Leviathan (Lucien Castaing-Taylor, Verena Paravel, 2012)
What is an apple for? That's something I genuinely want you to think about for a while. What is an apple for? Now I'm going to move on, but I shall come back to the apple eventually.
So the common conceit is that all matter is eternal. Nothing is created or destroyed. There're a lot of ins and out in amongst that whole story, but the basic principle holds. Nothing comes out of nothing, and nothing ends up as nothing. If you take a piece of paper and burn it, the paper is not really gone, it's just transformed, and all the parts that made up the paper simply continue to exist, albeit in a different form. And they'll do this 'forever'. They'll become part of something else. And, of course, all those pieces were part of other things before they were the piece of paper in the first place.
So let's extend this to us, you and me. It's easy to remember that our pieces are going to end up in other places, but it's difficult to remember that our pieces all came from somewhere else. So you were maybe a vegetable, bits of stone, a starfish, and so on. Basically we're renting our pieces, and in the end they'll be collected and they'll go on somewhere else.
However, for the time being we live in a world of such pure physicality of moving and food and energy that this transience is hard to grasp. But that doesn't stop it from being the case. Considering all of that it might be worth entertaining the idea of appealing to the one part of us that *isn't* borrowed, and that would be the part that doesn't have any physicality.
Sure, all your thoughts and feelings and stuff are electrical impulses and hormones and blah blah blah, but there's nothing to them. They're immaterial, in the literal sense of the term. They don't exist, and yet they are not only very real to you, but also the only element which is unique to us. The rest is hand-me-downs. So maybe that's the bit that we should pay most attention to, non? It might make sense. As I say, it's difficult to remember this because everything is so damned physical, but it's worth bearing in mind.
Going back to the apple: some people might say that the apple is for eating. It gives you energy and then you can walk around and talk and do stuff. And that's not wrong. But if you look at it from the perspective of the tree, then all of that stuff isn't really pertinent. The tree is just trying to get its seeds as far away from it as possible. So it makes a vessel for the seeds that will be eaten. Then the thing that ate the apple will go for a stroll and, eventually, poop out those seeds, and then, hopefully, the new tree grows. Nice and far away.
All of that might not interest you, but pieces of you are very likely to end up in a tree, part of a tree. And then you'll care.
So the common conceit is that all matter is eternal. Nothing is created or destroyed. There're a lot of ins and out in amongst that whole story, but the basic principle holds. Nothing comes out of nothing, and nothing ends up as nothing. If you take a piece of paper and burn it, the paper is not really gone, it's just transformed, and all the parts that made up the paper simply continue to exist, albeit in a different form. And they'll do this 'forever'. They'll become part of something else. And, of course, all those pieces were part of other things before they were the piece of paper in the first place.
So let's extend this to us, you and me. It's easy to remember that our pieces are going to end up in other places, but it's difficult to remember that our pieces all came from somewhere else. So you were maybe a vegetable, bits of stone, a starfish, and so on. Basically we're renting our pieces, and in the end they'll be collected and they'll go on somewhere else.
However, for the time being we live in a world of such pure physicality of moving and food and energy that this transience is hard to grasp. But that doesn't stop it from being the case. Considering all of that it might be worth entertaining the idea of appealing to the one part of us that *isn't* borrowed, and that would be the part that doesn't have any physicality.
Sure, all your thoughts and feelings and stuff are electrical impulses and hormones and blah blah blah, but there's nothing to them. They're immaterial, in the literal sense of the term. They don't exist, and yet they are not only very real to you, but also the only element which is unique to us. The rest is hand-me-downs. So maybe that's the bit that we should pay most attention to, non? It might make sense. As I say, it's difficult to remember this because everything is so damned physical, but it's worth bearing in mind.
Going back to the apple: some people might say that the apple is for eating. It gives you energy and then you can walk around and talk and do stuff. And that's not wrong. But if you look at it from the perspective of the tree, then all of that stuff isn't really pertinent. The tree is just trying to get its seeds as far away from it as possible. So it makes a vessel for the seeds that will be eaten. Then the thing that ate the apple will go for a stroll and, eventually, poop out those seeds, and then, hopefully, the new tree grows. Nice and far away.
All of that might not interest you, but pieces of you are very likely to end up in a tree, part of a tree. And then you'll care.