So that's what it means to think of life as a dog, then?
I think Velasquez is the wrong painter - maybe Goya's Black Paintings are closer to the truth?
Life as a journey is a strange sort of metaphor - it is often applied but seems oddly inappropriate somehow: a journey is supposed to be the route to somewhere, but life doesn't really take you anywhere at all; regardless of successes or failures, you end up in the same damn place, in your head at least, from whence you thought you'd set off on that wonderful trip. The problem is both mechanical and spiritual: your genes make you what you are and all the experiences in the world can't honestly change that. I have had personal experiences from a very young age that I wouldn't even recount here, anywhere in fact where I'm not personally known, because I would be written off as a romancer, a fibber of the first waters.
But where did any of it lead? I'm still me and the highs are now long gone; excitement was certainly enjoyable in youth but now would probably prove fatal; belief in a rosier tomorrow gets washed out of the system if only because of the unavoidable lessons of experience. I remember a time when one could depend on over 15% tax-free interest offshore - now, all you get is a hole in your capital and ever increasing bills. And no, it isn't a matter of life on any breadline - yet! - but something far more destructive. Think of your own history: how do you think you might feel if you come to realise you are the last of a certain section of a family's generations, that there is nobody left alive with whom you can talk about things that happened in your youth; people who know the same people, songs and movies...? That's not to say there are not others much older around, simply that they are not part of a personal landscape of references. This could be taken as a huge dollop of introspective shmaltz, which it might be, but it is the truth nonetheless. Far from being on any journey I think we are all in a private little capsule which holds all of our references and experiences, dreams and fears. We bob about on a sea of random currents and imagine we are actually in control! The thing is, that little capsule contains everything you have in life, and as it decays from within there is no lifeboat able to come out and tow you away to your safe-haven.
But at least the dog doesn't know this - I hope!
;-)
Rob C
Rob,
What an interesting post really, and it all came with the Michael's intriguing dog.
Whatever Velasquez or Goya, the Dog is consciousness. It is not that the "dog" does not know this, it is that it
does not care about this.
I agree with you when you say we do not go anywhere, there is nowhere to go. We stayed in the same f......g place, a place that we have never leaved.
Also true that we are not doing anything, although we like to beleive so.
But in your post, there is a reference of a kind of "feeling of powerlessness", and you also talk about identity. One=the other.
The dog does not have identity, it is above, neither male-female. It is there.
It is not only our genes who make us what (we think) we are: it is our conditionning. Where you born, cultural codes, things you hear baby, climate, external circunstances like war or peace etc...these determine the "programming". As 99%, we are programmed to respond in a way or another, we stay in the same place because this programming correspond to that space. To go somewhere, we would need to change the programing, but it is so difficult that we stay where we are. When older, you realize that you did not do a meter ahead!...
The dog (symbolic of course) does not need to go anywhere, does not need excitements because excitements make us beleive we are "alive"! when we are more deads than anything else. Excitements need to be feeded, you will need more in order to be satisfied. Onces you reach one step, it is not exciting any more so you need to go further...more intense excitments.
You're out of the system? Welcome then, who wants to be a ship?
Dogs control ships, and force them to go where it wants to.
What you are feeling is really good.
Fred.
