Who pulled the trigger? Is that the question?
No, the question was: Who did it?
Isn’t that the same thing? We are dealing with a murder victim who has been shot, and all we want to know is of course who did it, in other words: Who pulled the trigger?
No, it’s not the same thing. The murderer may not have been the one who pulled the trigger.
What nonsense. How can it not be?
Well, anyone who has read or seen a murder mystery knows that the detective is not always just looking for the immediate cause of the killing. If the killer was a hitman, was tricked into shooting, didn’t know the gun was loaded or was the victim of a number of other circumstances, he was not really the murderer. Or if you still insist on calling him by that name, we must agree that he is not the person we really want to catch. The real suspect is the one who was behind it all and ultimately caused it.
You mean the one who gave him the gun and told him to kill? Even if there is such a person, would that take the blame away from the immediate killer. I say he is still our suspect.
He may not be blameless, but he was not the ultimate cause. The person who set the process in motion that led to the killing, is our man.
Who might that be? When is the start of a process? We might as well look for the mother who gave birth to the person who sold the gun to the one who gave it to the one who pulled the trigger. Who knows, maybe you should suspect yourself for having been present at a certain point in this endless train of events. Did you do it?
Your Daily Word Prompt – #Suspect – #YDWordPrompt July 6, 2020
Short trips sometimes become long trips. It happens that what was meant as a quick excursion into unknown territory, with the expectancy of a speedy return to normalcy, gets prolonged and stretched out indefinitely until one day you realize that reality has irrevocably changed. The anxious should therefore always stay at home where all habits are firmly set, and the world is clearly defined. It’s better never to learn that reality could have been different.
If you are made of more resilient stuff, however, you may venture out of your abode for a short period of time without risking your precious identity. It may even serve to affirm yourself and strengthen your own sense of righteousness. When you allow yourself to take a look into how distorted other environments and cultures are, your sense of pride and self-worth might increase, and you can face the world with greater assurance.
Differences are dangerous if you are weak and easily stressed out. If you get the idea that there are many possible answers to the same question, you are no longer safe. Then you may not be able to find your way home again. You may become a vagabond on a perpetual excursion, always on the lookout for solutions to nagging questions but getting farther from a reconciliation. When searching for certainty you get ever more uncertain and you can never return to safety again.
But then what is life if not a prolonged excursion? You are born in one place; it may be a good place, but it’s not the whole world. You acquire your basic knowledge at an early age, but there is more to learn. The chance that the entire readymade truth is found exactly where you find yourself is rather small, and even if it were, it wouldn’t be truly yours until you had examined it. Go out then. Look around. If you don’t find your way back, you have still gained more than you have lost if what you had was an illusion.
Your Daily Word Prompt – #Excursion – #YDWordPrompt July 5, 2020
People don’t want to be told the truth, not your truth at least, not mine either. We know we are right, of course, but they just refuse to listen, don’t they? Try to explain to them their obvious faults and shortcomings in an honest effort to improve their character, and they will aggressively shut up and turn their back on you. Strange, isn’t it?
People don’t like straight talk. They insist on being offended by the most obvious descriptions of reality. It’s as plain as day, but they prefer the obscurity of the night. So it seems to be your lot to have to spread the light.
Poor you. No one listens, but you keep going, shouting your message to the world. If someone is ugly, you have to tell them. If someone is so selfish that they don’t give you their part, they ought to know. You just want to be fair, but somehow it doesn’t make you popular.
Maybe you are simply not loud enough like the big guys. You don’t have the megaphone of a president of the divided states, and your manners are not crude enough to be a professional bully. There is still room for improvement, and if you just drop that last piece of self-restraint, you may reach far. Everyone knows that the fittest survive, that might is right and that man is a wolf, and it would be rather stupid not to give the world that obvious message and not take advantage of it. Isn’t that what you think?
Unfortunately the world is not quite that simple. The purity of black and white is rare and the shades of dawn and dusk extend into most of the day. As soon as one statement is made a paradox arises and eliminates its certainty. Maybe your truth is not the whole truth. Discretion is advised.
Your Daily Word Prompt – #Discretion – #YDWordPrompt July 4, 2020
The more you divide something, the less it is divided. If a society is split into tiny fractions, there are actually no fractions. The smallest possible part of society is the individual, and if every individual were his own party there would in effect be no parties at all. Everyone would be united. United by what or by whom? By one strong Leviathan! A million-party state would be a one-party state.
Unity is always the ideal, although quite a metaphysical one. In the physical reality of the state, unity would come with a price. The question is then what level of division would create the healthiest level of unity.
The bipartite state makes any conception of unity unattainable. It makes it necessary to decide one over another and any idea of compromise is intrinsically excluded. Of course compromises still happen, but at that moment the system effectively cancels itself, and for it to survive it is necessary for it to immediately bounce back to its natural position where everything is effectively split down the middle.
Now a tripartite state is a naturally living compromise. There will be a resting place in the middle for those who are generally content or just don’t want to be forced into a position with unknown consequences. Such a partition creates the most realistic sense of unity, that is one that is not based on the principle of divide and rule.
The idea of balance is found in the number three. One is a monolith that is based on forceful restraint. Two can at most achieve a ceasefire: The combatants will be eyeing each other waiting for a false move to restart the fighting. Four is on the way towards a weakening multiple division. But in three there is balance.
On either side of the scale people are striving to pull the whole weight over to them and any sudden pull will tip the balance; only a third force can keep it.
Your Daily Word Prompt – #Tripartite – #YDWordPrompt July 3, 2020
They called it a symposium. It was meant to be a free conversation between educated individuals on lofty topics that would enrich the soul. Like their spiritual ancestors, the Greeks, they gathered in a wealthy home in the best part of town, and none of them were unconscious of their own importance. They all liked to talk and the promise of a liberal supply from the host’s wine cellar was not likely to prove an impediment to their slippery tongues.
But this happened in our modern times, an age where the Greek virtues of universal truth are long gone and only a distorted memory is left. They remembered the elevated speeches on love that were produced at that original symposium in ancient Athens, and they certainly felt attracted to those sublime ideals, but as children of today, (late in history, post post modernism even) their love was primarily directed at one rather unstable point: themselves.
They were seated at the grand table, indulging in the first course, the wine already plentifully dispersed. A cacophony of chatter was heard excitingly anticipating the speeches they would make when everyone would be listening to them, to him, to me(!) in particular.
But the moment never came, or rather it never reached its fulfillment. True, they all spoke. One after another they rose and delivered eloquent orations touching on that topic of tonight, the love that they so much loved, but couldn’t grasp.
We can’t really blame them for failing to understand, after all they were our contemporaries and therefore they all had to talk about different things, expressing what was right and good for them only. Love is a feeling, they correctly stated, feelings are personal and not meant to be understood. So every man present focused on his favorite topic instead: himself. And every woman chose herself, and no one spoke a language anyone could understand.
But they were happy. Well, they looked happy, inebriated people often do, and these had a double source of intoxication. They talked until the light dawned on them, and with the beauty of their own voice resounding in their head they concluded the carousal.
Your Daily Word Prompt – #Carouse – #YDWordPrompt July 2, 2020
Sometimes good news is bad news. A glimmer of hope in a sea of turmoil is often a sign of treason and afterwards the feeling of betrayal is worse than never having had a hope.
We thought it was finally over. The enemy had been raging for months, patrolling the streets and making us flee to our homes where we were forced to hide. We had peeked out of the windows but seen only the black shadows gliding past. We had been anxiously cowering in our corners just waiting for freedom to return.
So when the good news came and the sky seemed to be clearing, we thought we could see the horizon. Many of us rushed to the beaches and stood there staring longingly, encouraging each other to look better and confirm what our imagination had thought into existence. Yes, it was indeed on its way, we thought. The light, the liberator was clearly rising above that distant line, its white sails so full of promise.
It wasn’t really a lie. The clouds were indeed getting thinner, black passed through grey and approached the white of a new beginning. The crowds now went wild. In a euphoric outburst they ran into the streets and smashed symbols of oppression, broke into windows of opportunities and relieved houses of unnecessary possessions. The hated uniforms were pushed away, and we thought they were beaten.
That was yesterday. Today we are locked up again. Confined to our cells we are broken and robbed of hope. The police have reentered the streets, the virus has taken a vengeance and now it is unbearable. We might have gotten used to our prisons and adjusted to a life of restrictions, but freedom becomes painful when it disappears. If only we had not seen that moment of respite.
Your Daily Word Prompt – #Respite – #YDWordPrompt July 1, 2020
Proceed with caution. That would always be the advice. Or maybe better yet: Don’t proceed at all. Stop! Stand still! The world is just too dangerous a place.
But of course that’s not possible. A life without moving is a life without living. It’s self-contradictory to deny one’s own being and therefore it’s impossible. We must move but how much?
The golden mean! Ah, that golden middle ground, the critical point where the scales are in the balance and there’s no too much and no too little. Where is that to be found in the face of danger?
Risk alone is always too risky, and caution without danger is nonsense. But most of the time there is something to gain and something to lose. The point of balance would be where the chance of gaining equals the risk of losing, and a little more or a little less would tip the scale in either direction. The chance of winning ten dollars may merit the risk of losing one.
Unfortunately, though, life is not math, and when actually living most things seem to fall into disproportion. You go for a walk and risk getting hit by a car and killed. The benefit of that insignificant stroll can in no way outweigh the potential loss of life, so it’s just not worth the risk. Or is it?
Well, ultimately that disproportion is present in everything we do, and even in everything we don’t do. Disaster might strike at any moment no matter what precautions we take. From that perspective caution is quite impossible and therefore meaningless.
This is where you must be cautious: Don’t get entangled in thoughts of caution, for once you are in it, you risk getting trapped in a vicious circle: Everything gets riskier, everything becomes dangerous, and you can no longer move. Caution is risky.
Your Daily Word Prompt – #Caution – #YDWordPrompt June 30, 2020
Who is your muse? What makes you create? How are you incited to act differently from what is expected? Why do you surprise yourself? Where does it come from?
Human beings are not computers. We don’t process our input in a mechanistic way securing an outcome that directly follows from a preprogrammed operation. When inspired we don’t conform to a strict path of logic but swerve out of the habit of always combining the same equation of x and y. We don’t know what follows next and it appears to come from nowhere.
But nothing comes from nothing, so inspiration must be granted by our own personal muse. Who is she? A supernatural being? A spirit that transmits spirit into our soul?
However you choose to look at it, this is the nature of creativity: something which comes from nothing which comes from something. It goes beyond physics and beyond logic, so why not attribute it to a mythical being with a stringed instrument.
Inspiration is a breath of life into stale habits and mechanical thinking. It comes from inside, but it doesn’t. It comes from outside, but it doesn’t. Anything out there can incite inspiration, but it’s not in that thing since it can be transformed into something totally different if only the mind lets go of its restraints.
Inspiration is total renewal. The thing that inspires and the person inspired come into contact, but the result is in not a mixture of the two but something totally different. A painting is not an actual landscape united with the mind of an artist as if they were two ingredients mixed in a bowl. A third element is present. You may call it your muse if you like. Call it a leap of freedom or a rupture of constraints. Call it inspiration.
Your Daily Word Prompt – #Inspire – #YDWordPrompt June 28, 2020
One word. Then silence. The seed was sown. No more was needed.
They understood what it meant, and it opened a flood of thought in their mind. Only they could not say it since it had already been said. With that one word. Adding another word would subtract from the meaning. The richness of thought would be compromised. Therefore silence.
“Brevity is the soul of wit,” said the man who left a volume of greatness. His words are loaded with meaning; his plays are interpreted and reinterpreted and masses of brick-sized books have been piled on top of each other to try to express what he has already said. It’s hard to be silent.
“In the beginning was the word.” A biblical sentence with multiple meanings and yet with only one meaning: In the beginning was the essence of it all.
The word is the essence; it is more essential than the object it denotes, for that petty object is full of irrelevant accidents.
The word may contain an idea that can potentially expand ad infinitum. Trying to relate its entire meaning by means of intricate explanations risks getting you ever farther away from the wealth of its essence and gets you entangled in details of decreasing relevance. Then talking will get you nowhere and the more you say the less you say.
The human language is a poor device. It fails to express our thoughts. The best we can do is to indicate our meaning by simple words that have an approximate common connotation and then just hope we will not be too badly misunderstood.
The less said, the more said. The essence should not be watered down. It is all there in that one succinct expression. Say it. Hear it. Think it. It is what it really is: It.
Your Daily Word Prompt – #Succinct – #YDWordPrompt June 27, 2020
The entrance is the most frightening part of any process. Once you have started, you can go along and come what may, at least you will have some idea about what you are up against. Not so at the beginning. The point at which it all starts, the embryo of the introduction, is nothing in itself, but it contains all that will come. When taking the first step into it, it has all been decided. Your fate is in the matrix.
Perhaps it would be safer to bypass the entire matriculation. If you never enter the school of life, all the following missteps will effectively be avoided. There will be other errors, sure, there will be accidents, even disasters, maybe, but they will not be caused by that one fateful event.
The initiation embodies the greatest risk, for it contains all the dangers that will come, but it also carries within its womb all those good things that you thought you wanted. There shouldn’t be much to consider, really, but you hesitate.
It is not necessary to cast the die. You don’t have to matriculate. Life will go on without any conscious decision, and good and bad things will happen anyway. Living is learning, but outside of any school the training is arbitrary. Whatever you stumble on, adds to your experience, but without an order, it risks remaining a fruitless mess.
The matrix of development is in matriculation. The moment of fear is the moment of possibility, and the coward will miss it.
Virtue can be learned, but courage is needed to start learning. Where can you then learn courage? You can’t have it before you have learned it, and you can’t learn it before you have it. Is it impossible then?
No, the first step can’t be learned, but you can take it anyway. Matriculate!
Your Daily Word Prompt – #Matriculate – #YDWordPrompt June 26, 2020
A Bear - Poles Apart 