Courage and Beauty

[zorgeo]

It takes some courage to jump off the consumerist wheel: uni-work-marriage-kids-more work-allotment-retirement-death. Can't avoid death of course, but the rest is very much optional. It just takes some guts to live with insecurity, sometimes even poverty, lack of commonly accepted recognition. 

And it doesn't help if you have a mental disorder. Well, take this very word "disorder". What's the opposite of it? Order. Die Ordnung. Comme il faut. Disgusting!

It hurts to be different. It hurts to be lonely. Pathologic introverts can get lonely too, didn't you know?

How can one live like this? Rejected from the society of successful "normal" people. Unable to cope with "normal" people. Always dreaming of escape.

Where is your magic cavern, traveller?

It's the beauty. Your hunger for it. Your physical intolerance to ugly things and ugly gestures.

You don't get emotions, I know. But you are kind, because evil is ugly. You can't stand bad smells and bad noises. But you can see beauty in other people.

And you can create. All your life, you draw our life. You draw you. You create an enchanted world of pictures, costumes, photos and words. Sometimes you open it up to strangers.

Your human skin had burned long ago. You put on the frog's skin, and you decorate it.

Beauty never saved anyone. But when I see it, there is no death or boredom. There is magic worth suffering for.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

But how can you measure the magic, and how do you know that your instrument that you are measuring it with is well calibrated if operational at all?
The problem with the concepts like the beauty, magic, evil, ugliness is not that they are subjective (too many things in this world are), but that they are extremely easy to manipulate; you are installing a few very powerful levers into your head and you don't know who will grab them next and what their intentions are.

> Your human skin had burned long ago.

However, the most important thing is that your human brain is still operational.

> It just takes some guts to live with insecurity, sometimes even poverty, lack of commonly accepted recognition.

I think that the word "guts" is not the proper term here. Also, if one brings "the recognition" into the equation then one acknowledges that it is a factor. It brings up an old discussion about atheism; an atheist is not the one who believes that the god does not exist, it is the one for whom the term "god" has no meaning; who can get answers to all questions of life without resorting to the concept of god.

By the way, Georgy, are visiting our god-forsaken tipharetnik?
ded_mitya

[zorgeo.livejournal.com]

I am glad I inspired a discussion.

The trouble with emotions is that we are only just starting measuring them. I heard of a study where they were using EEG and some sort of machine learning to measure how depressed one is, and show it to a patient in real time. The patient would see a slider on a screen and try to improve their mood, so it would go up. Early days of course.

And I am glad you brought up a concert of god. As a scientist, I can't deny the limits of our knowledge and comprehension. And i recognize a human need for answers and for consolation. This "god" thing is supposed to cover these needs.

[(Anonymous)]

George, speaking of science, knowledge and god, and actually my unquoted quote on the nature of the atheism, there is a good article on the subject, where I borrowed the latter from:
http://old.russ.ru/ist_sovr/20030516_manin-pr.html

I know there is a temptation to let a "god" thing into the life, even for the consolation purposes, but for me personally that would require to alter the basis which defines me and what propelled me this far in life. I am not ready now, an possibly never will, abandon this basis.

Speaking the limits of knowledge and comprehension. As a person, we do probably have these limits, simply because over the stretch of measurable history we as species have not evolved much, however the amount of information and the complexity of the organization of that has grown by orders of magnitude over the same period of time. Couple of hundreds years ago scientists who could wrap their minds around the science as a whole and made substantial accomplishments in the whole array of branches of science were not uncommon. This is no longer true for quite a while. We are simply hosed by the stream of information. But that does not alter the fundamental principles of what is possible and what is not. More difficult, yes. Requires different approaches altogether to succeed, yes. Limited, I don't think so.

Best.
d_m