It is only on very particular occasions, such as when giving a speech, that we first formulate a clear intention internally and then speak it. Most of the time, we don’t know what we’re going to say or do until we do it. We do not go through life with a constantly self-aware inner controller calling the shots. We get to know our own beliefs, thoughts and desires in the same way that we do those of others: by noticing what our words and actions express.
ReadRegular readers might have noticed that I often talk about confronting reality as though that were a good thing. Could it not be a philosopher’s bias to assume that it is better to live in the gloomy shadow of dark truths than in the artificial light of pleasing falsehoods?
ReadIf the price of a certain liberty and spreading out in the world is less of a sense of belonging, for many that price is worth paying. There are those for whom it is better to be moving and rootless than static and routeless.
ReadGetting close to nature is therefore not a simple matter of removing as much of the human touch as possible. It’s not the quantity of our intervention that counts, but the quality.
ReadThere is a poetic truth in Nietzsche’s final collapse into syphilitic madness. In tears, he flung his arms around a horse he had seen being flogged, both man and beast enduring suffering neither could overcome. In that moment, he showed that we can love the weak without them or us loving their weakness.
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