civilized ku # 480-82 ~ eye see nothing / closed
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Interstate exit chain store oasis ~ somewhere in Tennessee or Kentucky • click to embiggenI've been putting off a final reckoning, re: my road trip from hell revelation / epiphany because, to be honest, I still haven't completely come to grips with the thing.
That said, I can't help feeling that there is a rather direct connection between the addiction to making / viewing pretty pictures and the eye-see-nothing aversion to seeing the real-world mess that constitutes so much of everyday life.
As noted previously, it is a if, as Plato suggested, we all live in caves with which we have become quite comfortable and which we believe to be the one and only true nature of things - or, at least the one and only true nature of things that we choose to accept. Consequently, when we leave the caves and encounter the light of day, we are blinded to a reality that we steadfastly refuse to see.
What I find depressing is that now that we can take our caves with us - that is, all of our portable media devices - there is no reason to even try to see what's in the light of day. Just keep your head in your cave-space and ignore all the rest. Unfortunately, the net result of living in a spoon-fed cave-space is the death of imagination, curiosity, and creativity.
And, doubly unfortunately, when imagination, curiosity, and creativity die - as they apparently have for the majority of the denizens of the good 'ole US of A - we end up with a lot stuff in the light of day that no one sees and no one wants to deal with.
And, in the process, so much of real value that is ignored or isn't seen is lost and disappears - only to be replaced with even more messy stuff that we ignore or refuse to see.
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Featured Comment: Tennessee Ron (no link) wrote: "For example, if a man is presumably happy… although considered in the light of truth he is unhappy, he is usually far from wanting to be wrenched out of his error. On the contrary, he becomes indignant, he regards anyone who does so as his worst enemy… Why? Because he is completely dominated by the sensate and the sensate-psychical, because he lives in sensate categories, the pleasant and the unpleasant, waves goodbye to spirit, truth, etc., because he is too sensate to have the courage to venture out and to endure being spirit." Søren Kierkegaard - Sickness Unto Death