Indifference

They bear curious Greek names of erudite derivation which mean "the New", "the Hidden", "the Inactive", and "the Alien". They are indeed so inert , so satisfied with their condition that they do not interfere...do not combine with any other element and for precisely this reason have gone undetected for centuries." -------from 'Argon' in The Periodic Table by Primo Levi

It is said that we die in the exact place on earth from which we came; it is written in the stars that certain elements are drawn together to fashion our bodies and souls; so, those few diamond-souls will return to a specific place just as the monotonous, dull carbon ones, copying each other, will return to their allotted place and the mercurial , restless ones to theirs. There are those with iron in their soul, nerves of steel. But what of those "rare", "noble" unearthly beings that exist amongst us, detached in their superlative equanimity, serene and indifferent in their inner spirit, who live in the mind alone, those who live in the margins and bear witness and whose deepest intuition tells them that they do not belong here?

There is holy indifference and then there is the indifference that Fenelon saw as the grave danger of our times. The laziness of soul that is oblivious of any awareness of God; this was what Augustine saw as the true horror: that we do not know what we lack...that we lack. In this vein the cardinal sin is self-sufficiency, the turn to "the subject", a rejection of the need for anything unconditioned (whence the fall, whence the demise of the Ontological proof).

The axis of evil. But evil, demons, sin do not exist and there are no true atheists any more. Not existential angst or battles against black, malign enemies; no, the malaise of our times is ennui, indifference, claustrophobic sameness. Simmel would say that the typical attitude of the inhabitant of a city is to be blase. Whatever.

We only imagine that we are trapped in a matrix, the system, and search out escape routes: the highest mountains, the deepest seas, drugs, entertainment..anything but our noxious selves in a century when there is only the self! But "whither shall I flee". The exotic has been domesticated
and if we are but earthly creatures why reject life, home anyway?

In the face of a meaningless universe, being "thrown" here by chance (or , rather, thrown up by chance since there is no 'thrower') the options are: joy in contingency (hedonism) or nihilism. We are either completely withdrawn from the world, self-absorbed, ensnared by our own thoughts, passive, suffering in this second turning inwards or we dedicate ourselves to the cult of action, as if the sheer act of the will, no matter to what end it is directed, was all that counts. But there is another possibility, the earthly "broad gate": indecision, the limbo. If the universe, nature, is supremely indifferent to our existence then we can mirror its greyness, its lukewarmness; everything is but a process and truth and value are only lyingly added, a game , a sport we grown ups play to pass time, to run down time, to kill it. Science only posits truthfulness, not the truth.

The cosmos is no longer related to the good but nor is it something negative that must be transcended. This is as good as it gets and there is, as the gnostic Darwin said, just the right amount of suffering in the world. We live under the shadow of a cold, indifferent heaven.

But it was not always so. Pluto, it is said, is an aberration to the system;always just off radar, teetering on the edge of irrationality and kosmos, its very presence throws the whole delicately balanced order out of tune, creating a minor preturbance that disturbs the fragile equilibrium. It may not have any immediately perceivable repercussions but when disaster struck one could invariably trace the ripples back to the her dark influence just as one might look over one's shoulder. And yet, because she was so far from the the main centres of power and light it was thought that she maintained some semblance of holy innocence, being childlike in her smallness.

And the comets, with their pristine existence, so close to the origins, the pre-world...how they retreat to the outer fringes of the solar system, all that is known. There they replenish the ice and rock and ancient metallic ores that lie folded in their hearts, drawing sustenance form the oort cloud. These distant , aloof beings, heroically stoical in an alien universe wait for aeons in the darkest , furthest regions. Only every several million years are the strangest of wayfarers in this desert universe drawn to the sun's brilliance. And then they shed their outer lives, bursting through to reveal a dazzling infinity.

These mythological beings that closely guard God's secrets carry with them, through the vast night of this crystalline, mathematical equation that we call home, the most elemental, the most quintessential thing to our life:water.

But now the universe doesn't sing to the god of mars nor can one hear that sweet melody. And the storytellers have long gone. In Purgatory there is no real desire to escape and so we talk to ourselves, satisfied with our condition, unaware of the silence, the indifference of our hearts.