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Flipping Through
If I could advise you on anything, it would be to adhere to moderation. Moderation is what society thrives on. It functions through the push and pull between our individual lives and the whole world’s actions. But, I hope you won’t listen to me. Moderation is the ultimate demise of the human spirit. If you limit yourself you can never learn to fly, breathe without regret, love with the passion of a thousand suns, and most importantly, you do not learn.
Many of my friends have proven that moderation is futile. We struggle to fit ourselves in a box and conform to set shape or form and only end up failing miserably. We walk on for thousands of miles before we know it we are acting against our boundaries and then we are back where we started, punishing ourselves for breaking those boxes. It is in our nature to run wild and stand in the rain even though we know we will only get hurt in the end.
We are meant to be ourselves to the fullest, which means expressing ourselves in the most passionate and extreme measures. A friend of mine, Matt, has been punishing himself for acting with his emotions. He pursued my best friend with his heart unknowingly, following his heart as the passion grew. Now he struggles to understand what he did wrong and how he feels. After standing back from the state of freedom and into the boundaries of the box, we are instantly in pain. His was an obvious breaking, shown from the tearing apart of his friendship with my best friend. He is so stuck in this unnatural flow of expression that he cannot learn or improve himself.
You could say that we learn at our fullest from experience because it connects to us in a more personal level, saying that is the best representation of the rejection of moderation. We learn in books, stories, newspapers, and even from gab of other people that certain actions or things cannot be tolerated, which serves as a form of moderation, yet we do them anyway. We act upon our impulses, an action that is the most pure expression of ourselves.
The Greek Gods were so “perfect” because they were able to avoid necessity yet still follow it. Necessity had been the constraining force behind the Olden Gods of logic and order under Kronus’ leadership. They lead with order and necessity, doing things because it was needed or logical. Zeus’ realm exists under a more amorous necessity, one cloaked under Eros. They are able to follow impulses and emotions but still be “perfect” because their necessity they are ruled by, is in itself chaos. The amorous necessity is one of chaos but still order. It implies that there are consequences and actions, neither deemed more evil than another yet they always follow one another. There are still inalienable truths but they are not solid foundation anymore, they can be bent and broken as long as you are aware they are there.
We are unique when we are able to follow our true selves when rejecting moderation in the sense that the Gods had a “perfect” nature by following amorous necessity. As explained, they were perfect in their own context of necessity. We are unique as long as we do not follow moderation but are aware of it. The new necessity of today is moderation.
We can become Gods these days by being unique, truly unique. Those that dare to imitate or follow us only end up creating evil. Like the Greeks and Romans, when they followed their Gods, because “the gods were the example and model of every evil, and it wasn’t fair to blame men for imitating actions the gods had committed before them” all who followed the Gods were blameless and free but not necessarily unique (155). Humans must search and define themselves to be unique but gods are unique in their nature. Humans have the potential to be unique if they follow their impulses or nature. The other problem is that other people see evil in the perfection of the Gods, seeing them as an example or model of every evil when they are just following nature. Nature, one must realize, does not have a boding with good nor evil.
Not all impulses are bad—eating, going to the bathroom, loving, and even being happy. Nature is the one of the divine forces on this Earth that has an extreme power immeasurable at this point in life other than using our impulses and desires. Now, I am not telling you to go out and wreak havoc to be unique. I am saying that true uniqueness shines without all power, all knowing, or all good. True purity comes from uniqueness. Everyone has a different set of impulses to follow; thereby everyone is differently unique if they learn.
But seriously, I hope you won’t listen to me.
Source: The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony by Roberto Calasso, page 155.
This is just a fragment of some of the light I get from my Mythology class. It's more of a rant but still insightful and thought provoking. I hope you enjoyed it ^^
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