Does man require a transcendent purpose?
One that is divorced from the coldness of reason?
Must such a purpose be present within the soul of man in
order to stave off decay and complacency and galvanise the spirit?
I take my birthright amid the enormous mechanisms of man's creation,
which rationally interpret and interrogate the cold and dead earth.
With these vast engines man scrapes away at mystery and superstition,
inexorably unearthing the bedrock of
objective truth which underpins all.
Yet to turn this machinery inward and and interrogate the conscious
essence of the human being is to wrangle
with a problem of near infinite complexity.
A tapestry of delicate facts that are the whim of endless variables.
Can mere quantification of facts and phenomena
grant grandeur to the mind and sate the spirit?
To stand before a cliff face and to know the location of each and
every crop and ledge does not by its mere
knowledge allow a man to climb to the summit with ease.
Yet to traverse the infinite problem of being,
are we told that the bedrock of cold
facts is sufficient for orientation?
That a man with one hundred facts at hand
is better equipped than a man with fifty?
Is objectivity therefore an ultimate end to strive for?
Or is a fumbling and abstract force equally potent to quench and
inspire the soul of man,
around which we may rally without
understanding the finer intricacies of our actions?
Would a man driven by well-meaning but false and heuristic principles
forge a life less effectual than one
who follows only undiluted total truth?
Furthermore, are such false principles and abstract mistruths
simply immature glimpses of higher orders of objective truth?
Truths that are yet to be fathomed and thrall to prediction?
If, with infinite resource,
we could determine the variance of things and plot a course through
each action with precise, atomic deliberation,
would illusion and mistruth be eliminated from the psyche of man?
Or, conversely, would these mistruths and false principles remain
effective forces in managing the inertia of man in a way that
is more beguiling than the cold and blunt truth of the earth?
Must we therefore concede that the
untrue can be tolerated in some capacity?
Must we drape the veil of illusion over our eyes in order to
reap the rich crop that this illusion might allow to attain?
This is the deepest quandary that has torn at
my spirit, like the flail to the back of a slave.
O, how I remember when sweet certainty embraced my
fragile form and cocooned me from the unyielding tides.
I remember.
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