Words, words, words. The world is full of words. People talk, talk, talk. What are they saying? It’s hard to say, for their words disappear in words.
Everything has an essence; a point; an it. Everything else is elaborations; extensions growing out of the thing like long tentacles searching for more ways to repeat while getting farther and farther away from itself.
The thing is just the thing. Raise it to the light and look at it. That is it. No words are needed. “What about it?” you ask. What? Don’t you see the same as I see? Don’t you see the… And then I have to explain, and the thing becomes blurry. The light fades.
An idea you have in your head is not long-winded. It is there immediately. You grasp it in a flash; it is clear and obvious to you. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could share our ideas directly with others, that the concept in our mind could be transferred unimpededly to them, and we could relish it together. Instead we have to go the long way by means of an imperfect language, trying to translate our thoughts into petty words and continuously failing.
The fewer words are needed to convey a simple meaning, the more accurate it will be, for then the distance from my thoughts to yours is shorter. When two people know each other well, one word is sometimes enough to convey an entire idea. Silence says the rest.
Instead we are strangers to each other. We desperately try to talk to conceal our insufficiency. We can’t share the important ideas in our minds, so to escape the loneliness we simplify and trivialize and talk on the surface. When even that fails to connect us, we add more and more words in the vain hope that the sheer quantity will bring us together. But the more we talk the farther we get from our meaning, and the idea, if there ever was one, disappears in a cloud of words.
Shut up!
Your Daily Word Prompt – #Prolix – #YDWordPrompt June 25, 2020
Fear is pain without an existing cause. There is something potentially existing in the future; it doesn’t exist now and it may never exist, but it is causing pain. If it existed now, it wouldn’t cause fear. What it is then, this dread that has no real object?
In the present, pain is just pain. Whether you think about it or not, it is there, and it hurts. It is real.
The past is gone, but the loss may still be felt, for its result is still present. The past therefore exists in the present and causes pain.
The painful object of the future is uncertain. If you knew it would come and knew its exact nature, it wouldn’t cause fear. You are afraid of getting sick, but once you are sick, that fear is gone. Therefore, it is the uncertainty itself, the lack of reality that causes the pain. What then can you do? Make what you fear happen?
Sometimes a non-existing object causes more pain than it would if it had existed: Sometimes the fear itself is worse then the object of fear. Then, you have nothing to lose if you let it happen.
Sometimes even, the object of fear is so unrealistic that even if it were to happen, its shape would be completely different from anything imagined.
Fear is sometimes shapeless. Its object is a cloud which would be meaningless even if it existed. What are you afraid of then? “I don’t know, I’m just afraid.” Then do walk closer. Approach the cloud and let it enclose you. It is water and air and nothing else: no substance.
“We have nothing to fear but fear itself.” Man is an irrational animal. Why else would we make up ideas that contradict our own logic and belief and choose to suffer from them.
Your Daily Word Prompt – #Afraid – #YDWordPrompt June 24, 2020
A loss can only be repaired if you get the item back. Any kind of indirect compensation will always fail to be realistic, but we still tend to have a superstitious belief that one thing can be transformed into another even if their natures are totally different.
The most flexible object of transformation is money. In our mind everything can be changed into money and everything has a price. True, we are not always that far off, since admittedly there are a few things that money can actually do. When we had no great attachment to the lost object, a pile of bank notes might be instrumental to restoring pretty much the selfsame thing; If your car is just a means of transportation, any vehicle will do, so if it’s wrecked, money will get it back, more or less.
But you may choose to purchase something completely different and still feel compensated. When the marketplace value is approximately the same, you get the odd idea that the two objects also have the same value for you. You appreciate one as much as the other because that invisible hand pointed a finger at both, told you they were identical, and you believed. Isn’t that rather superstitious?
The discrepancy should be all the more glaring when it comes to things that have nothing in common whatsoever. The loss of health and even of life is also furnished with a monetary value as insurance companies act as wizards and accomplish a metamorphosis that defies all logic. What’s the connection between the loss of a pair of legs and a sum of money, however large? How can the life of a dear relative in any way be measured as a number in a bank account?
It’s not just that life or eyesight is of such a great value, it is completely incompatible with anything else. Even if you would be prepared to cut off a finger for a tidy sum, there is just no connection.
And what about the opposite kind of compensation: Damage inflicted on the evildoer? How can that really give relief?
A compensation that doesn’t bring back the loss is an illusion.
Your Daily Word Prompt – #Compensate – #YDWordPrompt June 23, 2020
An empty house is sadness, a shell that has lost its purpose.
The ruins of an ancient town where the last man left centuries ago, is now lying in a deserted landscape, overgrown with grass. A civilization was once built here, people had their lives in this place, they worked and played, but then they left. Were they violently rooted out? Did they slowly die until one day a few lonely creatures found themselves abandoned? Why or why not?
The field was the site of an ancient battle. It is known from the history books, but nothing reveals its story now. A modern man is standing in the field, thinking he can see the thirty thousand soldiers and their horses, their swords and spears and shields. He hears the clamor, he believes, resounding through the centuries. It must still be there. The fight must still be going on. Then is now. He opens his eyes, but the grassland is vacant. The survivors have fled and there is not a trace of the slain who must have littered the ground. It happened hundreds of years ago; it was gone then, and it remains gone.
The house is vacated. Will it so remain? The old tenants have moved out, but other will move in. Not the same but the same.
The town is vacated. It so remains. One civilization disappeared, but somewhere else another one sprang up. Not the same but the same.
The battlefield is vacated, but battles are still ranging. The fight goes on and on. The world is never at peace with itself. It is good then to return to that ancient site of strife and find it all so quiet. The war went elsewhere and here silence reigns.
It is sad to be abandoned. It is joyful to escape.
Your Daily Word Prompt – #Vacate – #YDWordPrompt June 22, 2020
You think you love colors, the sparkling inconsistency of flashy lights that appear without any rule or pattern. You absorb the enlightenment from dozens of ideas conveyed to you in an enticing language indistinguishable from all other esthetic expressions that are there for your enjoyment.
They are all a little right, you think. Those philosophers of different schools are artists of varying styles, but you can use them all when decorating your life and living room. Everything fits into your broad mind.
I’m sorry, your tolerance has gone astray if you think you have to believe in all those conflicting ideologies that catch your attention. You think they all have a point and you pride yourself of how skillfully you accept them all and make them fit into your individual chaos.
We may not want to return to the dark ages of medieval orthodoxy, but the world did lose something when it entered the modern era of seemingly infinite diversity. It is not so bad that we can choose what to believe but the refusal to choose is unfortunate and the desire to choose everything is even worse.
You are an individual and as such it makes you a mess of conflicting inclinations. But whatever the world is, it is a coherent whole, or else there wouldn’t have been anything there for you to observe and try to make sense of. The different interpretations of the world, the different philosophical systems worth noticing, need to be consistent to explain anything.
For the individualist lover of freedom, it may seem like too great of a sacrifice to have to commit oneself to one system and reject most of the others, but without coherence there is no freedom either. We must make some sense of the world to be able to resist and avoid being caught by the slightest whim.
Your Daily Word Prompt – #Coherent – #YDWordPrompt June 21, 2020
We always hurt each other. It seems to be an inevitable and a feature of the human species, but most of the time even the most evil among us don’t really aim at hurting. It is collateral damage, happening when the selfish find it more important to regard their own convenience than other people’s suffering.
But pain is also inflicted for its own sake. Then it is usually called punishment or revenge. There is something even more appalling about this form of infliction since it is entirely conscious. Suffering is the one thing that is bad about human life and it seems more evil than anything to deliberately add more of it.
However, today I’m in the mood to be indulgent with the human race and explain away revenge as a kind of rage that is not entirely controllable. That leaves punishment proper which is almost always inflicted by the state.
The state is a machine. It has no human feelings and performs its operations with clinical coolness, inflicting its poison with even greater composure than a Dr. Mengele.
No one can tell who deserves to be punished, for that would require an insight into a person’s psychology that only a supernatural being could possess, and the state is certainly not such a being. Yet it behaves as if it knew and thus the cruelty of its inflictions is doubled.
The state is not a person. It is faceless as it leans over its victim, citing its dreary book of laws as if it were holy writ, naming its verdict “justice” and pretending that it is necessary and inevitable. That makes it more cruel than anything a human is capable of doing.
When the law of the state has caught the poor sinner, he is lost in its anonymous grip. Slowly and methodically the pain is inflicted.
Your Daily Word Prompt – #Inflict – #YDWordPrompt June 20, 2020
Suffering is bad in itself. Although it may sometimes lead to something good, it’s the only thing that in itself is just bad. (Give me any example of something else you think is bad, and I’ll tell you it’s bad because it leads to suffering.) Compassion, on the other hand, is good, and that seems like something of a paradox since compassion is a form of suffering: Com- means “with”, and -passion means suffering (not to be confused with the modern meaning of the word “passion”). It is bad to suffer, but good to suffer with someone. How can that be?
It is not so much the suffering that is good as the ability to do so on account of another person. The connection, the “com-“, is what matters; the relationship between you and another real being.
It is not difficult to share someone’s joy: It’s enough to touch the surface of their emotions and rejoice and cheer with them. No strong connection is offered and received; no effort is needed to relate to the happiness of a winner. The champion remains remote; he is not like a fellow human being.
But in a sufferer, you sense humanity. You imagine what it would be like to feel his loss and you can emotionally understand him. His pain is not literally yours, but by understanding you get a share of it, and a true relationship is formed.
Understanding the suffering of mankind makes you human, and therein there is joy. You feel the sorrow, but at the same time it feels good because through it you are not alone.
A fellow sufferer is a fellow human being. All those others, the partygoers, the chatters at the local market who tell you they are doing fine, are just mannequins on display.
Compassion makes you real.
Your Daily Word Prompt – #Compassion – #YDWordPrompt June 19, 2020
The trophy was bestowed upon the winner. The proud man was standing on the podium lifting the large cup above his head and indulging himself in the applause and cheers from the crowd. This was the moment he had been waiting for: the reward for his work and his cunning schemes. The honor was his – the greatest of all goods.
“What is money?” he thought. “I can buy my own swimming pool and live in luxury. That is rather pleasant, but it has never been my main goal and I doubt if it could be sufficient for anyone. If no one sees you, admire you and envy you, that swimming pool of yours will soon be very boring. No, what I want is the power that comes with my wealth and the honor that such power will bestow upon me. My team, the people I own and control, have now won the trophy, and it is mine: My power and my glory.”
His team were standing behind him. They had each received a small cup, a replica of the one their boss was holding. They certainly looked content, but their demeanor had none of their boss’ flamboyant triumph. After all they had merely done the hard and dirty work, and they were never meant to shine. Some of them looked rather embarrassed about the honor that had been bestowed on them and glanced at their silver cup as if they had not deserved it.
“What is the connection,” they thought “between this fancy piece of metal and the work we have been doing? We did it, and the fruits of our work were our reward: the satisfaction of a job well done and the joy and usefulness that others may have gained from it. We produced it all by ourselves. We didn’t need a bestowment.”
Your Daily Word Prompt – #Bestow – #YDWordPrompt June 18, 2020
No one would resist a lawful government. No one calls himself a resurgent. A rebel – maybe, a freedom fighter – definitely, but a resurgent – impossible.
Some people break the law. They are criminals. Insurgents are criminals, the worst of the lot, for they break all the laws. From the perspective of the authorities, nothing could be worse. They are terrorists.
No one can break a law that doesn’t exist. No one can do anything against what is non-existent. From the standpoint of the rebels, the government is made of criminals who are breaking the law of nature. That law exists.
They are fighting a war; the government against the insurgents – the freedom fighters against the tyranny. They are fighting a war of words.
“The first victim of war is the truth,” it is said. In a war of words there is no truth.
Words are not true or untrue. They reflect no other reality than the speaker gives it. You can call a thing whatever you want; you can yell at it or praise to the skies, it remains the same earthly object.
Hero or villain? He is a man. That is all we can agree on. If we don’t give him the same name, we can’t talk about him. Let’s call him a man.
The man wants to follow the law, not any law, the law. Whoever is fighting for what he thinks is right, is fighting for the law
The anarchist is fighting for the law: it’s the law of anarchy.
Law is right, and right is law. The circle of definition allows us to talk without saying anything.
The man is a rebel. Can we all agree on that? Right or wrong, he is fighting against established authority. If you are ever called an insurgent, you should rebel.
Your Daily Word Prompt – #Insurgent – #YDWordPrompt June 17, 2020
To be similar or not to be similar, that should not be the question. You are told to be yourself, and then to stay that way. But what you are, is what you have become, and becoming is a process of assimilation.
Being yourself means being natural; expressing yourself without force and constraint and letting your being flow along without resistance. It doesn’t mean always staying the same, for to do that you would have to use force and resist your nature.
Assimilation is natural. The child gets formed by its environment and molded by society and culture and when coming to age a person is a mixture of it all, including its innate self. It is all natural. And the process doesn’t stop. Grown individuals continue to be shaped by their surroundings and only the most stubborn brute refuses to move.
A natural process is what occurs when no one is trying to manipulate its course. Nature is always natural, while force and compulsion are human activities.
It’s unnatural to force people to assimilate, but when it happens without force, it’s unnatural to resist.
It is also unnatural to deny people the chance to assimilate by closing doors and building walls across communities.
There exist societies where cultures have been living next to each other for generation without assimilating. It is sometimes praised as multiculturalism and it’s undeniably a fascinating phenomenon, but underneath the colorful surface there will always be a history of force; the dominant culture acting as a force denying access to those who are not similar to itself.
Don’t try to make them similar, and don’t try to keep them from becoming similar. Don’t try to become, and don’t resist becoming.
Be yourself. Be and let be. Similar to this or that or quite different, that is not the question.
Your Daily Word Prompt – #Assimilate – #YDWordPrompt June 16, 2020
A Bear - Poles Apart 