11.12.2017

Aphorisms on Truth / Diversity

9. They say truth is atomic, too small to observe with the eye, and that only a specialist can explain it. They say too that truth is the most general, the equation to assume all other equations, and that only an expert can understand it. That men in the middle, men of localities, small communities where they know every other man by his face and blood--they say now that these men know nothing of the truth. They are without specializations. They have expertise in nothing at all. 

10. Language itself is being remodeled on the tiniest or the most general; its origin in a local, small, well-knit community of men now obscured. To what purpose? To the benefit of whom?

22. And so you have inherited a tradition. It is Greek. It is pagan. It is Jewish and Christian. It is the singular, monotheism of the latter that has come to dominate. Plotinus was the first, they say, to acclaim the One, and thereafter the multiplicity of gods were winnowed down to the one God of Abraham, the one Christ. It is a model of truth that allows no diversity of opinion -- none of the endless conflicts of the disputing pagan gods and goddesses. The one God brought the Europeans together when before they worshiped and believed apart: they believed locally. Now they were to be brought together in the first pan-European project: a faith in Jesus Christ. Those who resisted to maintain local traditions, rituals and divinities were heretics to be converted or set fire to. 

27. They speak today of diversity. They invoke it often. They say hiring a negro to do a job is diversity. Publishing the thoughts of a woman with a penis is diversity. Putting a retard on the high school varsity basketball team will bring some sort of justice. But these are each shallow understandings of diversity. True diversity is to allow for other forms of life: to allow for hunter gatherers to go about their lives and not imprison them for poaching and trespass; to leave the forests alone that are habitat for the animals that are each year made more extinct; to let alone the plants and fish; to not drill into and cut apart the mountains; to not darken the skies with pollutants; to keep what is wild and illegible from being named and transformed by the political-economic system.

1 comment:

  1. On the gods: the prelinguistic Hunter gatherer and his gods versus the monotheistic is interesting, but the epic gods of the Sumerians, Egyptians ,Greeks etc have to be mentioned. The fight among those gods for monotheism is a different experience from the helping and hurting spirits of the hunter gatherer. The upcoming podcast will highlight this tpoic.

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