I am everything; you are nothing. There is no common measure between us. Nothing is 'given'...I can only create a world in my image or destroy. How will this end?
'He is Null Achtzehn. He is not called anything except that, Zero Eighteen, the last three figures of his entry number; as if everyone was aware that only a man is worthy of a name, and that NullAchtzehn is no longer a man.'
'He is Null Achtzehn. He is not called anything except that, Zero Eighteen, the last three figures of his entry number; as if everyone was aware that only a man is worthy of a name, and that NullAchtzehn is no longer a man.'
---Primo Levi.
Is there something Protestant about the hero, battling against himself as much as the world, this fallen world that cannot be redeemed by "works" but only by grace? The damned and the saved, the absurdity of it all.
He must push on, against all odds, not so much because the goal is difficult but, rather, because this relentless striving is the goal. To be constantly on the move, deeply sceptical of the world and its "distractions". By sheer irony, it is the existentialist's disdain for material goods, his quest for new experiences, that keeps the capitalist machine going. (To be satisfied, content, to live within one's limits, to find happiness in the people around you...all that, the "bovine acceptance of things" (Sartre) spells the death knell of the system).
He must push on, against all odds, not so much because the goal is difficult but, rather, because this relentless striving is the goal. To be constantly on the move, deeply sceptical of the world and its "distractions". By sheer irony, it is the existentialist's disdain for material goods, his quest for new experiences, that keeps the capitalist machine going. (To be satisfied, content, to live within one's limits, to find happiness in the people around you...all that, the "bovine acceptance of things" (Sartre) spells the death knell of the system).
I am everything; you are nothing. There is no common measure between us. Nothing is 'given'...I can only create a world in my image or destroy.
Is this not Man's version of God?
Free from authority, from institutions, 'supports', from doctrine and ritual. From now on, strike out. Make something of your life.
The ideal here is a consumer in a shop, surveying everything and taking what satisfies his tastes, sovereign in his decisions, unchallenged when it comes to the quality of those tastes since they are blind desires and no-one can sit in judgement. There must be no interval for reflection, everything must flow onwards...Desire, yours truly.
The existential hero must find pure space (Calasso's American Woodsman comes to mind but all sorts of 'settlers'), flee from cyclical time-partly because it is too confining, but partly (surely) because the last sequence is decline and death. It as if to say: we can only see ourselves truly from a distance, detached, cut free from any obligations, relationships. Other people remind us of our own mortality.
~~~
Why is there so much anger, aggressiveness, and violence? Is it because we fail to get recognition through love and friendship and that we must, therefore, attempt to compel others to recognize us? A self-hatred spilling out on to a hatred for other people?
Norman Mailer provocative comments on the attacks after 9/11: America must reassert (or find again) its (moral) authority. Kick Ass!
Is the exercise of power ever really an exhibition of freedom or is it really just a symptom of the will to dominate?
~~~
Why is there so much anger, aggressiveness, and violence? Is it because we fail to get recognition through love and friendship and that we must, therefore, attempt to compel others to recognize us? A self-hatred spilling out on to a hatred for other people?
Norman Mailer provocative comments on the attacks after 9/11: America must reassert (or find again) its (moral) authority. Kick Ass!
Is the exercise of power ever really an exhibition of freedom or is it really just a symptom of the will to dominate?
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