Saturday, 14 April 2007

cooking the lunch and controlling the rawness of nature

Emptying boxes of books must qualify as one of the slowest activities in life; reading quickly as titles catch the eye collapses into sitting on the stairs , into getting a chair, into becoming engrossed by (in this instance) Edmund Leach on how we are like to gods.

We are masters of our situation and it should be the object of learning that we can come to terms with our surroundings rather than obliterate them in panic at the otherness of things.


As he says, "The unique and astonishing thing about human beings is not simply their capacity to analyse the contents of the world around them, but their capacity to create. Every one of us is an artist with words....as you speak you generate conciousness; what you create is yourself. That is a god-like activity."

Our education system is founded on taking things apart to see what they are, and then things are dismantled, or dead, when it should be about putting things together to see what can be created and alive.

3 comments:

Newmania said...

We are higher than the gods HG they exist to soothe the fear of consciousness and otherness that why they get so cross when we steal fire and indeed any action of will. I must say if you are going to invest everything with metaphysical portents of this sort you `ll never get out of the house . Is that why women are always late ?


Moved ? ….Anywhere nice ….

BTW Sorry I have overdone it here a bit.

hatfield girl said...

Pedestrian is the watchword for the next few remarks then N.

I keep reading the books instead of shelving them so the move was shamefully longer ago than it should be.

Newmania said...

Pedestrian is the watchword for the next few remarks then N.

Ha ha ... keep off my territory HG you can`t do banale .....

XX