HOW WHAT?

Grey. Or gray, if you want. The breakdown of ability to make distinctions results in 'totalitarian' landscapes. We 'exist' in 24 fps, in exit right, enter left standard - the tempo of cinematic conventions have locked us into step. With what? With what though? With an ever-homogenized aesthetic. Attempts, as there are, to 'free' the 'trapped' are over-focused on notions of false consciousness. Whatever became of faith in mind? The core of that great big existential corpus - was really the affirmation of the individual as an essential identity (not the supposed necessitation into nihilism)... see Kierkegaard, see Kant on 'freedom'. (But) Hence we would free ourselves through enslavement. Via dedication to extremities, to 'new' unconventionalities. Blatant stupidity is the way this contradictory new ideology presents itself. Be unique - and choose for yourself the drink that everyone else is choosing. No work is required to undermine the absurdity of these kinds of statements. Nevertheless the contradiction is taken as non-contradictory - why? because the message 'be unique' and 'be like everyone else' are both accepted as generically positive. And contradictory language has a 'stunning' quality. Examine the tautological sentencings of contemporary politicians. What shall we do about the budget deficit? We will do something about it. What can we do about improving education? We will resolve to do something about improving education. But what? How? And there is now the persistant clamor of all-connectedness - this persistant effort to eliminate the natural borders (instead of the unnatural ones) is just more evidence that we are loosing the ability to face our individualities and suffer our uniqueness, to make connections of our own free will, out of our commonalities and differences alike, across natural divisions there are may be natural connections - the metaphysical ones, those we must make distinctions in order to be able to see. We are not all the same... "We had to learn to distinguish. To distinguish and distinguish and distinguish. It was distinguishing, and not explanation that mattered." (Saul Bellow, Mr. Sammler's Planet, pg. 61) And from the previous page: "Whereas others sought the extraordinary in the world. Or wished to be what was gaped at. They themselves wanted to be the birds of rare plumage, the queerly deformed fishes, the ridiculous breeds of men." Max Weber - "Specialists without spirit, sensualists without heart, this nullity imagines that it has attained a level of civilization never before achieved."