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Wednesday, February 04, 2009

Hidden Gymnastics Of The Non-Mind

Of all the books resting patiently unread on my shelves, this one has the most poignantly ironic title:

Image of My Unwritten Books

My Unwritten Books by George Steiner.


I saw that Rage-Boy on Mystic Bourgeousie has found it as well and also pulled up an excellent Steiner quote. I respectfully quote his excellent quoting.

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The quote is from an interview with Steiner on Australia's ABC Radio National. The interviewer reads a passage from the book: "I'm haunted to the point of panic by the fragility of reason." Asked what he means by that, Steiner replies...

As I come to the end of my life, there are four times as many registered astrologers in the United States as there are physicists and chemists. Four times as many. The wife of our sometime Prime Minister wears an amulet against "space rays." There is not a corner of our lives now that is not invented, invited, invaded by idiocy of irrational superstition, [such as] people who pay vast sums to have some fake Oriental arrange their furniture. Vast sums! The whole New Age -- this is a charlatan's age like never before. It makes the Middle Ages seem scientific in many ways. And all around me, in people I deeply respect, you scratch the surface and there is a frightened, profoundly superstitious person doing hidden gymnastics of the non-mind, in a way, trying to plan their fate, trying to escape from reality. And it frightens me a great deal, because reason is very fragile.


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Life is tenuous, reason is threatened and I'm feeling a tad fragile myself...

Someone suggested acupuncture for my feet... I had no hesitation is telling him what I thought of that idea.

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Quote for a later blog-post from After Dark by Haruki Murakami:

"Of what value is a civilization that can't toast a piece of bread as ordered?"


Not much value at all, I'd say.

E@L

10 comments:

Indiana said...

Did they screw up your Kaya Toast again this morning?

I like the Fragile Mind quote ~grin~

rambeaux said...

Maybe you should drink a glass of water to help your feet?

savannah said...

how did i miss after dark, sugar? xoxo

(but yes, i agree with steiner and you about the state of mind around us. perhaps, that was one reason, thinking people rallied around our president when he said more science, more math and more reason!)

expat@large said...

Indy: On the way to my deep muscle therapist, I went tp breakfast at "Han" - my non-god, what an abomination! They used a... I shudder to think of it... a toaster for the kaya toast! Horrid, yet true. And the kopi (using the term loosely) had so little condensed milk in it, I had to add sugar!

Rambeaux: diluted, sorry I mean energised with a molecule of...?

Sav: It was late? (Late! "After Dark", late, geddit?? Hohohohohoho...)

Re: "our" president... should we (the world) place so much ethical responsibility on the shoulders of a man who, after all, is a Harvard lawyer?

expat@large said...

I mean, he's a really profound muscle therapist...

DanPloy said...

May I recommend the book, 'How Mumbo Jumbo conquered the world' by Francis Wheen.

savannah said...

i'm sorry, i meant "our" as in my president, sugar. i was speaking about our particular situation in the states. i believe the usa must work with other countries to achieve any sort of world wide stability, rather than assume that the usa can do it all alone, even with a harvard trained lawyer president. xoxox

expat@large said...

Dan: have it of course. The New Apocrypha by s-f writer John Sladek was a great new-age deflator as well in its time (1970's).

Sav: just teasin' ya... I believe we're all going to hell in a hand-basket thanks to Chicago School of Economics trained financial tapeworms...

Essentially it was the general switch from 'savings as investments' to 'investments as savings', that whole stockmarket thing that re-started in the 70's which had made us all so much more vulnerable. We are all culpable, because of our greed... The End is Repenting! Come Now!

savannah said...

;) ok! xoxo

expat@large said...

Talent hits a target no one else can hit; Genius hits a target no one else can see.
- Arthur Schopenhauer

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