Desire Suffering Satisfaction Forgetting

The more desire advances, the more true possession recedes. So that if it is possible to obtain happiness, or at least freedom from suffering, what we should seek is not the satisfaction, but the gradual reduction and final elimination of desire. We try to see those we love, we should try not to see them, for only the process of forgetting leads finally to the extinction of desire.

quoted in:
Proust, Marcel
"The Fugitive" (In Search Of Lost Time, Volume 5)
pps. 417-418, Penguin Classics, 2003

... and if in the end she did surrender ...

... and if in the end she did surrender, I would never be able to forget the time when she had been alone, and even if finally victorious, I would have suffered defeat in the past, that is to say irrevocably.

quoted in:
Proust, Marcel
"The Fugitive" (In Search Of Lost Time, Volume 5)
p. 401, Penguin Classics, 2003

Habit the fearsome goddess

I had thought that I no longer loved Albertine, believing that I had taken everything into account, that I was completely lucid and that I had plumbed the depths of my heart. But however great our intelligence, it cannot conceive all the elements that constitute it and which remain undetected as long as no event capable of isolating them makes them start to solidify out of the volatile state in which they exist for most of the time. I was mistakened when I thought that I saw clearly into my heart. But this knowledge, which the finest insights of my intellect had not given to me, had just been brought home to me, as hard, dazzling and strange as crystals of salt, through the sudden stimulus of pain. I had become so accustomed to having Albertine beside me, and now I suddenly saw Habit in a completely new perspective. Until now I had considered it above all a negative force suppressing the originality and even our awareness of our perceptions; now I saw it as a fearsome goddess, so attached to us, with her inscrutable face so grafted on to our hearts that if she detaches herself and turns away from us, this deity, whose presence we were barely able to discern, inflicts upon us the most terrible suffering, and then she is as cruel as death.

quoted in:
Proust, Marcel
"The Fugitive" (In Search Of Lost Time, Volume 5)
p. 388, Penguin Classics, 2003

... The world of real differences ...

The world of real differences does not exist on the surface of the earth, among all the countries levelled by our perceptions; how much less, therefore, does it exist among the 'worldly'. Does it in fact exist anywhere? The Vinteuil septet had seemed to tell me that it did. But where?

quoted in:
Proust, Marcel
"The Prisoner" (In Search Of Lost Time, Volume 5)
p. 254, Penguin Classics, 2003

I went crazy last night

I went crazy last night, love ran into me and said:
'I am coming, do not shout, do not tear your clothes, speak no more.'
'O love!' I said: 'I am afraid of other things.'
'There is nothing else' it said: 'speak no more.
I shall whisper hidden words into your ear;
You just nod in approval! except in secret speak no more!'

(Divan 2219:1-5)

Rumi

... The only real journey, the only Fountain of Youth, would be to travel not towards new landscapes, but with new eyes ...

But is it not the case that these elements, this final residue which we are obliged to keep to ourselves, which speech cannot convey even from friend to friend, from master to pupil, from lover to mistress, that this inexpressible thing which reveals the qualitative difference between what each of us has felt and has had to leave on the threshold of the phrases which he uses to communicate with others, something which he can do only by dwelling on points of experience common to all and consequently of no interest to any, can be expressed through art, the art of a Vinteuil or an Elstir, which makes manifest in the colours of the spectrum the intimate make-up of those worlds we call individuals, and which without art we should never know? Wings, another respiratory system which allowed us to cross the immensity of space, would not help us. For if we went to Mars or Venus while keeping the same sense, everything we might see there would take on the same aspect as the things we know on Earth. The only real journey, the only Fountain of Youth, would be to travel not towards new landscapes, but with new eyes, to see the universe through the eyes of another, of a hundred others, to see the hundred universes that each of them can see, or can be; and we can do that with the help of an Elstir, a Vinteuil; with them and their like we can truly fly from star to star.

quoted in:
Proust, Marcel
"The Prisoner" (In Search Of Lost Time, Volume 5)
pps. 236-7, Penguin Classics, 2003

Information as Active Authoring on an Interpersonal Basis

"Several years ago I was talking with Tim O'Reilly about the discomfort we both felt about treating information as a commodity. It seemed to us that information was something more, and quite different, than the communicable form of knowledge. It was not a commodity, exactly, and was insulted by the generality we call "content".

Information, we observed, is derived from the verb *inform,* which is related to the verb *form*. To *inform* is not to "deliver information", but rather to *form* the other party. If you tell me something I didn't know before, I am changed by that. If I believe you, and value what you say, I have granted you authority. Meaning, I have given you the right to *author* what I know. Therefore, *we are all authors of each other*. This is a profoundly human condition in any case, but it is an especially important aspect of the open source value system. By forming each other, as we also form useful software, we are making the world. Not merely changing it."

Not sure that I have come across such a concept of "Active" information before, especially in relation to "information" "authoring" or "forming" something within a person - the very act of communicating information becomes an active involvement in creating something new in another.

Surely there must be some philosophical or psychological precursor to this notion? Who else wrote about such concepts?

Proust everywhere

Didn't quite know how many people reference Proust out there (on the 'net) - but then again, I shouldn't be surprised (of course - but sometimes, in one's little egocentric universe, the breadth of universality surprises and disturbs at the same time).
Clairity's Place has this blog on the Proust Project - path to leader to deeper inquiry.
But just as surprising (well, not really, is the number of people referencing Proust who have never read him). That's the damage for becoming a cultural icon (after one's death).

(PS - I am sure I will talk about something else when I have finished his masterwork!)

Blogging - self-referentially

Did you see this article on blogs?
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/05_18/b3931001_mz001.htm

No, I hadn't, but on reading it - couldn't agree more.

And the wonderful reference to the babies blog (quite a cute little joke).
http://thedowningboys.blogspot.com/2005/04/yucky-dee-doo-day.html

OK. Blogs are interesting and are multiplying at germ warfare rates.
And they can have some influence on companies.
Mostly "disruptive", as the writer mostly hinted at (strongly and literally in one place).

Grows quickly. Just like the web did (after a while - same for blogs).
And then mainstreams and falls in on its own mass - something else comes along which not really supersedes but rather enhances (in addition to) that "older" technology. Nothing is ever lost - just added to.
Ditto for blogging.
Not everyone will blog or want to or make it a part of their normal day.

Next...

Reverse Cyborgism

Somebody (http://velvetbreeze.blogspot.com/) wrote:
I am so super super tired. I am going to blue-screen soon.

Love the computer reference for a human medical condition. Reverse Cyborg thinking.
Are we being "reversed" into Cyborgism?

Universal Truth and Difference

The universe is true for all of us and different for each one.

quoted in:
Proust, Marcel
"The Prisoner" (In Search Of Lost Time, Volume 5)
p. 171, Penguin Classics, 2003

The managing editor, an honest, clumsy soul ...

The managing editor, an honest, clumsy soul, lies quite straightforwardly, like an architect who assures you your house will be ready on a date when it will not have been started.

quoted in:
Proust, Marcel
"The Prisoner" (In Search Of Lost Time, Volume 5)
p. 162, Penguin Classics, 2003

-------------------------------------------------

Isn't it nice to know that more than 100 years later, certain aspects of society remain obstinately similar.

What is it about building that means it is always late?

And since we are involved in the "building of technology" industry, and software systems are notoriously always late (one way or another, regardless of the "scoping" changes that various game-players use to "pretend" that they are "on time, on budget"), are we now talking about some "universal verisimilitude" that is ingrained in the nature of human activity ...
Building Something Aways Takes Longer Than One Expects (Or Wants)

... one of those tortures where a task has constantly to be begun again, like that of the Danaids or of Ixion.

Jealousy, whose eyes are bandaged, is not only powerless to see anything in the surrounding darkness; it is one of those tortures where a task has constantly to be begun again, like that of the Danaids or of Ixion.

quoted in:
Proust, Marcel
"The Prisoner" (In Search Of Lost Time, Volume 5)
p. 135, Penguin Classics, 2003



So, how did the Greeks get it so right? And so long ago?
How did they work out that life consisted of such repetition that one felt like Ixion strapped to a never-ending turning wheel of fire (http://www.pantheon.org/articles/i/ixion.html), forever pronouncing "Be Nice To He Who Looks After You". Mind-numbing, horrifying repetition.

"They say that by the commands of the gods Ixion spins round and round on his feathered wheel, saying this to mortals: 'Repay your benefactor frequently with gentle favors in return'." [Pindar, Pythian Odes 2.20] (http://homepage.mac.com/cparada/GML/Ixion.html)


Ixion - Tormented For Eternity By A Flying (Burning) Wheel

Quel mortel insolent vient chercher le trepas? (What insolent mortal comes here to seek death?)

Quel mortel insolent vient chercher le trepas?

Est-ce pour vous qu'est fait cet ordre si severe?

Je ne trouve qu'en vous je ne sais quelle grace
Qui me charme toujours et jamais ne me lasse

---------------------------------------------------------

What insolent mortal comes here to seek death?

Was it for you that his stern order was made?

I find only in you a certain grace
Which always charms me and never tires me



from:
Racine, "Esther"
quoted in:
Proust, Marcel
"The Prisoner" (In Search Of Lost Time, Volume 5)
p. 106, Penguin Classics, 2003

... debris of a dream ... inattention ... vain anxieties: a life most like a dream.

We do not know, we shall never know, we struggle to put together the debris of a dream, and in the meantime our life with our mistress goes on, our life of inattention to what we do not know is important to us, attention to what we think important but perhaps is not, a life made nightmarish by beings who have no real connection with us, filled with forgetfulness, gaps, vain anxieties: a life most like a dream.

quoted in:
Proust, Marcel
"The Prisoner" (In Search Of Lost Time, Volume 5)
p. 131-2, Penguin Classics, 2003

Memory

For memory is not a copy, always present to our eyes, of the various events of our life, but rather a void from which, every now and then, a present resemblance allows us to recover, to resurrect, dead recollections; but there are also thousands of tiny facts which never fell into this well of potential memories and which we shall never be able to check.

quoted in:
Proust, Marcel
"The Prisoner" (In Search Of Lost Time, Volume 5)
p. 131, Penguin Classics, 2003

... that invisible, translucent yet changeable medium through which we looked ...

In front of my eyes, in front of Albertine's, there had been not just the morning sunshine but that invisible, translucent yet changeable medium through which we looked, I at her actions, she at the importance of her own life: that is to say, those beliefs which we do not perceive but which are no more a pure vacuum than the air we breathe; they compose around us a changing atmosphere, sometimes excellent, often unbreathable, which we could usefully measure and note as carefully as the temperature, pressure and season, for each of our days has its individual character, physical and psychological.

quoted in:
Proust, Marcel
"The Prisoner" (In Search Of Lost Time, Volume 5)
p. 133, Penguin Classics, 2003

=====================================================

By far the finest literary exposition of the concept of Weltanschauung
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weltanschauung) (http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1918freud-civwelt.html)
that I have ever read - and written maybe seventy years before used by Peter Checkland in his Soft Systems Methodology work
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Checkland) (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soft_systems) (http://www.brunel.ac.uk/~bustcfj/bola/research/ssm.html) (http://members.tripod.com/SSM_Delphi/ssm4.html) (http://valinor.ca/ssm3.html).

Here, Proust vividly describes the essential invisibility yet pervasiveness that constitutes a "Weltanschuung" that guides our thoughts (shallow and deep). Yet not only inform our thinking, but, by means of an almost self-referential loop, constitutes the bedrock by which thinking itself can only occur (in the same manner that air itself constitutes the means whereby (human) life can exist).

... her narrow, velvety gaze fastened on the passer-by, stuck to her, so gluey and corrosive ...

Certainly at these moments she was not at all the same as when it was she who was interested in some passing girl. In that case, her narrow, velvety gaze fastened on the passer-by, stuck to her, so gluey and corrosive that you felt it would not be able to detach itself without removing a patch of skin.

quoted in:
Proust, Marcel
"The Prisoner" (In Search Of Lost Time, Volume 5)
p. 134, Penguin Classics, 2003

Boredom / Expectations on Achievement

There is so much attention played on achievement, right from an early
age.  Doesn't matter what age and doesn't matter even what level
of achievement.  It is more doing something, and making sure that doing achieves something that others can recognise - that others say "You achieved this thing".

So, you are directed to achieve from an early age.  Is it sociological or is it biological?  Do we have to achieve to simply stay alive - at least when we are young - we have to achieve to learn and to thrive and to grow?  Probably, probably not!

How much do we know there/here?  But whatever it means, this may not be the case when we are older.  We are imbued with having to achieve but at some point in life - earlier, or later - we sometimes (is that always?) decide that achievement does not matter any longer.  We don't care about achieving any longer - we just want to live and get from one day to
another.  And so we don't strive to achieve and therefore we don't achieve.

And following on from that level of on-achievement, nothing happens.  And we feel like nothing happens.

We have then the lack of an expectation of achieving something, which leads to the lack of action with respect to achievement, which leads to the lack of achievement, which then reinforces the lack of an expectation for achievement.

A nice loop indeed.

Does this mean, that from a certain point (in time, in life) - there is just that rather gradual, nice, slow decline to a quiet death?

Ahasuerus

Et la mort est le prix de tout audacieux
Qui sans etre appele se presente a ses yeux.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Rien ne met a l'abri de cet ordre fatal,
Ni le rang, ni le sexe, et le crime est egal.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Moi-meme . . .
Je suis a cette loi comme une autre sournise,
Et sans le prevenir it faut pour lui parler
Qu'il me cherche ou du moins qu'il me fasse appeler.

------------------------------------------------------

And death is the reward of any audacious person
Who without being called appears before his eyes
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Nothing can protect one from that deadly order,
Neither rank nor sex, and the crime is equal.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Even I . . .
am subject to this law like anyone else,
And without forestalling him, if I am to speak with him
I must wait for him to come to me or at least have me called.

-------------------------------------------------------------

from:
Racine, "Esther" (Act I, Scene iii)
quoted in:
Proust, Marcel
"The Prisoner" (In Search Of Lost Time, Volume 5)
p. 11, Penguin Classics, 2003