№ 773. While We Were Sleeping

2. The Broken World and the Functional Person

In line with his preference for concrete philosophy that speaks in ordinary language, Marcel begins many of his philosophical essays with an observation about life. One of his central observations about life and experience, from which he is able to derive many of the philosophical distinctions that follow, is that we live in a “broken world.” A world in which “ontological exigence”—if it is acknowledged at all—is silenced by an unconscious relativism or by a monism that discounts the personal, “ignores the tragic and denies the transcendent” (Marcel 1995, p. 15). The characterization of the world as broken does not necessarily imply that there was a time when the world was intact. It would be more correct to emphasize that the world we live in is essentially broken, broken in essence, in addition to having been further fractured by events in history. The observation is intended to point out that we find ourselves hic et nunc in a world that is broken. This situation is characterized by a refusal (or inability) to reflect, a refusal to imagine and a denial of the transcendent (Marcel 1951a, pp. 36–37). Although many things contribute to the “brokenness” of the world, the hallmark of its modern manifestation is “the misplacement of the idea of function” (Marcel 1995, p. 11).

“I should like to start,” Marcel says, “with a sort of global and intuitive characterization of the man in whom the sense of the ontological—the sense of being, is lacking, or, to speak more correctly, the man who has lost awareness of this sense” (Marcel 1995, p. 9). This person, the one who has lost awareness of the sense of the ontological, the one whose capacity to wonder has atrophied to the extent of becoming a vestigial trait, is an example of the influence of the misapplication of the idea of function. 

Pinterest

№ 556. Myth, Meaning & Mahler

 

If the past 11 months have seemed illogical and unstoppable, consider these questions. What if the hummingbird darting from flower to flower is actually a nobleman eternally searching for his beloved maiden? Or the sun and the moon are an angry married couple destined to chase each other across the sky? These age-old myths unsettle everyday logic to reveal larger truths. Unpredictability is but a literary device that helps explain an increasingly bizarre world.

Mythology is not only the relic of ancient civilizations, but also the engine of contemporary cultures. Its stories provide comfort by bringing people together to make sense of strangeness through shared foresight.

Mythology (from the Greek mythos for story-of-the-people, and logos for word or speech, so the spoken story of a people) is the study and interpretation of often sacred tales or fables of a culture known as myths or the collection of such stories which deal with various aspects of the human condition: good and evil; the meaning of suffering; human origins; the origin of place-names, animals, cultural values, and traditions; the meaning of life and death; the afterlife; and the gods or a god. Myths express the beliefs and values about these subjects held by a certain culture.

Mythology has played an integral part in every civilization throughout the world. Pre-historic cave paintings, etchings in stone, tombs, and monuments all suggest that, long before human beings set down their myths in words, they had already developed a belief structure corresponding to the definition of `myth' provided by Leach and Fried. 

According to psychiatrist Carl Jung, myth is a necessary aspect of the human psyche which needs to find meaning and order in a world which often presents itself as chaotic and meaningless:"

"The psyche, as a reflection of the world and man, is a thing of such infinite complexity that it can be observed and studied from a great many sides. It faces us with the same problem that the world does: because a systematic study of the world is beyond our powers, we have to content ourselves with mere rules of thumb and with aspects that particularly interest us. Everyone makes for himself his own segment of world and constructs his own private system, often with air-tight compartments, so that after a time it seems to him that he has grasped the meaning and structure of the whole. But the finite will never be able to grasp the infinite."

№ 480. Pigovian Tax

A Pigovian tax (also spelled Pigouvian tax) is a tax on any market activity that generates negative externalities (costs not included in the market price). The tax is intended to correct an undesirable or inefficient market outcome (a market failure), and does so by being set equal to the external marginal cost of the negative externalities. Social cost include private cost and external cost.

Pigovian Taxes

№ 442. A Brave and Startling Truth

Understanding Humanism

A BRAVE AND STARTLING TRUTH
Maya Angelou

We, this people, on a small and lonely planet
Traveling through casual space
Past aloof stars, across the way of indifferent suns
To a destination where all signs tell us
It is possible and imperative that we learn
A brave and startling truth

№ 395. Literature and Politics

“The place for literature is built by writers and readers. It’s a fragile place in some ways, but an indestructible one. When it’s broken, we rebuild it. Because we need shelter.” --- Arundhati Roy

Student art from paper cranes at the
Hiroshima Peace Memorial