((consensus))
We are all ghosts
of a time
when we were alive.
Even a simple toy can be an idol. A “molten calf” (Exodus 32) is a simplification or a substitute. It is like an artificial vagina compared to a woman, provided that “a good woman is hard to find” (Morphine). It is the “wide gate” (Matthew 7:13). Paul calls idolatry an obvious act of the flesh (Galatians 5:19-23). The “fruit of the Spirit” is then akin to the novelty search (Kenneth Stanley 2015). A toy becomes an idol when it leads a child away from discovery. The sin of idolatry is the sin of a boring homeostasis, of choosing always the familiar over the new. Of Eros without Thanatos.
Moses clings to the Jews (Exodus 32:10-11) and has to die with them (Deuteronomy 1:35) later. He is like an immutable value (Ps 55:19) in a garbage collecting language.
Firefighter [shares the value of being prepared to go](https://youtu.be/7eNlwB0WrZk), of maintaining a kind of just-in-time (on-demand) detachment from everything, from a minute pastime to self-identity (ego) and life.
“*Live every day as if it were your last*” (Marcus Aurelius) seems a popular quote, but it has a quality of an idol. People are pulled towards discovery and homeostasis both. When they don’t want to go the lengths of John Cage’s “chance operations” or some such “narrow gate”, they would melt their gold into the “molten calf” of that phrase.
Seldom do they implement the understanding that it is the actual embrace of Death which gives a person the courage and joy of discovery and life.
(cf. Hagakure: *Meditation on inevitable death should be performed daily.*)
Running from Death (2022-06-06) makes as much sense as for a program code to run from a programmer, or for a car to run from a car shop. No one can face God and live (Exodus 33:20), for to face God is to face change and reform. As Chesterton would put it in Orthodoxy: “*The love of a hero is more terrible than the hatred of a tyrant. .. If a man loves some feature of Pimlico (which seems unlikely), he may find himself defending that feature against Pimlico itself. But if he simply loves Pimlico itself, he may lay it waste and turn it into the New Jerusalem. .. A man’s friend likes him but leaves him as he is: his wife loves him and is always trying to turn him into somebody else.*”.
cancerous toxins and the rot of social consensus
inner consensus becomes possible when external is denied
critique and arguing as a form of collusion (scaling down)
the paradox of a sticky/static consensus: that which can not change/die, can not be a part of a dynamic consensus