How can modern man rediscover his inborn instincts to stay with things — not chase them — to rediscover paradoxically the Tao, by swimming up the stream of Bergson’s élan vital into the rapids of "the endless risks of thought." Yet to Bergson life is more a matter of change than of position. Why then the concern for space, place, and position? Time, change, without a backdrop, without a perspective, without a medium, is for the confinement of an all embracing One that is not of this sensory realm. Man needs a field of action.

Could this then explain the restiveness of humanity—to chase things---giving incentive for conflict and competitiveness in the human field of action? We need heroes and villains to stir the soul. We take sports seriously to use as an alternative to wars beyond and within ourselves. We exploit political division because we hate complacency and love to hate opposites even though we might have to create sordid details of disapproval. Harmony is but an aberration of prevalent discord, which is quickly restored by trendy cacophonous creations. Though we praise love, we quickly discount it by estrangement and divorce — love is feminine romance and unworthy of manhood, which can only be achieved by the barbarian midst fawning nymphs. Pure religion — emphasizing universal brotherhood — strips away the will to power and consequently must be reinvented by the hierarchy of dissimilitude and exclusion.

The Tao and the risks of serious thought are not the route of modern humanity: it thrives on the thrill of one-dimensional ideologies leading to political, social and physical conflicts.

Copyright © 2004 Richard R. Kennedy All rights reserved. Revised: August 31, 2004.