Unmoored

"The idea that happiness could have a share in beauty would be too much of a good thing." - Walter Benjamin

But how much is too much? Our problem today is that we always want more, and will go to great lengths to get it.

In pursuit of even more, we will do almost anything.

And the more we do, the more we can do.

This leads to Great Expectations, as in: since we teach ourselves to highlight how much more we can do, soon we find that others feel comfortable asking us to do more of it.

It's connected to beauty, art, and taste too. In Australia, when something tastes luscious, and you want to keep eating it, then it's more-ish.

When you are addicted to travel, beautiful people of the multitudes, a good book, an excellent bottle of white wine from the Marlborough region of New Zealand, or anything that mixes real coconut with dark chocolate, and then find yourself unexpectedly having access to all of the above in places you never dreamed of, life itself becomes more-ish.

But when does this joie de vivre become just another phase of greed-mongering?

Whether it's going out and making more money, or turning in and philosophically investigating why we always want more more, there is still the problem that when push comes to shove, less is more.

At least this is what I have found to be true.

What started me on the Road To More?

A poetic life of voluntary simplicity.

Highly suggested.

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Metadata: life, philosophy, travel, art, food

Boredom Wins Again

"Boredom is the threshold to great deeds. Now, it would be important to know: what is the dialectical antithesis to boredom?" - Walter Benjamin

The only way to answer Benjamin's question successfully would be to ignore it - to avoid it, to void it in the nothingness that is the antithesis to boredom that exceeds any inclination to playing his game.

But here is another blog entry, and the game somehow goes on.

Maybe tomorrow I will finally win, and boredom's other will have its final say.

Until then, there's always the blogstyle version of Passagen-Work.

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Metadata: blog, philosophy

Dream-Sleep

I, too, dislike it.

Consumer culture, that is.

Ersatz leisure time sold as heightened experiential value.

For example, this view here:



Is this version of paradise really worth the struggle of being an American intellectual cum "avant-garde" artist?

Since this is my view of the world when I watch the sun rise, I suppose it's a loaded question.

Is this what Walter Benjamin meant by the term "dream-sleep"? And am I the all-too-willing consumer of its vast purchase?

Or is it the flip side of Benjamin's intent with his Passagen-Work, i.e. "an experiment in the technique of awakening"?

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Metadata: art, philosophy