Word-play-of-the-day ...
[woke-up light-headed, musing about an old movie]
"Lightness" is where science morphs into philosophy; where "logos"
exhales life; where levity becomes a weighty issue, and where
being becomes nothingness.
Huh?
... to complete the picture, one needs a serious scowl and a
Sartresque 'pipe' ... or maybe a Magrittish 'ceci n'est pas une
pipe'.
If I have lost you there, Jean Paul was seldom seen with a
smoking-pipe and Rene Magritte's painting "La trahison des images"
("The Treachery of Images") is a depiction of what could have been
Sartre's smoking pipe with the phrase: "This is not a pipe."
Because, well... it's not an existential pipe, it's just a
painting of a pipe.
Anyway, lightness is mostly about essence - about "being" and not
especially about photons nor gravity ... nor even impecuniousness
<g> but since we know that light 'feels' gravity, we can't dismiss
the connection. And as for the cash-connection, suffice it to say
that freedom equates with lightness, which is nothing left to
lose.
According to Kundera's take on Sartre, "being" is full of
"lightness" because each of us has only one life to live: "Einmal
ist Keinmal" ("once is never", which is to lament that "what
happened once might as well have never happened at all") ... not
to be confused with the very-lightweight: "once is never enough"
and excluding the singularity known as the big bang. 'Einmal ist
Keinmal' is the polar opposite sentiment to "better to have loved
and lost ... etc"
And taking this to the extreme -- a life, like a wave of light, is
ultimately so insignificant as to mean nothing in itself; and
weighty decisions scarcely 'matter' at all. In a hundred years,
the foolishness of an oil-war, or even the treasonous lies and
deeds that justified it, will be scarcely remembered ... while
such concepts as "what is the meaning of "is"? or "didn't inhale"
or "don't ask, don't tell" may be imbedded in the language as
memes. These are the whims of a culture which is not constrained
by reason.
Hence, since 'decisions' do not matter much, their lightness
should not tie us down with misplaced guilt. But at the same
time, the very insignificance of our so-called 'freedom of choice'
is an unbearable admission that its not so much 'free' as it is
'evanescent' - just as our lives, our being, or the
lilies-of-the-field - are unbearable in lightness and fragility...
and transitory beauty. All sound and fury - signifying nothing.
Jones
PS (and giving credit where credit is due) doesn't this mean that
"the unbearable lightness of being" is drawing interest from a
bouncing Czech ?
BTW: Your "word of the day" was brought to you by the letter "L"
