term, is only a subterfuge, a hysterical zapping, a means of s to see, to catch a glimpse of oneself and to camouflage this vision under a thankless, anemic and amnesiac make-up. Here continues to stir an agit-prop concerned with creating new needs and constantly renewing them to always create an unprecedented and endless dissatisfaction and to force the eternal and exhausting quest for the ghost of the self.
The quest for identity
In its mad quest to make people believe that we can choose everything all the time, the modern era has methodically replaced being with having. Yet this logic, this ideology has its limits: some things cannot be acquired, among them: otherness. Living one's identity, being what one is, inhabiting one's name , allowing intimacy and therefore knowledge and deepening of one's being, these are the conditions for an encounter with the other. The first difference between Creon and Antigone is located in this precise place, the ground on which the fight is built, Antigone preserves anchored in her this gift of the elders, of the gods, this rootedness which defines the authority to which she leans for stand up to this man, his relative, the king, who espouses the will to power and finds himself blinded by it to the point of hearing only his own voice, its echo.