(in which the education of everyone is restarted)
The human imagination must never be robbed of its power to tell itself other stories,and thus to create a different future.
John Cowper Powys*
As I copy out his words I feel that they could begin the integration of my own experience and that of anyone who seeks unity and purpose in the complexities of the time.
...But after drafting and redrafting that sentence the writer realises that it is still too vague and too abstract... so he must wait until something more concrete appears 'from the depths' (if it does...This reminds me of a longer quotation that appears among the epigraphs at the end of softopia 2.2:
I touch here upon what is to me one of the profoundest philosophical mysteries: I mean the power of the individual mind to create its own world, not in complete independence of what is called "the objective world," but in a steadily growing independent attitude of other minds towards this world. [...] The point is that we have the power of re-creating the universe from the depths of ourselves. In doing so we share the creative force that started the whole process.
John Cowper Powys, from Autobiography, 1934/1994.
from the depths: a miracle
chapter 2
in which the miracle of unification continues and re-learning of how to live with technology without dualism begins
Unity is an imaginary being who lives in an imaginary house. She has returned there after many centuries of disbelief, conceived by the Ancient Greeks and re-learnt in the Renaissance. We moderns, who are now in global trouble caused by split-mindedness, are still looking for unity but do not yet realise that she is an imaginary being who lives on an imaginary earth that is still waiting to be realised as or in or on this one...
Will the moderns ever find her or is the tragedy of mechanisation going to continue forever?
Stepping down from these abstract heights, the writer is hoping to answer that question as a story of earthlife relived in the presence of Unity, of Utopia, of Numeroso and of other imaginary beings whose presence will, he hopes, make a difference.
He smiles.
His first move is to travel from the house of Unity to the city of London. The high speed vehicle moves with post-mechanical smoothness but in the rush to catch it he forgot the sandwiches that Unity has made for him - they are still in the actual refrigerator. Life is not perfect even in the presence of Unity but the intentions are good even if memories are defective.
[navigational note]
Remember (in this new and now final attempt) to wait for the inevitability of integration and do not act before it's timely nor expect to exert special moral or economic effort - let the new take its own time and find its own form (keeping distance from past urgencies, wishes or moral demands, biased or greedy integrations that are unfair or untimely)... [end of navigation]
As the journey from idea to reality continues, the writer realises that the lifeworks he wants to rethink and revive are not subject to the tempo of his thoughts or his wishes, or those of any others - they are subject to the speeds and resistances of collective reality such as none of us perceives fully but which are in the power and imagination of each to realise, given a new meta state that is yet to be formed in this very writing and all such forms of constructive idealism (as opposed to evasive or resistive)...
(unearthly applause and then silence)
(these pages are designed to be read with the window set to two-thirds of the screen width)
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