The Passionate Mind: Sources of Destruction and CreativityRoutledge, 07 ապր, 2020 թ. - 370 էջ Consciousness, declares Robin Fox, is "out of context." Useful as an adaptation in the Stone Age, it brought humanity to the top of the food chain but has now created a world it cannot control. The Passionate Mind explores this paradox not through academic demonstration but through satiric dialogues, blank-verse ruminations, lyric, narrative and comic verse, and Aesopian fables. This mix of genres and styles forces us out of our usual linear modes of thinking to confront a harsh thesis. Because of consciousness we cannot operate without ideas, but once in thrall to ideas--whether of love, power, religion, or ideology--we cannot operate without destructiveness lest we become imprisoned by them. The range of subjects and genres Fox covers includes a verse summary of the key points of human evolution, a conference of farm animals ruminating on their social problems, visions of a desperate future from a neolithic hunter and a shaman at Lascaux, Kafkaesque trial scenes, and a new version of "God is dead." George Washington, having lost at Yorktown is put on trial with Adams, Jefferson, and Benedict Arnold giving evidence. Through the persona of Humbert Humbert as decadent Europe, the new world of Lolita/America is faced with the consequences of its pursuit of happiness. Scandinavian utopianism and salvation through romantic eros get their turn, and the basic "design failure" of humanity is examined in a Platonic dialogue. A bullfight and the struggle for existence in New Jersey farming lead up to a monologue from a decidedly unlikely Jesus who turns out to be part of an alien plan to control an otherwise out of control human race. Through this kaleidoscopic mix, Fox mounts a case for a thorough revision of consciousness that breaks "realistic" boundaries between science, the humanities, religion, and myth. |
From inside the book
Արդյունքներ 48–ի 1-ից 5-ը:
... Reason Is, and Ought to Be, Futile Lyrics on the Female Enigma (again) Three Possibilities Girls Who Lost Their Fathers Prospect of Nuclear Winter Bullfight at Altamira: The Sea at Santa Marta Psalm One Hundred and Fifty-one Five ...
... reason. But was it not Pascal who opined that the heart has its reasons of which reason knows not? And was it not the poet Ralph Hodgson who so luminously wrote Reason has moons, but moons not hers Lie mirrored on her sea, Confusing her ...
... Reason , of course , is important , but secondary . But where , alas , for the greater part of humankind , has the ability to think soundly fled ? The fact seems to be that it hasn't fled : For most people , it never was ; or for the ...
... reason , and our passions - which existed up to some ten thousand years before the present , has been lost : " This harmony , " he writes , did not mean peace , love , and justice for all , but rather that the pieces fit together in a ...
... reason, intelligence, culture, or especially “artificial intelligence.” He veers, he tells us, between mild optimism and total pessimism, hoping that his pessimism may alarm and alert and so serve a useful purpose. We devoutly pray, and ...