They’ll never know what you know, Cicero said of her academic colleagues. They’re not close to it, like you are. The secret of life is known only by those who’ve seen to the world. Who’ve died to it and come back. Who went beyond it, but had to come back.
There are those who know the world as a game, Cicero says. Who laugh at it: the whole world as a game. Who’ve learnt the lesson: that it’s all a game, a great game. That the Madness is greater than we are. That things just Happen, and we can’t do much about it. That the Contingency is greater than anything we might impose. That it towers over us: our powerlessness. The fact that we can do very little. That we’re dwarfed. Towered over …
And yet, we also know that the contingent has no ultimate reason for being the way it is. There’s no ultimate reason for anything. So you can’t complain, can’t mourn. It’s not all about the ur-trauma. About the withdrawal of the ground. About the absence of Necessity. About the great Indifference … the great Nullity … the great Void … threatening to devour everything.
Life is lived in midst of this. Forgetting the great Powers. The terrifying Sublimities. Forgetting all about the Storm of it all.
That we could laugh forever at the killing joke. At the arbitrariness of our fate. At the fact that what happens is in nobody’s hands. Even the rulers of this world. The great Planlessness. The great Randomness. The great Meaninglessness.
Man thinks and God laughs. We laugh – and laugh at ourselves thinking. Wasn’t that it, our philosophy. Our laughing philosophy?
Work in Progress 