Reductionism (1&2)

[jporter]

TF:

 >or maybe
>Leibniz is correct and this is the best of all possible
>worlds, but his reasoning, that God has made it so and could
>not have done otherwise is flawed by the comprehensiveness
>of Leibniz. Or perhaps it is the comprehensive Heraclitus
>that has got it right, but men both before they have heard
>it and when once they have heard it, prove uncomprehending.


I'm not a philosopher and trying to understand the works of philosophers
from the popular cultural level that I inhabit can be less than pretty. It
usually turns into a cultural reference game, wherein those things
referenced are only dimly understood (by me!), if at all, but have achieved
a kind of semiotic value in my mind, via one media channel or another, and
very much in competition with a whole bunch of other signs. It becomes like
seeking or worshipping the holy grid, or looking through a glass monod, or
shooting marbles with Demian, etc., etc., a game, in other words.

Perhaps the philosophers of today play parallel games with eachother on a
higher cultural level, and look down on the likes of me, the way Theseus
observed Bottom's production of- whatever Greek play he and his comrades
attempted- in a Midsummer's Night's Dream. I can only hope that the foax at
the top of the cultural pile are as wise and beneficent as Shakespeare's
Theseus. I don't think so, however.

And to make matters worse, there doesn't seem to be any gaurantee that
death will necessarily put an end to this inequality. I mean, maybe there
is only oblivion, but what if there is just another turf battle of a whole
different magnitude? Oneupmanship. Currying for favor, etc., all of which
we just don't recall secondary to the black waters of the Lethe? That might
really suck- a prime example of Met Him psychosis.

Back in this world, life goes on with only the faintest hint of "bestness"
peeking in from the corners, but mostly keeping out of sight. Sometimes it
just seems like another iteration of this morning's experience at the
supermarket. The night crew worker, at the end of his shift filling in at
the register, told me that when he finishes he's not going back to his
apartment to bed and a fitfull daytime sleep, but to his second job:
driving a Budweiser truck. He catches up on his sleep on the weekends, he
told me. Why are you working two jobs, I asked. "I'm saving up to buy a
house," he said.

On the radio driving back home I learned Alan Greenspan- right up there
with Leibnitz- had raised interest rates again. Too many people working, it
seems.

Where is Alan Ginzburg when we need him? (Didn't he write a supermarket
poem that I should reference about here in this post? )

Come on memory- step and fetch it.

jody