.

And by a prudent flight and cunning save A life which valour could not, from the grave. A better buckler I can soon regain, But who can get another life again? Archilochus

Sunday, March 28, 2021

The Big Other - If the G_ds Aren't Watching Us, Maybe You Are.

So many people today are documenting every "notable" aspect of their own lives on line.  Why so many "selfies"?  What's the attraction?  Fame?  Celebrity?  Notoriety?  Power?  

How about "meaning"?  Is my life "insignificant" only if no one else experiences it with me?  I don't want to be "insignificant"  Only if I can transfer the "signs" and "symbols" which constitute the structure and substance of my mind into the signs and symbols in the mind of another can I achieve "significance".  

And if people one thousand years from now see the signs and symbols I left behind, am I now re-membered?  Have I achieved immortality?  But more importantly, can people see beyond the fake "framing" of my captured episodes and into my "authentic" self if only the "good" is captured digitally and all my negative unexpressed thoughts self-edited out? 

For am I not-so-subtly editing the footage I present on YouTube?  Are you seeing only the "good" side of my nature and not into the ass-hole who I really am?  

The G_ds would see everything, wouldn't they?  They would be judging us, estimating our worthiness to join them in the afterlife, or whether to exile uz into Hades.

So why do we even seek out this judgement from the Big Other?  Is it only because we've successfully tipped the scales through the self-editing of captured YouTube moments and believe we have, thereby, "fooled" the judges?

As for me, I prefer to remain in the shadows where none but the G_ds can see and judge me... but wait, have I not undone myself in the writing of this small essay?  Perhaps I, too, am trying to edit "the other's" (your) reality, holding on to mine by own subjective fetish constructed of the knowledge that, "I know very well, but..."  It certainly wouldn't be the first time, nor the last.
Perhaps I'm just waiting for an "event" by which I can go back and re-write the meaning of my life and its' "true" significance.  But unlike the Silver Swan of old, my song will most likely be that of a goose.  A very absurd and "foolish" goose who laid not one single "golden" egg.  Yet perhaps it is just that which makes me foolishly try, try, and try again...

...and so, Prospera, in case I don't see ya at the assay tables, "Good Afternoon, Good Evening, and Good Night!"  For some of us slaves are stepping out from one platonic cave and into the light, and NOT directly back into the dark cavern of another manipulating Sycorax.

"κακοῦ κόρακος κακὸν ᾠόν"
("From a bad crow, a bad egg")

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