The Arrogance of Enlightenment

To believe that we have arrived at some kind of "final wisdom" and therefore have the prerogative of looking back at all prior history (not to mention all prior literature) with some absolute infallible insight is a very dangerous prejudice for the modern mind to hold...We should be constantly humbled by the creeping thought that many of our ethical assumptions are still flawed and our way of looking and evaluated skewed, but perhaps most importantly that our seeming rectitude covers over a multitude of potentially bad motives. We have outlawed every conceivable bad behavior (and improper thought) at least in theory - without having provided the means for people to avoid those behaviors...

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1974

Prologue - > We are fortunate to live in a time, or so it is said, when we of the future no longer feel the burden of gender to such a degree as in previous ages; nowadays there is no pre-established norm or "role" for us to perform or hold onto like a chain about the neck. There was a time, of course, and not so long ago, when men were de facto expected to be tough strong, resilient, athletic, assertive... and which to judge by the role models in movies and popular culture which we could add on silent, stoical, protective, while no great shock was registered if there should be a woman or more than one who in some degree was known (also through popular culture, movies, novels, songs, etc. in comparison with her male counterparts) as: soft, demure, flirtatious, sociable, wise, and to which one might add on: practical, prescient, intuitive, gregarious, solicitous, nurturing and perhaps multi-tasking, socially-aware, loyal, resilient . With regard to the males, unfair

The "Endless Summer" Feeling a.k.a. "Time Stop Mechanism"

Growing up out west - we had what was known as the "endless summer" feeling - a moment in the summer when - not Time per se - but hectic, anxious, nerve-wracking time would come to a standstill. Change would still happen of course, things would continue moving, interacting, but at a slower, more predictable pace...the rhythms of summer would take over with sunny days giving way to balmy nights...a certain degree of repetition would lend structure to this seeming "pause" in the action...Clouds still move across the sky, waves still crash against the shore, traffic on the roads, people walking, biking, swimming - but all in a self-contained world over which one had some semblance of control..Long days at the beach, lying in the sun or playing tennis at the community college, watching the heat rise on the pavement, shooting baskets on the outdoor courts, sitting poolside at a neighbor's house, sitting on the lawn at dusk, staying outside on summer nights with no wi

Historicity - Facticity - Thrownness - Temporality - Historical Fate

Historicity...Facticity...Thrownness... Temporality...Geworfenheit...the condition of having been born into a situation, thrown into a particular place and time - having one's Life conditioned by these unique, random, haphazard, non-repeating individual factors...Born into this year - this decade - the 1960s for example...growing up (for the most part) in this other decade (the 1970s) in a particular location, California, the west coast, in a particular milieu, the suburbs, with a stable family, on a quiet street (a former orange and walnut grove), with enough water and rain (or so we thought), on the edge of the desert, east of Los Angeles, a valley surrounded by mountains, a sleepy agricultural town with a college or two, during an uncrowded era of fast-moving freeways, a corner enclave of ranch homes, uphill from a dairy, a familiar mountain, a horse farm and a dried out river bed, in a neighborhood full of kids on bikes and roller skates, during such and such a time, a postw

SERIOUS GRAVITY (A SANITY PRIMER)

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