Showing posts with label counter-ecstasy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label counter-ecstasy. Show all posts

25 Apr 2013

Ecstasy



We should be extremely wary of those attempts to conceive of the overman as corresponding to the possibility of an ecstatic break from humanity. Zarathustra explicitly warns against the thought of a transcendent leap into the future.

In fact, it's arguable that what is most needed today is some form of counter-ecstatic return to the flesh; a stepping back into material life and the rejection of all forms of idealism that would abstract us away from the world of physical objects that we might touch.

For the key to constructing an active and ethical life is to remain, says Lawrence, inside your own skin and not pretend that you're any bigger than you actually are. To overcome ourselves we need not become more hu-man or superhuman, but less so; more animal, complete with teeth and guts and genitals and all those things which our idealists hope to see shrivel away.

And so, like Anna Brangwen, I hold on to the little things that save me from being swept up helplessly into the Abstract and the Universal. I don't want to get outside myself, or go around open-mouthed with a strange, ecstatic grin like a true believer.