The success of the marionette we call Brain is largely due to the fact that Brain does not feel pain. This is precisely why brain tells us that we are the most important thing in the universe regardless of all the other things in the universe that just want to share the place with us, think us ok but not all important, and want to be a part of the part that we are. Brain of course instructs us that we are special, we jump into this conceptualization of ourselves because there is something really teddy bear woolly within, it feels warm to be special, to be god’s chosen folk, it feels good to be the center of intelligence, it feels good and this is the one that I will never comprehend but it feels good to be able to question! Fuck the only thing that ever questions anything is the thing that does not know and not knowing only has one proposition; it has to marry itself to an answer. The marriage can only end in divorce. The answers that we find ourselves are inconsequential to the universe regardless of how important they are to us. You can sit around marveling about the fact that we split the atom and Columbus discovered the new world; to the universe splitting the atom is an everyday occurrence, one of the least exotic events within it; and the fact that Columbus discovered America is frankly so inconsequential to the universe that it will simply wont matter and it wont be documented or registered in universal history. A shame because I assume that discovering America was not small feat for Columbus and specially not a small feat for Spain which has a Don Quixote relevance quotient.
To be fair to Spain, Einstein’s theory of relativity is also interesting and better yet pretty, but the universe really doesn’t care about it, sorry Einstein but that is the honest truth. The universe does not really care! And that is what is so damn difficult to appreciate, because it is damn difficult to appreciate that the universe does not care because it should not be that way because that is not the universe we would have designed. Of course, for obvious reasons we did not design the universe and so the universe does not surprisingly behave like we would like it to.
But while we did not get the privilege of architecting the universe we have been fortunately given the role of being a part of it, and since we are a part of it we make up that part of the universe of which we are the part. The wholly difficult thing is that we are not the whole thing, though we are a whole humanity which is saying a lot, only we have subdivided ourselves by creating the individual entity which means that we are now a part of a part of the universe because we broke up the whole into individuals. Brain does this because Brain doesn’t care about you; and you wont do anything about it because your in love with what Brain does. Never mind that this whole division makes us less capable of truly conquering the universe, if that were the thing and the right thing to do.
We scramble this way and that way and away from one another as a way to manifest our uniqueness, only our uniqueness is in the fact that we are a humanity, as that we might be unique, further dividing humanity does not make it more unique it only breaks it up into what must end result in broken parts. Humanity is an essence, a universal essence, when we take it and riddle it with individuality we may feel especial but we will feel less; and the less we feel the more we are going to like cold blooded Brain.
Of course things don’t seem right to us, plenty of us know that things are wrong, and plenty of us would like a unification of the uniqueness we call humanity; but it really seems impossible; from every angle we are a fighting faction, from every root we seem to want to blossom as the masters of the universe or at least as the masters of our profession. How can you say an artist produces in isolation? How can you say that an architect does his own thing? Where is the truth in individual accomplishment? I have never seen an individual accomplish anything significant? Even Einstein depended on ideas and theories developed by other to come up with his pretty thing. The Mona Lisa was as important to the painting as Leonardo DaVinci and so were all the producers of the materials, maybe the inventor of the canvas was more important, maybe the importance of the inventor of the canvas lies hidden within that smile. When I see that woman smile there seems to be a massive satisfaction as if she were getting something over on us, as if Leonardo was saying I know what I am doing to you and I am not really doing it to you, you are really doing it to yourself and you are going to think I am fantastic. But was Leonardo fantastic or was that woman fantastic? More a chance I think that she was fantastic and that he was a good copier, he copied her, he had this model, the perfect model for the expression, he merely copied her onto canvas. This I think is more accurate, but of course he had to have known the importance of the moment, and he ought get credit for that, and credit for the accurate rendition, but there are so many things that make a painter, the artistry of it is only part of it, there was of course something between Leonardo and Mona, and they did it in front of us, they are still doing it in front of us, and that is what keeps the painting so fresh, these two are feeling something within each other and they are letting us watch. That is precious.
The correlation of self to the world and to others suffers no distance nor dimension. This is what really hurts ruler Brain because we don’t need Brain to touch the world. What Leonardo and Mona accomplish everyday is touching.
Touching is not an individualistic act.
