by Steven Sills
Chapter 16
Broaching the Personal
If, when conflated with sensory input, emotion is that which is the genesis of thought and intelligence, adulterating emotion adulterates both; and if the impressions of personal experience are not to be trusted as a form of truth, then no individual has anything whatsoever to offer to posterity; and without the ability to reach posterity an evanescent life will have been proven with enough time by whatever comes thereafter with time to have never existed, although, to himself, contentment and satisfaction in such a petty life is possible if consistency over the years in job, friends, and family, that which is perennial to a man’s brevity on the planet, is maintained. Certainly, to substantiate already substantiated observations of the outside world recorded vicariously in books and documentaries (better than personal experience in every sense but confirmatory observations ultimately superfluous, and thus in the absence of any absolute truth beyond the need for compassion and equity—everything in life set in accident—a man can only luxuriate in his senses: the spectacular moon he has seen as though it had not been seen before, the sheen of the waters, the sweet smells of any verdant flora he encounters, the vast complexities of his own petty personal domain, slightly different than all others) is a an exercise in futility; and that which has not yet been confirmed is usually limited to the realm of science, and a team work effort at that so nothing that can be done alone.
And it is aloneness that I seek, and it is on the gondola of words that I am transported into a realm of sentience referred to as consciousness leading to purported deeper dimensions of me. If, these flooded catacombs, these cavernous dimensions of the self, are merely sprawling and interweaving words, and not truth, that lead nowhere but culs de sac and words that are merely a nexus to other words, and I am merely a dog chasing its own tail, I will do so in my own way.
If I am a pawn manipulated by my DNA I will not be unwittingly so; and if manipulated by my society, I, just another prostitute for money, albeit an unwilling one, will choose to be conscious of it the whole time, do what little I, a professor of Western philosophy in Siam, must, and no more, to survive and retain me, and contribute to it as I see fit. If not, I will also be a dispensable part in this mechanical monstrosity of society, a tiny part of a carbon emitting juggernaut barreling onto all including itself in its own self destruction with enough time. But there is no not, as I will be lionized as a whole man. I say this as Aus, scared of the battles that are waged in this city and my earlier absence, holds onto one of my arms, making it hard to write.
BOOK II
The Self and Environment Close-up through a More Myopic Lens