Friday, February 10, 2012

Becoming Creature

We talk about a kingdom --  is it a matter of difference or degree?  At what point do we engage in an act, a mode of being that distinguishes us from an animal?  What are animals incapable of that we can do?  There is very little, as science reveals, that we thought belonged solely to humans -- e.g. language, self-awareness, rational and mathematical thinking.  All these qualities just draw out a line of degree from animal to human.  There is one thing that no animal possesses, and it is dual creative and revelatory energy of the sanctification.  It is nihilistic and destructive by denying the material in place of the splendid and spectral transcendent, and at the same time, it is creative and gives new meaning.  Lies are more essential to meaning than truth.  A difficult psychological and historical reality to accept.  Humans are the only animal capable of sublimated suicide, a seemingly disembodied ego that can turn on itself and the blood-based, physical world.  We have to believe; we have to lie to preserve our humanity even our base human functioning.  It is hard to maintain an appetite if you cannot convince yourself that human love is real.  We are animals without tooth and claw if we are deprived of the suicidal drive to lie, to sanctify, to remove ourselves from the material.  If we enter into the lies, we create and perpetuate the lies, we are no longer an animal, not a degree, but transcend into difference.

If sanctification, or sublimated suicide, is the way we become human, how do we achieve the fullest extent of our sole act of humanizing.  Enter into a lie that destroys the primary lie that enters into an absurdity of being both human and animal at the same moment.  Sanctify the animal, take care for the animal, abstain from injury towards the animal.  You lie and say the animal is your total equal, and you are an animal.  The animal is anointed.  In your most human act, you give up your humanity and become animal again.  How is it possible that we've acted at our highest capacity as a human and in doing so debased ourselves at the same time?  The material is sanctified, you are debased and equalized, your essential human trait to destroy is inverted and gives new meaning and life to the physical world.  You are both animal and human, you act in a way that makes the animal your equal, but you caused it to occur by engaging in the thing that makes you beyond animal, therefore a human -- you revel in being an absurd creature.