As Ruiting lay in bed this morning,, I handed her a book I was reading — some lit-crit essays by Walter Benjamin — so she could read a passage about Kafka (a conversation between Max Brod and Kafka):
‘I remember,’ Brod writes, ‘ a conversation with Kafka which began with present-day Europe and the decline of the human race. “We are nihilistic thoughts, suicidal thoughts that come into God’s head,” Kafka said. This reminded me at first of the Gnostic view of life: God as the evil demiurge, the world as his Fall. “Oh no,” said Kafka, “our world is only a bad mood of God, a bad day of his.” “Then there is hope outside this manifestation of the world that we know.” He smiled. “Oh, plenty of hope, an infinite amount of hope – but not for us.”
A suicide talking about a suicide talking about how our world is a sort of cosmic suicidal thought.
At times I certainly can feel that way too -- that our world is a sort of glitch in a broader and better cosmic realm — Yes, the post-Singularity universe will be amazing; yes there are all sorts of potentials for growth, joy and choice in the universe — but fuck it, humanity is just a goddamned piece of shit — we are the minimal generally intelligent system and we are tangled and fucked up in all sorts of social knots and the best we can do is to make one last final gasp of creativity, and on our deathbed as a species, cough out of our dying collective throat some sort of superior mind, some sort of engineered being with less perversity and more creativity and understanding … some sort of mind that doesn’t waste 99% of its energy defeating itself and its kindred by tying bizarre cognitive-emotional knots and suffering from the tension they create ..
And yet, it struck me that Kafka had so beautifully summarized the worthlessness of the human race that it was a self-defeating statement, right? the justification of the human race was, in fact, the exact sort of beauty illustrated in his statement as reported by Benjamin — as the minimum generally intelligent creature, we are the first species on earth (well except maybe some cetacea, who knows) capable of appreciating the poignance and beauty and terror and absurdity of our own limitations, and capable of understanding the glory and wonder of what lies beyond and what may come after us, and what may already exist in parallel with us (or in some sense within us) in different dimensions —
Amen! ...
‘I remember,’ Brod writes, ‘ a conversation with Kafka which began with present-day Europe and the decline of the human race. “We are nihilistic thoughts, suicidal thoughts that come into God’s head,” Kafka said. This reminded me at first of the Gnostic view of life: God as the evil demiurge, the world as his Fall. “Oh no,” said Kafka, “our world is only a bad mood of God, a bad day of his.” “Then there is hope outside this manifestation of the world that we know.” He smiled. “Oh, plenty of hope, an infinite amount of hope – but not for us.”
A suicide talking about a suicide talking about how our world is a sort of cosmic suicidal thought.
At times I certainly can feel that way too -- that our world is a sort of glitch in a broader and better cosmic realm — Yes, the post-Singularity universe will be amazing; yes there are all sorts of potentials for growth, joy and choice in the universe — but fuck it, humanity is just a goddamned piece of shit — we are the minimal generally intelligent system and we are tangled and fucked up in all sorts of social knots and the best we can do is to make one last final gasp of creativity, and on our deathbed as a species, cough out of our dying collective throat some sort of superior mind, some sort of engineered being with less perversity and more creativity and understanding … some sort of mind that doesn’t waste 99% of its energy defeating itself and its kindred by tying bizarre cognitive-emotional knots and suffering from the tension they create ..
And yet, it struck me that Kafka had so beautifully summarized the worthlessness of the human race that it was a self-defeating statement, right? the justification of the human race was, in fact, the exact sort of beauty illustrated in his statement as reported by Benjamin — as the minimum generally intelligent creature, we are the first species on earth (well except maybe some cetacea, who knows) capable of appreciating the poignance and beauty and terror and absurdity of our own limitations, and capable of understanding the glory and wonder of what lies beyond and what may come after us, and what may already exist in parallel with us (or in some sense within us) in different dimensions —
Amen! ...