'There are periods of decline when the pattern fades to which our inmost life must conform. When we enter upon them we sway and lose our balance. From hollow joy we sink to leaden sorrow, and past and future acquire a new charm from our sense of loss. So we wander aimlessly in the irretrievable past or in distant Utopias; but the fleeting moment we cannot grasp.'...
'So I swear to myself in the future to fall alone in freedom rather than to accompany the servants on the path to triumph.'
Ernst Jünger, On The Marble Cliffs (1939)
We should attempt to get beyond our sense of the tragic. I received in my makeup a generous amount of hard-wired Anglo Saxon pessimism and self-hatred, so I understand that point of view very well.
ReplyDeleteHowever, life is good. There is no sin, there is honor and dishonor. Living fully is an extremely honorable act. Honorable deeds and thoughts celebrate life and light, and strike a blow against the Age of Iron we happen to be passing through. (Champions of the Light don't dwell in the Age of Iron, unless they submit to what is, for them, a form of mental disorder.)
You, for example, have obviously chosen to systematically present various aspects of style, elegance, valor and honor on this blog. That world will never die as long as people hold dearly to those virtues.
When one exercises his sense of aesthetics, taste and discretion by selecting the style and material for a well-tailored suit, he honors himself and he also honors not only the craftsman who created it, but the microsystem which sustains such craftsmanship as well.
The craftsman honors the purchaser by creating the suit specifically for him, and he honors himself by celebrating through use a hard-earned complex of skill, knowledge and aesthetics. This exchange is far more than a commercial transaction. The luster of both parties is burnished by the exchange.