Let’s consider what it means to be involved in this world. I mean that in a very literal and existential way. First, break down the word “involve.” The suffix in- is pretty simple. It means “in.” Okay, and “volve” comes from the Latin roots volvere, meaning “to turn.” So “involve” means something like “to turn in.” That sounds like you might turn in, as if going to bed. Or rather you might be looking inward, inside yourself, seeking insight. But what about in the idea that we mentioned first, as being involved in the world?
Let’s get metaphysical. Martin Heidegger, a German existential philosopher, made this same point in his book Being and Time. If you’re fluent in German, I suggest you read it in its native tongue because the English version is hard enough. The idea here is that being involved in the world consists of a kind of turning. It’s turning. You’re turning. You’re interacting. It’s interacting. And as it turns and you turn, you begin to realize that the involvement between you and the world cannot be done separately from one another. The two are inherently intertwined. We are all part of the weave, cut from the same fabric, if you will. And the world is this weave.
And in this intimate revolution between you and the world, you will find that because the world is so involved (and remember our definition of involve—the turning in) with you, it is as much within you as it appears to be outside of you. Let that one gel for a while.
Be involved, but know you must seek equipoise, be it in the concerns of dust- be it within the abstracts of an independent, idealist mind, or be it within pure mysticism- balance the Jezebel, though she ravages.
ReplyDeleteYes, one could easily derogate- could disappear within their own creations if not frugal in eye and caprice- but one sacrifices equally the very one true processor he knows, if he opts to so arrantly hold dirt and nothing else.
perhaps the world is a cheap dream, a dirty bubble, and we find flight within it because of some foolish clemency- we find inoculation only because we mollify the damned, certainly, but we resign when we cast into the shadows evil, for with it all beauty, all sacred will go. Can it be torn down the middle, can you glide through the single side of things, fully involved, and dismiss the other? A dream, me thinks, a nice dream.