Ergo Sum

A 19th Century French poet advised: “Let yourself be sustained by your principles — until they start to wobble.” Just for the fun of it, I’d like to shake them right off the bat.

“I think, therefore I am” is accepted as a universal truth but I disagree and propose instead: “I feel, therefore I am.” Perhaps I am not the first to claim it, as it seems pretty obvious. So, sorry for “rediscovering America.”

I know, thanks to the mind, that 2 + 2 = 4, and everybody else … Read More

You May Be Right, But …

Each time you encounter in an argument the “but”, transcending reason, it’s usual stronger than the reason. It refuses dialog proper to reason, it transcends your sense of values. ‘But’ is Zen, it doesn’t impose a solution, it only declares: “I don’t know why, I only know that your solution is unacceptable.” It’s in the twilight zone of intuition that the difference between us and the intelligent machine manifests itself. ‘But’ is quantic, indefinable. It will never be at the service of one idea because an ultimate solution doesn’t exist; … Read More

From the balcony at night …

From the balcony at night, I saw the neighbours through their lighted windows. The high-rise buildings looked like giant aquariums in which people, like fish, moved with mysterious aims, meaningful only for them. All movements are magic and hypnotic when we sum them up and take away their individual sense; fish in an aquarium, people in their habitats, rotation of the planets … all become unified, static, eternal; Buddhism and relativity in a common embrace.

Extracts of Existence

Passing instants …

Blossoms in the Snow

The desperation of passing instants

The spirits go away . . .
Above: clouds are passing
Below: people pass like ghosts.
When the humans go away, when the ghosts go away, why is it such a parade of sorrow? Perhaps because passing introduces the past to the present and to the inflexible future, as youth introduces old age and old age introduces death.
With ghosts you will not straighten your accounts.

Extracts of Existence

Extracts of Existence

Change …

~ Condition does not change essence, the ship aground will not root to become a tree.

~ There is no such thing as change; some part goes and another comes in its place. The human is like a tree — the leaves come and go and don’t know about each other

~ The problem is physical if you can change it and philosophical if you must change yourself.

Extracts of Existence

Extracts of Existence

.

Dance of Eros — Dance of Thanatos

In my archives, I happened to fall upon a postcard reproduction of Blair Drawson’s, “Dance of the Free Spirits.” To this artwork which I enjoyed, I added my translation of the last lines of “The Dancing Socrates” by the Polish poet, Julian Tuvim:

“Let them know that the madman in trance
The clown with the ugly snout of a dog
Learn the truth, learn the dance
Hopsa, hopsa, hop, hop, hop”

Now the reverse of Eros, the dance of Thanatos:

A couple of Holocaust survivors talked to me. The husband … Read More

God?

The materialists believe too much in what they know, the spiritualists dream too much about what they don’t know.

Richard Dawkins, agnostic, author of the book “The God Delusion”, sees in creeds false hopes, false rituals and limits to objective investigation.

We can neither prove nor disprove God, and preoccupation about God’s existence is not necessarily our first priority. The three to four dimensions where we spend our life can be with or without God. We know very little of our sensorial world but to live in it we don’t … Read More

“Stupidity”

A few weeks ago on CNN or CBC I saw a program about Stupidity. As stupidity is not a scientific term, the topic had to be treated humorously, and concluded that even if we can recognize stupidity it is still hard to define.

Logically, the term should define intellectual below average limits. What makes it hard to define is that, in reality, human behaviour is not the fruit of intellectual ability only, but also of personality. So, a person not considered stupid can make stupid, meaning ‘wrong’ decisions due to … Read More