Antigone, rebellious and intimate (6/7. The vocation)

 

What stories about identity! The word does not appear neither in the Greek epic nor in the tragedy. The identity at the time of Antigone is leaning on the line and belonging to a city. Identity was soaked from rooting. The family and the city brought together under a virtual standard the entirety of what the other should know about oneself during a first meeting. During Antiquity, no one proclaimed their identity or promulgated it, and no one decided on its identity. It was not a question of putting a costume. Men were in their identity. The identity was akin to a charge, we had to be worthy of it. She ruled being and becoming. Modern era has made an issue, because it has transformed the identity to have, a sort of achievement which can be disputed or departing. In its modern fantasy to believe that you can choose everything all the time, the modern era replaced with a relentless method being by having it. Yet this logic, this ideology has its limits: certain things cannot be acquired, among them: otherness. Living your identity, being what you are, living in your name , allowing intimacy and therefore the knowledge and deepening of your being, these are the sine qua non conditions of one meeting with the other. The first difference between Creon and Antigone is at this specific location, the terrain on which the fight is built, Antigone preserves anchored in it this gift of the ancients, of the gods, this rooting which defines the authority to which it is leaning for Take up to this man, his parent, the king, who marries the will to power and finds himself blinded by her until he only heard her own voice, his echo. Read the rest of "Antigone, rebellious and intimate (6/7. 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 one? What can become the one who does not walk towards the one he is? We must constantly fill the chasm between the one we are and the one we believe to be. What can the one who does not know who he is? A wreck, an eternal drift, a failing? This one can sink into all forms of submission, in particular the will to power; There is nothing that can temper it, caress or control it. It is a question here of having the same requirement as in writing: to add as closely as possible, as close as possible, the style and the subject. Succeed in being one to be one. Operate and accomplish metamorphosis to get out of yourself, to be yourself. Unlike what is often said or believed these days, the perpetual meeting with the other also called interbreeding or creolity or the next fashion in fashion is only a subterfuge, a hysterical zapping, a means of seeing, entering and camouflaging this vision under ungrateful, anemic and amnesic makeup. Here continues to be agitated proper (which, as often, is an ally of the most devious liberalism) concerned with creating new needs and constantly renewing them to always create an unprecedented and endless dissatisfaction and oblige the eternal and exhausting quest for the Ghost of 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.

Based on the values

Authority has lost its letters of nobility along with humility. Authority has become synonymous with implacable order, reckless force, tyranny. What an inversion of values! While authority according to Antigone prevented tyranny! The modern age has this impression of authority because it has been trampled on by men who have used it; while serving authority. But has authority been damaged by these disastrous experiences? A value cannot be damaged by a man. Fidelity unfolds above Saint Peter without his being able to do so. Loyalty unfolds above betrayal because it encompasses it. Loyalty asserts itself in betrayal. Betrayal carries with it no meaning except its own satisfaction. Any value also speaks of indecision and uncertainty within man. All value is a guardian and a shelter. No need to choose, value adapts to our weakness since it precedes our uncertainties. The modern world confuses authority and power by making them bear the same wounds and the same pains. God had to be taken out of everything. Neither the ancients nor the contemporary would understand, but that didn't matter, they counted for nothing now. If ever God did not leave, he would have to be killed. The 20th century wanted to be the time of the death of God. He will have killed only the death of his idea. Above all, he will have created a new anthropology based on suicide.

Antigone, rebellious and intimate (3/7. Destiny)

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3rd part: destiny

The man descends from the tree. Man, like the tree, is defined as well by his roots or his fruits. Man, like the tree, depends on external and interior elements to reach maturity. Man looks like this trunk sculpted by the tests based on his roots and bearing more or less beautiful, more or less good fruit ... The similarities between the plant world and man are endless. Water that nourishes the roots with the sun sprinkling the fruits, with oxygen exuded by the leaves, all this life that rushes and circulates in an irremingly human condition. The tree is a family metaphor. From the fruits to fruits and leaves, a metaphor for the history of man and the family is developing. What evil fairies presided over the birth of the labdacid family from which Antigone descends? Any beautiful consciousness these days would see a calamity and a pathological explanation of antigone decisions. How does this little antigone become this heroic fruit by being born on a trunk so full of stigma and bruising? Destiny blows and guides this family in an uninterrupted and obtuse way and, suddenly, Antigone frees itself from this shackles, releases all her family from this shackles, she defeated the camisole, and completes to dismiss fate. What a prodigy! By far, hung on their branch, two leaves always seem identical, it is enough to approach to see how differ. Read the rest of "Antigone, rebellious and intimate (3/7. Fate)"

Antigone, rebellious and intimate (2/7. The funeral)

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Part 2: The funeral

My dear Ismene. I come this morning to tell you that I took care of everything. I took the same undertakers for our two brothers. I couldn't choose and since our brothers didn't leave any last wishes, I took matters into my own hands to get it sorted out as soon as possible. I still ordered embalming so that they are presentable. If you want to go see them, they'll be ready around 3 p.m. You do not have to. Well, if you can take ten minutes, that might be fine. It may be better to keep an image of them happy, children for example. I took the same urn model for both. A priest will come to the funeral home and give a short speech before the cremation. I ordered him to come to the funeral home. You see, I took care of everything. Eteocles will be buried in the cemetery which is located about thirty minutes from Thebes by taking the national. For Polynice, it is more complicated with the law of our uncle, Creon. I decided to scatter his ashes on the battlefield as the king does not want him buried. Makes sense, right? Tell me what you think, I'm not stopped on this point. This portrait of Antigone living in the 21st century delivering the remains of her brothers to the funeral director summarizes the rite of funerals today. The family has since the Industrial Revolution been rendered unproductive. Funerals are no longer part of the family tradition. The modern world is reassured by using the formula make sense , as the translation of the Anglo-Saxon expression is heard today, and as it is so comforting to repeat it to oneself without it really having any… sense, because what what are these mini-senses found on the ground almost by chance, what are these skin-deep that invite themselves in almost without our being there for nothing, if not the residues of a past sense, a common sense, a good sense sculpted by the centuries? Through the destruction of the family, transmission between generations is lacking, the meaning of our actions is lost, so we have to invent meaning, create meaning, we have to give ourselves the illusion of still living, of not not have totally given up. Deceit is backed up by ignorance, and on this point too, trickery is not new. The meaning given by death within the family, this meaning almost completely forgotten nowadays, is recalled by Antigone in Sophocles' play where she stands as a guardian of the values ​​that liberate, because they protect man from death. 'animal. Antigone reaffirms what man can and cannot; it takes hold of a force destined to protect us from our will to power and to teach us the time of responsibility; a time nowadays entrusted to specialists replacing the family, the people who compose it and the tenuous links woven between them over time.

Read the rest of "Antigone, rebellious and intimate (2/7. Funeral)"

Antigone, rebellious and intimate (1/7. The family)

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1st part: the family

From the first reading of Antigone, an ambiguity settles in the mind of the reader. Does Antigone embody action or reaction? What moves Antigone? The reaction never exists by itself whereas the action needs no one, it legitimizes itself in the act. Action always inaugurates something. Contrary to what is often said or believed, Antigone does not wait for Creon to be Antigone. Like Electra for revenge, Nausicaa for hospitality, Penelope for fidelity, Antigone embodies duty. It is action, because it serves: it is accomplished in duty. It is accomplished in servitude (are we pretending to forget that servitude means “to be a slave”?). Contrary to what is often said or believed, Antigone is never an individual. She never stands alone. If the law of Creon pushes it to action, and if this one can seem a reaction, it is only on the surface, by simple chronology.

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Charlie's Fate

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"The enemy therefore limits you gives you your form and founds you". This sentence of Saint-Exupéry expresses our condition fairly well at the end of this first week of 2015. The enemy forces me to evolve according to his codes, within a space he has circumscribed. I am first prisoner. He chooses the field and is trying to stay confined to it. Of the two immutable human data, space and time, it takes me space. Remove the space in time is a bit of Laurel to Hardy. The other unit continues to live, but it is disfigured. She lost the balance offered by the otherness of her spouse. Time is not the same following the space in which it evolves. Geography performs fate with a measure as precise as the hourglass. Read the continuation of "The fate of Charlie"