A Quote by Michael Leunig
Try as I do to comprehend the human project and my part in it, I am further than ever from understanding the monstrous everyday things that seem like self-evident truths and existential necessities to so many.
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Travel challenges truths that we were raised thinking were self-evident and God-given. Leaving home, we learn other people find different truths to be self-evident. We realize that it just makes sense to give everyone a little wiggle room.
Further, there are things of which the mind understands one part, but remains ignorant of the other; and when man is able to comprehend certain things, it does not follow that he must be able to comprehend everything.
Thomas Jefferson spoke of certain truths as self-evident. He did not say that these truths were self-explanatory or that they were self-operating.
There is a human striving for self-transcendence. It's part of what makes us human. With all of our flaws we want to go a little bit further than we've gone before and maybe even further than anyone else has gone before.
Religion is something people do together to face urgent problems and to resolve them by appealing to truths that seem self-evident to them.
I am part of the sun as my eye is part of me. That I am part of the earth my feet know perfectly, and my blood is part of the sea. My soul knows that I am part of the human race, my soul is an organic part of the great human race, as my spirit is part of my nation. In my own very self, I am part of my family.
Sometimes the simplest tasks are so incredibly challenging but everyday I try and I make choices to push myself further than I could ever imagine.
The most important misunderstanding seems to me to lie in a confusion between the human necessities which I consider part of human nature, and the human necessities as they appear as drives, needs, passions, etc., in any given historical period.
Our everyday self is a narrow construct...Our total self is far broader, ultimately infinite. Actors who seem to be playing themselves are actually playing roles they have become so skillful at that they seem pure and natural...Much bad Acting is the result of being too close to the Actor's everyday self, confining him in its rigid mold.
Life is an unfoldment, and the further we travel the more truth we can comprehend. To understand the things that are at our door is the best preparation for understanding those that lie beyond.
When you're in [ Bahamas], it feels like a bunch of islands, with keys and things like that. It's an existential archipelago. It's funny, you try to escape who you are and where you're from, but it's always part of your social DNA.
Philosophy would do well to desist from issuing any further injunctions about the need to re-establish the meaningfulness of existence, the purposefulness of life, or mend the shattered concord between man and nature. It should strive to be more than a sop to the pathetic twinge of human self-esteem. Nihilism is not an existential quandary but a speculative opportunity.
This is the personal side of things. When I started going through some of those transitions in my mind, just as a human being versus as an artist, I tried to... Essentially, I did this thing called Landmark Forum. It's three days of mind-expanding, existential philosophy, like Jean-Paul Sartre for everyday living. In existential philosophy they talk about "Being and Nothingness," this idea of not putting meaning onto things, and that in that way you live more purely. In other words, we form reality from these stories that we make up about our lives.
I love to exercise my creativity in many ways but as each year of specialization goes by I feel further and further from my other creative selves. I used to be able to see myself doing many things and sometimes I still long for a job that involves less pressure and grappling with people but, as you say, I am one of the lucky ones so I try to just focus on feeling lucky and carry on!
I am convinced that an electronic machine, no matter how smart and intelligent, being still a mere spatial structure in concept, can neither innovate nor even understand the self-evident proposition: 'No spatial structure can be a representation of any feeling'. Such innovation can only be a work of a non-spatial mind, like a human being, and only such innovation, it should be acknowledged, can pave the way for further scientific achievements.
Illness is a part of every human being's experience. It enhances our perceptions and reduces self-consciousness. It is the great confessional; things are said, truths are blurted out which health conceals.
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