20141214 (J)
Journal: December 14, 2014
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Idea of "Other"                                Language                                Morality                                Mt. Summit Years                                Self

Prometheus and Burning of the Prudential Building: Terry Harvey and I often burned the trash at Harvey’s oil barrel incinerator, from my dad’s oil days. The incinerator had both ends removed. When ashes built up inside, just lift the barrel and spread the ashes over the lawn. Martha, Terry’s mom, kept the “burnables” in large cardboard boxes she saved from the grocery store. Our chore was to burn the trash.

Being kids, we turned adversity to opportunity and made a game of our chore. The box became the Prudential Building, the tallest in Chicago at the time. Both Terry and I had seen that massive stone monument thrusting endlessly into the sky, the biggest thing either of us had ever seen. We dumped the newspapers into the incinerator (most of the burnables) sometimes crumpled to ignite faster, sometimes not to burn slower, then lit the fire.

We set the box on top of the fire and cheered as the “Prudential Building” caught fire. If the box were set just right, the flames would burn from the inside out, reaching the outside surface in an explosive burst of flame to great cheers of "Whoo Whee" (Aphorism 47). Glowing pieces of black cardboard would rise in the heat, flicker and die. Some probably didn’t, prompting Bob’s suggestion, Terry’s dad, that the trash burning followed a rain. A little sadness crept in that the climax was over, but knowing another Prudential Building was already gathering fuel in Martha’s kitchen.

Chores done, REAL Play Time. Thanks for the good times Terry. You must have burned boxes with Mikey and Steve Harter, maybe even older Bill Bergmann, and many time alone. But for me it was an exciting thing to do. Perhaps we all have a little bit of an arsonist in us. Thank you Prometheus for your “forethought” that enabled us to control fire. His sin was to tell us about Chronos and Ananke and their daughters the fates powers greater than even Zeus, for which Zeus punished him severely.

Changeless Questions: What is changeless? What is eternal? What is God? The stars never changed with respect to each other. They are still the things whose position is known most precisely and predictably. What is the cause of causes? The time in which time exists? How can we “know” anything if all is changing? What “unchanging” ruler can we use to measure our knowledge? What is good? What is bad? What is the unchanging ruler for their measure? God, Brahmin, the Tao, Nirvana, self that survives death, oneness of all, will, Jung’s collective unconscious are all from the “other world”, the world beyond the senses, the world of imagination.

Now it seem math is a favorite candidate for the “unchanging eternal” F α 1/r2 etc. We can count on math to stay the same eternally, therefore “true”. And perhaps via JS Mill, we can use math to approximate even the human will, perhaps even Hagel’s will. The only problem with that is we can’t agree on the numbers for pleasure and pain.

Some even say pain is a gain, self-sacrifice a good. I remember the coach writing on the green blackboard (inconsistency noted) in the dressing room the first day after the final cut of basketball practice:

                                                H   U   R   T
                                                 P   A   I   N
                                               A  G  O  N  Y

I gave basketball up during my second sophomore year at Davidson, because practice was that and I don’t like pain. I think coaches have a little sadism in them; they must. I became weaker during the season rather than stronger due to exhaustion.