The central confusion, that both surrounds and underlies the experience of a rhythmic discontent, seems to me to be the impossibility of answering at the same time 'who am I?', and 'what is the meaning of being?'. The dispute Heidegger tried to raise with so much vehement futility against Descartes rings as firm and irrepressible as when I try to stop from hearing the sound of my own beating heart. The nonsense of trying to interpret Heidegger's project as set out in his impossible opening to 'Being and Time' arises from the inescapable suspicion that the two questions should for the purposes of a coherent understanding of deliberate action be only one. Yet one begs and contradicts the other; the assumption of one that truth is one grounded by definition is made ridiculous by the other's insistence that value is a fundamental phenomenon, unique to being and prior to the act of understanding.
When one lands on new ground and tried to build, and decides, this is what I am going to do, should that not be a declaration of both who one is and what one values? In fact it is a declaration of, I am the content and meaning of what I do. But that is no good. It makes the meaning of the fact of being contingent on who one chooses to be. Every so often I find myself claiming, I want to do this because, and after a long chain of becauses, I am mired in the confusion of what is true and what I mean. I cannot choose to be something without enforcing the incontestability of my wants, the unfalsifiability of my good. A display of devotion to one's own agency that is not a godsend, but god. I am the content and meaning of what I do because I HAVE meaning.
Yet one feels compelled to persist in acts of self-persuasion that puts one in sync with the laws of the known world, without which all one's efforts cannot speak to the actions of others. We want to confront a world that can exist without us and we want to get in bed with our own kind, we want to sing in harmony, we want to bump into hard things and knock ourselves out cold.
Anthony Adams in Wes Anderson's Bottle Rocket describes Dignan: Say what you will about him, but he's no cynic and he's no quitter. Some days I feel very strongly about wanting to be Dignan. The actual state of things should have nothing to do with what I want to do, facts of life considerations can go get stuffed. On other days everything I come into contact with flows right through me. The world runs on madly by. The only thing I can touch is time itself, and I ride with it.
When one lands on new ground and tried to build, and decides, this is what I am going to do, should that not be a declaration of both who one is and what one values? In fact it is a declaration of, I am the content and meaning of what I do. But that is no good. It makes the meaning of the fact of being contingent on who one chooses to be. Every so often I find myself claiming, I want to do this because, and after a long chain of becauses, I am mired in the confusion of what is true and what I mean. I cannot choose to be something without enforcing the incontestability of my wants, the unfalsifiability of my good. A display of devotion to one's own agency that is not a godsend, but god. I am the content and meaning of what I do because I HAVE meaning.
Yet one feels compelled to persist in acts of self-persuasion that puts one in sync with the laws of the known world, without which all one's efforts cannot speak to the actions of others. We want to confront a world that can exist without us and we want to get in bed with our own kind, we want to sing in harmony, we want to bump into hard things and knock ourselves out cold.
Anthony Adams in Wes Anderson's Bottle Rocket describes Dignan: Say what you will about him, but he's no cynic and he's no quitter. Some days I feel very strongly about wanting to be Dignan. The actual state of things should have nothing to do with what I want to do, facts of life considerations can go get stuffed. On other days everything I come into contact with flows right through me. The world runs on madly by. The only thing I can touch is time itself, and I ride with it.
