"There is a certain kind of contempt for what I would call unconscious life in our culture..for the idea that there is anything in us that can't be quantified, externalised, instrumentalised."
--Josh Cohen.
Who am I to demand a partner never again indulge a crush, share a kiss at a party, or take someone to bed?
--Kate Iselin, The Guardian.
The end of the public world is, strangely, also the end of the private one as well.
This is not just about the replacement of one form of communication by another but the erasure of the necessary conditions that allow for the possibility of communication in the first place. What sense of the self can there be in a rapidly shape-shifting world? Only a smidgen of private life remains when we are so in thrall to confession, 'exposure,' instantaneous gratification, global connectivity and breaking news. For anything to grow there has to be a period of silence, a realm of darkness, distances, an essential gap between the self and the world. The rapid succession of one moment after the other destroys any chance of repose, which is why the distinctiveness of Sunday (or the Sabbath) is so important to maintain.
We flee from one extreme to the other: I am the word, or the world is everything. The ordinary, bourgeois concept of the self lies in tatters. This goes back to a fascinating talk yesterday over on Start the Week. Can we imagine ordinary, everyday pleasures and enjoyment as being as important as forbidden ones?
In terms of intelligence Lane Fox came across as too fusty to be interesting (I think I'm prejudiced because they're hailing his new biography of Augustine to be the new marker in scholarship and I can't fathom the thought that anyone could surpass Peter Brown's wonderful book, written in his twenties!).
Adam Philips sharp as ever, a bit too sharp perhaps. Larissa M, though, strikes me as someone who is deeply intelligent in a way that escapes most academics. I'm not quite sure why, but her essay on Derek Parfit is perhaps the best advertisement for a way of thinking that is both open and 'alive'.
2 comments:
maintaining the "distinctiveness of Sunday": absolutely!
I so much value the silence & aimlessness of a Sunday.
Recently major cities over here gave in to the commercial lobby and launched 1 shopping Sunday a month: exit Sunday calm in the streets, enter cars & stress
best,
fff
Yes, terrible. Sat + sun have changed..taking a bit of the gloss off Friday night. More importantly, the wonderful boring aimlessness of Sunday is rapidly disappearing.
What remains..in the uk anyway.. Are the 4 or 5 days after boxing day. Love that time of the year, fff.
In the land of the pure its a lot more relaxed and slower. Perhaps too much. But the same trends..no one has any time for anyone. The internet and the media are helping to destroy what Tillich called " the silence of the commons"
Orr?
Hope all is well. That things have quietened down there.
K.
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