2) Divination
A few years ago I came across a story which I wish to share, to help me illustrate an altogether inescapable realization concerning our existence of lability. The story comes from Saint Louis, Missouri and requires a bit of visual description regarding the city’s topography. When traveling from one neighborhood to the next there is an observation which cannot go unacknowledged; the streets are more than thoroughfares—they are the framework of the city which set structure to the otherwise coalescent characteristics of each neighborhood.
The residential neighborhood of Lafayette Square rests south of a large freight yard which runs west of the Mississippi and divides Saint Louis’ central commercial district from its residential counterparts. After walking through the train yard five days a week for nearly two years, I came to appreciate the character of the train yard, which is expressed by the unusual adjoining of the industrial operations with commercial and residential.
A few months before I took up residence in Lafayette Square, the people of the neighborhood witnessed a rare, but not altogether unbelievable event; a factory exploded releasing metal debris into the air which damaged lawns, automobiles, and roof tops. This event culminated with a citizen protest whose cause was the relocation of the industrial operation. During my first year in Lafayette Square propaganda populated the windows of the Victorian homes until the relocation was confirmed and completed.
We are blind all too often—our thought always an afterthought. I have to ask, what is the value of foresight to an individual when it is always an exploding factory which is needed to present us the moment in which to push back onto our environment? What is the value of foresight to a united front of thousands when there are always a thousand thousands which stand outside? Why gaze into crystal balls? Why seek a teller of fortunes?
To understand commendable foresight as a faculty of consciousness would mean to understand existence beyond all probability. This would mean to be at one with every cause—even those which are created through the passage of experience. This faculty would be equivalent to knowing every action that has been and the property of every substance which will react—this would be to know the universe as a single thought, and hear its song as a single harmonic tune.
But who could believe the universe fiddles a congruent song that they have been granted permission to hear? Who could be so audacious as to assume that their united front is the united front of all the universe, and that they are not one of the thousand thousands which stand outside? Who could believe that the fiddles of a thousand thousands fiddle for them? Who could suffer from so much vanity and exhort so much arrogance onto the world? And now that we have overcome our selfishness over the world—that is to say, our ego-coddling humanism—how could our modesty before the world allow us that which is so well concealed within that Christian plea: “Forgive them Father, for they know not what they do.”
Even today, when we find ourselves emancipated from the religious delusion we still find this impudence present in those political and economic philosophies which hold that intention can overcome any undesirable counter-finality—those who preach a morality out of their political and economical foresight. Why turn your foresight into the doctrine for your neighbor? And when your neighbor knows that the apple fell once, and when thrown again, will fall again, why become the overbearing mother with the weight of responsibly on your shoulders? Why, when in doing so, you become the thief who steals their feather or their brick?—why steal those experiences away?
