I don't take The Word literally, but I do appear to take each word literally. For me it's a simple matter of curiosity. Paradoxically, in order to accommodate my initially unlimited curiosity, at times, I have to resort to returning to being what I'm curious about. It might have been due to this need that I became fairly obsessed about the abstract concept of Being.
I did take the low road of my own volition. I didn't have to. Ever. I got my ways, and I'm a lucky man by fate. My astrological natal chart reveals the conjunction of Venus and Jupiter in an agreeable sign that inhabits the Fifth House of love. The fact that this lovely conjunction of benefics happens in the sign Pisces where the planet Jupiter formerly co-ruled and Pisces is where the most positive aspects of the planet Venus are exalted. It's called the luckiest configuration in astrology. It's true, but in my chart that luck is compromised by an aspect of opposition with Pisces' ruling planet, Neptune.
In astrology, the Sun and the seven planets that can be seen with the naked eye (Snow White, and the Seven Dwarfs) have mythical roles that probably go way back into the mystical annals of oral tradition. In my opinion, in regard to now and then, only the metaphors and possibly the culturallanguages themselves have changed or been lost altogether. Homo sapiens still can't visually perceive any further than the Sun and the first seven planets orbiting it without their tools and technology. When is enough enow as an individual?
Any personal reckoning system one might find themselves left with that requires tools to extend the five senses or less is not a useful contingency plan. Granted, in the light of nuclear weaponry, any survival plan is probably gonna require the cooperation of others for anybody that ain't dead yet.
If there isn't any such thing as a daemon or genie or docetic god that can't become human, but can't get over it's obsession to serve as a weak and futile effort to try endlessly, then homo sapiens would invent them. They'd work too. Think back. We made everything else on our way through evolution, why not docetic spirits that will do the legwork of genies just to bargain for our souls, which are not ours as a possession with which we can negotiate. We do that anyway too.
Docetic spirits can't become human because they got no soul. I'm just writing this down. I'm following my own Twittering. It's the damnedest thing. I finally get some clear-mindedness about what a soul IS, and a couple of days later, I'm writing that docetic spirits can't become human (which is old news), but to find myself writing that docetic spirits can't be-co-me humans BECAUSE they have no soul is a new kid on the block.
This may be why I'm still reading Sartre when I first go to bed at night. I don't do it as often as I did when my bed was in the other room. If I'd had a TV to watch in that room I had my bed in I'd probably have never read Being and Nothingness. But I didn't and I did. Since I did, there's no push to get through to the end of it just to say I'd done it. The feat of doing it was sort of athletic. It took the same sort of discipline.
Several articles I read about reading Sartre advised there readers to push on through reading the book even though you might not feel emotionally met by understanding what th' hell this man is writing about. The reason those authors, to the man, recommended pushing through was to go back to the Introductory chapter and read it again, in order to find out what you had just read by reading all 800 pages.
I got the inescapable feeling while I was reading the English translation of Sartre's Being and Nothingness, that Sartre was teaching me how to read what he wrote as I progressed through my slow reading of the entire tome. I don't know if he designed it that way. The transliteration affect of translating between two modern languages shouldn't be that big of a jump to carry the theme. Not like it would be from an extinct ancient language to a modern language.
I don't know and don't wanna know how competent a job of translating Sartre the woman did who did the work. I don't know the history of how she did it or whether she struggled or whether she collaborated with Sartre or got his blessing or plagiarized. I don't care. I et wot wuz sot before me.
I figure she probably played a significant role in what I took to mean what as I proceeded nightly for a paragraph or two or a page or two or maybe even a whole chapter in one session.
The real reason I continued reading, I believe, was that Sartre (through his translator) was philosophizing about two topics I haven't been able to fathom by reading anybody else with the required interest. I get the feeling that I've attempted to plough through other philosopher's writings (usually translated), and just run outta steam.
Maybe I had a real yearning to understand existentialism. Reading Sartre was far from my first exposure to the philosophical ideas that get grouped under this heading. I read some of the books and plays by the leading exponents, but much of it was required reading in the drama department and English lit classes I had to make a passing grade in. I was assigned roles in some of the plays. I had to memorize lines.
I'm thinking that maybe this earlier exposure to this type of material all those years ago fertilized the ground for my reading Sartre. That, and my curiosity. I'm curious about what consciousness is, but understanding Being has become a weak obsession, and Sartre does his very best to say what he thinks being AND nothingness is all about.
Part of what I may have comprehended from reading Sartre's writings is that it's impossible to have being without nothingness. Nothingness is like the river Jordan. You gotta get across it to get to the other side. Nothingness is created by negation. Being is instituted or constituted on the other side of that created nothingness, and if the denial that created the nothingness is interrupted or thoughtlessly ignored, you lose consciousness,.
Lose consciousness _to what_ can be an interesting speculation. The practice of meditation amounts to thoughtfully ignoring the process of denial necessary to create a ground for consciousness, but not going to sleep. It's a form of lucid dreaming, but approached from beta wakefulness instead of thoughtlessly letting denial of the plenitude me-ander away, and going to sleep. It takes two bowls...
Here is the first description of what Existentialism is I've run across:
To us, existence comes first. The essence comes later. Indeed, the essence is whatever we decide it is going to be. So, from our point of view things are just the opposite of what they would be for people who believed in God. Now it is "existence precedes essence." Hence, "Existentialism."
http://www.friesian.com/existent.htm
The fact that i found this definition on the internet says enough about whether it's a competent definition by a qualified person. Who knows? On the other hand the ideas I garner from reading about existentialism leads me to believe essence comes before ex-is-tense due to the fact that nothing has to be instituted before an exit from is-ness can be generated by denial.
I do not attempt to tell the God's own truth here because I don't know what the truth is or hardly ever. I try to capture the drifting thoughts that randomly appear in my imagination for reasons I may not understand. I don't know if the content I capture with these words is true or false. The Comments settings are turned off to prevent me from having to defend what amounts to little more than fanciful, sometime crude speculation. Great moments in our lives never return.
