Jane Hirshfield
Naila: Your address of flip-flopping on unwillingness/Incapability is so spot on — I don’t think I can add anything of substance to your words there. Being unwilling is turning away. You are committing to inaction. This is worse, this is actual self betrayal. And you are right of course, this is the state of (anti) love in a capitalist society.
There is a cultural death of integrity and character. I was telling my good friend the other day, lots of people don’t have distinguishing character; they have simulated personality traits they collect and think bonds magically into an identity.
Everything is a gesturing-to, I think of this in terms of architecture as well but with these globally gentrified cities, actual architecture with aesthetic and historic integrity are demolished or left in ruin and we have these hideous plastic hotel apartment complexes and fake warehouse looking shops. They like, destroy the actual Thing and create this Untethered replacement that *gestures to* what existed before it. Or gestures to like a homogenous, ugly ass AI landscape. It’s fascistic.
And here we are with lots of people trying to substitute an actual developed internal landscape with signifiers or labelings that have no actual substance. Essence is intangible — this is why words and actions are of paramount importance. I always say words are not static — we interact with language and we live by our principles.
Recently, I said people seem to be seduced by the suggestion of action - without having experienced the despair of failed pursuit—and that is vampiric ! That is not Understanding or Living. That is to say, Words divorced from action are sterile. This is what I wish for people to actually labor to understand and reform in themselves.
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