Category: Thinking

I have been think­ing about the unique strug­gles each per­son has exist­ing as an embod­ied being. I am being philo­soph­i­cal­ly impre­cise for the sake of ver­nac­u­lar clar­i­ty. Mind/Body dual­ism has been passé for awhile, and thoughts about men­tal states and skep­ti­cism about expe­ri­ences might be intel­lec­tu­al­ly enter­tain­ing, but do lit­tle in the imme­di­ate to help peo­ple do bet­ter at exist­ing.

Exist­ing and being aware of exist­ing is real­ly hard in infi­nite­ly vari­able ways. Pilot­ing these meat machines might be a lot eas­i­er if humans weren’t sapi­ent. Adam and Eve gain­ing the knowl­edge of good and evil by eat­ing the for­bid­den fruit is the orig­i­nal sin in that myth; and, stay­ing inside that par­a­digm, lit­er­al­ly every­thing that can be con­sid­ered cul­tur­al can be traced back to a strug­gle with sapi­ence. Whether art, or war, cook­ing, humor, music, or eco­nom­ics, they’re all moves Israel uses to wres­tle god.

So maybe that’s the metaphor for liv­ing — con­stant per­son­al strug­gle to under­stand, or rebel against under­stand­ing born out of our own impre­cise and faulty abil­i­ty to per­ceive and expe­ri­ence the world.

Hip out of joint, limp­ing along but refus­ing to sub­mit.