[lit-ideas] Re: Simone Weil
- From: Erin Holder <erin.holder@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Sat, 7 Aug 2004 10:11:25 -0400
> Perhaps, when you took your existentialism class, you were
>
> still immature.
That could very well be. Yes, indeed, that could very well be. The thing is
though, that I took that class last semester and it finished at the beginning
of May. So let's see, we've got May, June, July, A - well, no, it's only the
beginning of August, so August doesn't count. I doubt much has changed since
May (wry grin), 'maturity' wise. Had I known maturity was a prerequisite for
understanding Weil, I probably wouldn't have bothered with her to begin with.
But you're right. It would be silly not to take another stab at her. Maybe
later. Much later. Way later. Far, far and away down the road. I'm just
getting into this Square business. It's cute, this square. I like it. Yes,
I'll give her another shot. Maybe she'll surprise me. Maybe I'll wind up
liking her more than Schopey. Nah. Impossible.
Erin
Toronto
Quoting Austin Meredith <Kouroo@xxxxxxxxx>:
>
> About all I could recommend, Erin, is that you should make a second attempt
>
> to read Simone Weil's _Gravity and Grace_. This could be important, and
> helpful, to you. Perhaps, when you took your existentialism class, you were
>
> still immature. Perhaps now, by the time you return to it, something within
>
> you will have subtly unknowingly altered, and you will find clarity where
> before the reading was only baffling. Such grace does occur.
>
> In an attempt to explain Simone, please allow me to spin a parable. There
> was this planet on which life evolved. Live evolved by chasing down and
> eating other life. Billions of years went by. Trillions of times, one form
> of life chased down and caught and horrifically executed another form of
> life, and ingested its bleeding corpse. Evolution happened, because the
> organisms that excelled at catching, or at not getting caught, survived,
> while those that did not excel at this perished. Eventually a form of life
> evolved, that was so efficient in catching, or at not getting caught, that
> it took over the planet. It was called human. All over the planet, humans
> were catching each other, and attempting to escape from each other. It was
> supremely, sublimely bloody. Then, the story goes, there was this one
> human, in one place at one time, who declined to continue in this bloody
> business. Everything in the history of that planet has been redeemed by
> that one act. We all learned about this person when we were children,
> because that one act had made all the previous blood and sacrifice
> worthwhile. Then there was this rocket made up of three stages. First the
> first stage burned to get the rocket seventy miles up from the planet's
> surface, above the atmosphere. Then the second stage burned to get the
> rocket into orbit six hundred miles up from the planet's surface. Then the
> third stage burned to send the rocket to the moon, and so on and so forth.
> A nose cone splashed into the Pacific Ocean, and eventually a dude in a
> dusty space costume walked into the President's office and handed him a
> fragment of moon rock. The dude in costume explained: "This is payload --
> all that other stuff was just rocket science."
>
>
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--
Erin
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