5/15/2018 Elegance and the Damage Done – rotwork

rotwork

"If you're not living on the edge, you're taking up too much
space." – anonymous

Elegance and the Damage Done

Posted on May 14, 2018 by Keen

I think the worst thing monotheism did was introduce the concept of absolute transcendence to the
human mind. The idea that something, anything, can exist in complete and total isolation from
everything else. That this something needs no ecosystem to move through, no others to be in
relationship with, no sustenance to survive.

This idea is dangerous because once you conceive of something that doesn’t need the world to exist, then
the next logical step is that the world doesn’t need it to exist. And once you start burning the candle at
both ends like that, the whole structure comes crashing down. You enter into a kind of spiritual post-
modernism where the only things that ma er are what you, mortal, decide. And we mortals have a
pre y terrible track record of making good meaning. (And I say this with the full knowledge of my own
hypocrisy as a philosophical absurdist. However, this is how we get ridiculous schools of thought like
utilitarianism.)

Of course, some of us have stories that tell us about things and beings that exist, or once existed, in pure
isolation. But lest we forget, the isolation these primordial progenitors existed in were inhospitable
“places” to be for everything else – you and I included – because that isolation had to be done away with
before anything else could survive.

…You and I included.

The other thing that happens once nothing ma ers and anything can exist independently of everything
else if only you learn to excise them cleanly enough (in itself a kind of negativistic alchemy) is that the
world becomes a lifeless machine with interchangeable parts – a machine that can be understood in its
entirety and manipulated. A machine where parts can be removed.

We have spent many generations trying to make a more ‘elegant’ machine by removing supposedly
unwanted parts: people, nations, religions, animal and plant species, entire mountains and rivers and
seas. Worship of the elegant machine goes by many names: religious fundamentalism, state
communism, nazism, ecomodernism, manifest destiny, primitivism. Forget designer handbags; forget
designer dogs and designer children: this is a designer world arranged and rearranged like lego bricks.
This is the tyranny of aesthetic. This is elegance for elegance’s sake.

https://rotwork.wordpress.com/2018/05/14/elegance-and-the-damage-done/ 1/3
5/15/2018 Elegance and the Damage Done – rotwork

Dictionary.com defines elegant as:

Graceful in form or movement; appropriate to refined taste

And:

(of scientific, technical, or mathematical theories, solutions, etc.) gracefully concise and simple;
admirably succinct.

Refinement is a deliberate mechanical action with the goal of creating a superior product. In this case, a
more graceful, succinct, tasteful product for (certain) human consumption. “Admirably” succinct.

The idea that any one of us can change the world is predicated on this notion of a mechanical universe,
where all one needs to do is pull the right strings in the right order to get the desired result. Develop the
right still to produce the right sort of liquor, and all your dreams will come true. Funny that materialism
should have come from religious thought.

Unfortunately, this conception often forgets one li le thing: we are the machine, and the machine is us.
There is only one string, and it binds us all; one still, and its been spun since the dawn of time.

Be careful when you play with aesthetic; make sure you know what kind of purity you’re talking about.

I had a small revelation from the spirit(s) that are inspiring and sponsoring my comic recently; words
that did not feel like they were mine, but hit me and I’ve been rolling them around in my head since
then.

“We live here too,” they said.

“Oh, shit… you do.”

https://rotwork.wordpress.com/2018/05/14/elegance-and-the-damage-done/ 2/3
5/15/2018 Elegance and the Damage Done – rotwork
Advertisements

Doctors reveal the secret to

better knees & joints (Do this
daily!)

Report this ad

Pennsylvania Drivers With

No Tickets In 3 Years Are In
For A Big Surprise

Report this ad
Posted in Community, Work

Blog at WordPress.com.

https://rotwork.wordpress.com/2018/05/14/elegance-and-the-damage-done/ 3/3