Dear Reader,
Is there a difference between
a
Man Made man
and a
Self Made man?
Malick's representation of
living with Grace
and
living with Nature
within the film
Systemic change is created by the activation of individuals
at the root
okay. but the only true perception we have is our own. and aren't our individual perceptions all going to be different?
Why would they be different?
because we're each an individual human being, with our own individual brain creating it's own individual perception of the world. maybe that's why things are so weird- you know? there's a disconnect between our perceptions of truth causing the wind tunnel feeling that truth is lost.
Lost is relative.
Oliver Sacks (1933-2015) and William James (1842-1910) are one of my favorite pairs.
The idea of partners from another life
If you have a few more moments, dear Reader, allow me to read you a section from Sacks' River of Consciousness exemplifying the pair in motion:
' "Time," says Jorge Luis Borges, " is the substance I am made of. Time is a river that carries me away, but I am the river." Our movements, our actions, are extended in time, as are our perceptions, our thoughts, the contents of consciousness. We live in time, we organize time, we are time creatures through and through. But is the time we live in, or live by, continuous, like Borge's river? Or is it more comparable to a succession of discrete moments, like beads on a string?...
For William James, writing his Principles of Psychology in 1890, the 'Humean view," as he called it, was both powerful and vexing. It seemed counterintuitive, as a start.* In his famous chapter on "stream of thought," James stressed that to its possessor consciousness seems to be always continuous, "without breach, crack, or division," never "chopped up in bits." The contents of consciousness might be changing continually, but we move smoothly from one thought to another, one percept to another, without interruption or breaks. For James, thought flowed, hence his introduction of the "stream of consciousness." But, he wondered, "is consciousness really discontinuous?... does it only seem continuous to itself by an illusion analogous to that of the zoetrope?" '
What is time to you?
How can we strengthen our individual perceptions in order to strengthen what we lay to offer on Humanity's Table?
must we?
With the thunder of a beast’s weight thrown from a fireman's carry onto the table before us,
As us,
*we are pain avoiding creatures. it's not just you. it's everyone.