<html><head><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; line-break: after-white-space;" class="">Thank you Dani ~ one of the all-time greats.~ !!!<div class="">His book The Way of Zen is probably my first true experience of really “grokking” spirituality and consciousness.”</div><div class="">I remember reading that book in the bathtub and laughing harder and louder than I ever had in my life ~ or maybe have since. </div><div class=""><br class=""></div><div class="">Namaste,</div><div class="">~ m.🙏🌟<br class=""><div><br class=""><blockquote type="cite" class=""><div class="">On Mar 21, 2021, at 11:14 AM, Danleigh via Thespiritexpress <<a href="mailto:thespiritexpress@lists.mcn.org" class="">thespiritexpress@lists.mcn.org</a>> wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><div class="">
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<div class="moz-forward-container">I have recently rediscovered him
-- you may resonate with his philosophy.<br class="">
Dani<br class="">
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<h1 style="display: block;font-family:
Georgia,serif;font-size:
21px;font-style: normal;font-weight:
bold;line-height: 125%;letter-spacing:
normal;border-bottom: 1px solid
#E19B9B;margin: 0 40px;padding: 0 0
7px;text-align: left;color: #262626
!important;" class=""><a href="https://brainpickings.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1&id=8064eba967&e=abb58e6917" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;color: #C33737
!important;text-decoration: none
!important;" moz-do-not-send="true" class="">Alan
Watts on Love, the Meaning of
Freedom, and the Only Real Antidote
to Fear</a> </h1>
<div class="entry_content" style="margin: 0 40px;"><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;color: #262626;font-family:
Georgia,serif;font-size:
16px;line-height: 165%;text-align:
left;" class=""><a href="https://brainpickings.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1&id=50011a84cc&e=abb58e6917" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;color:
#C33737;text-decoration:
underline;" moz-do-not-send="true" class=""><img src="https://i1.wp.com/www.brainpickings.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/alanwatts_thewisdomofinsecurity.jpg?fit=320%2C494" class="cover" alt="alanwatts_thewisdomofinsecurity.jpg?fit=320%2C494" style="-ms-interpolation-mode:
bicubic;border: 0;height:
auto;line-height: 100%;outline:
none;text-decoration:
none;display: inline;width:
150px;margin: 5px 0 10px 30px;" moz-do-not-send="true" align="right"></a> </p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;color: #262626;font-family:
Georgia,serif;font-size:
16px;line-height: 165%;text-align:
left;" class="">“Fearlessness is what love
seeks,” Hannah Arendt wrote in her <a href="https://brainpickings.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1&id=08b170b74a&e=abb58e6917" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;color:
#C33737;text-decoration:
underline;" moz-do-not-send="true" class="">superb
1929 meditation on love and how to
live with the fundamental fear of
loss</a>. “Such fearlessness
exists only in the complete calm
that can no longer be shaken by
events expected of the future… Hence
the only valid tense is the present,
the Now.” </p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;color: #262626;font-family:
Georgia,serif;font-size:
16px;line-height: 165%;text-align:
left;" class="">Half a century before her,
Leo Tolstoy — who befriended a
Buddhist monk late in life and
became deeply influenced by Buddhist
philosophy — echoed these ancient
truths as he contemplated <a href="https://brainpickings.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1&id=d4c4605db9&e=abb58e6917" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;color:
#C33737;text-decoration:
underline;" moz-do-not-send="true" class="">the
paradoxical nature of love</a>:
“Future love does not exist. Love is
a present activity only.”</p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;color: #262626;font-family:
Georgia,serif;font-size:
16px;line-height: 165%;text-align:
left;" class="">That in love and in life,
freedom from fear — like all species
of freedom — is only possible within
the present moment has long been a
core teaching of the most ancient
Eastern spiritual and philosophical
traditions. It is one of the most
elemental truths of existence, and
one of those most difficult to put
into practice as we move through our
daily human lives, so habitually
inclined toward the next moment and
the mentally constructed universe of
expected events — the parallel
universe where anxiety dwells, where
hope and fear for what might be
eclipse what is, and where we cease
to be free because we are no longer
in the direct light of reality.</p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;color: #262626;font-family:
Georgia,serif;font-size:
16px;line-height: 165%;text-align:
left;" class="">The relationship between
freedom, fear, and love is what <strong class="">Alan
Watts</strong> (January 6,
1915–November 16, 1973) explores in
one of the most insightful chapters
of <a href="https://brainpickings.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1&id=49b4b4223e&e=abb58e6917" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;color:
#C33737;text-decoration:
underline;" moz-do-not-send="true" class=""><strong class=""><em class="">The
Wisdom of Insecurity: A
Message for an Age of Anxiety</em></strong></a>
(<a href="https://brainpickings.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1&id=3df3be0320&e=abb58e6917" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;color:
#C33737;text-decoration:
underline;" moz-do-not-send="true" class=""><em class="">public
library</em></a>) — his
altogether revelatory 1951 classic,
which introduced Eastern philosophy
to the West with its lucid and
luminous case for <a href="https://brainpickings.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1&id=2739f6814e&e=abb58e6917" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;color:
#C33737;text-decoration:
underline;" moz-do-not-send="true" class="">how
to live with presence</a>. </p>
<img src="https://i0.wp.com/www.brainpickings.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/alanwatts.jpg?zoom=2&w=680" alt="alanwatts.jpg?zoom=2&w=680" style="-ms-interpolation-mode:
bicubic;border: 0;height:
auto;line-height: 100%;outline:
none;text-decoration: none;display:
inline;width: 100%;" moz-do-not-send="true" class=""><p class="caption" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;color: #595959;font-family:
Arial,Sans-serif;font-size:
11px;line-height: 165%;text-align:
left;border-bottom: 1px solid
#bfbfbf;padding: 0 0
4px;font-weight:
bold;-webkit-margin-before: .35em;">Alan
Watts, early 1970s (Image courtesy
of Everett Collection)</p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;color: #262626;font-family:
Georgia,serif;font-size:
16px;line-height: 165%;text-align:
left;" class="">Drawing on his <a href="https://brainpickings.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1&id=f55fa02389&e=abb58e6917" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;color:
#C33737;text-decoration:
underline;" moz-do-not-send="true" class="">admonition
against the dangers of the divided
mind</a> — the mindset that
divides us into interior
self-awareness and external reality,
into ego and universe, which is the
mindset the whole of Western culture
has instilled in us — he writes:</p>
<blockquote style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;display:
block;-webkit-margin-before:
0;-webkit-margin-after:
0;-webkit-margin-start:
40px;-webkit-margin-end: 0;" class=""><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;color: #595959;font-family:
Arial,Sans-serif;font-size:
15px;line-height: 170%;text-align:
left;" class=""><img src="https://gallery.mailchimp.com/13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1/images/2e292385-dc1c-4cfe-b95e-845f6f98c2ec.png" alt="2e292385-dc1c-4cfe-b95e-845f6f98c2ec.png" style="-ms-interpolation-mode:
bicubic;border: 0;height:
auto;line-height: 100%;outline:
none;text-decoration:
none;padding: 5px 30px 10px
0;display: inline;width: 50px
!important;" moz-do-not-send="true" align="left" class="">The meaning of
freedom can never be grasped by
the divided mind. If I feel
separate from my experience, and
from the world, freedom will seem
to be the extent to which I can
push the world around, and fate
the extent to which the world
pushes me around. But to the whole
mind there is no contrast of “I”
and the world. There is just one
process acting, and it does
everything that happens. It raises
my little finger and it creates
earthquakes. Or, if you want to
put it that way, I raise my little
finger and also make earthquakes.
No one fates and no one is being
fated.</p>
</blockquote><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;color: #262626;font-family:
Georgia,serif;font-size:
16px;line-height: 165%;text-align:
left;" class="">This model of freedom is
orthogonal to our conditioned view
that freedom is a matter of bending
external reality to our will by the
power of our choices — controlling
what remains of nature once the “I”
is separated out. Watts draws a
subtle, crucial distinction between
freedom and choice: </p>
<blockquote style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;display:
block;-webkit-margin-before:
0;-webkit-margin-after:
0;-webkit-margin-start:
40px;-webkit-margin-end: 0;" class=""><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;color: #595959;font-family:
Arial,Sans-serif;font-size:
15px;line-height: 170%;text-align:
left;" class=""><img src="https://gallery.mailchimp.com/13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1/images/2e292385-dc1c-4cfe-b95e-845f6f98c2ec.png" alt="2e292385-dc1c-4cfe-b95e-845f6f98c2ec.png" style="-ms-interpolation-mode:
bicubic;border: 0;height:
auto;line-height: 100%;outline:
none;text-decoration:
none;padding: 5px 30px 10px
0;display: inline;width: 50px
!important;" moz-do-not-send="true" align="left" class="">What we ordinarily
mean by choice is not freedom.
Choices are usually decisions
motivated by pleasure and pain,
and the divided mind acts with the
sole purpose of getting “I” into
pleasure and out of pain. But the
best pleasures are those for which
we do not plan, and the worst part
of pain is expecting it and trying
to get away from it when it has
come. You cannot plan to be happy.
You can plan to exist, but in
themselves existence and
non-existence are neither
pleasurable nor painful.</p>
</blockquote>
<img src="https://i2.wp.com/www.brainpickings.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/thomaswright6.jpg?resize=680%2C753" alt="thomaswright6.jpg?resize=680%2C753" style="-ms-interpolation-mode:
bicubic;border: 0;height:
auto;line-height: 100%;outline:
none;text-decoration: none;display:
inline;width: 100%;" moz-do-not-send="true" class=""><p class="caption" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;color: #595959;font-family:
Arial,Sans-serif;font-size:
11px;line-height: 165%;text-align:
left;border-bottom: 1px solid
#bfbfbf;padding: 0 0
4px;font-weight:
bold;-webkit-margin-before: .35em;">Art
by Thomas Wright from his <a href="https://brainpickings.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1&id=340930c33b&e=abb58e6917" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;color:
#C33737;text-decoration:
underline;" moz-do-not-send="true" class=""><em class="">Original
Theory or New Hypothesis of the
Universe</em></a>, 1750.
(Available as <a href="https://brainpickings.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1&id=775e320975&e=abb58e6917" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;color:
#C33737;text-decoration:
underline;" moz-do-not-send="true" class="">a
print</a> and as <a href="https://brainpickings.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1&id=540b915573&e=abb58e6917" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;color:
#C33737;text-decoration:
underline;" moz-do-not-send="true" class="">a
face mask</a>.)</p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;color: #262626;font-family:
Georgia,serif;font-size:
16px;line-height: 165%;text-align:
left;" class="">Stripped of the paraphernalia
of circumstance and interpretation,
our internal experience of being
unfree stems from attempting
impossible things — things that
resist reality and refuse to accept
the present moment on its own terms.
Watts writes:</p>
<blockquote style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;display:
block;-webkit-margin-before:
0;-webkit-margin-after:
0;-webkit-margin-start:
40px;-webkit-margin-end: 0;" class=""><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;color: #595959;font-family:
Arial,Sans-serif;font-size:
15px;line-height: 170%;text-align:
left;" class=""><img src="https://gallery.mailchimp.com/13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1/images/2e292385-dc1c-4cfe-b95e-845f6f98c2ec.png" alt="2e292385-dc1c-4cfe-b95e-845f6f98c2ec.png" style="-ms-interpolation-mode:
bicubic;border: 0;height:
auto;line-height: 100%;outline:
none;text-decoration:
none;padding: 5px 30px 10px
0;display: inline;width: 50px
!important;" moz-do-not-send="true" align="left" class="">The sense of not
being free comes from trying to do
things which are impossible and
even meaningless. You are not
“free” to draw a square circle, to
live without a head, or to stop
certain reflex actions. These are
not obstacles to freedom; they are
the conditions of freedom. I am
not free to draw a circle if
perchance it should turn out to be
a square circle. I am not, thank
heaven, free to walk out of doors
and leave my head at home.
Likewise I am not free to live in
any moment but this one, or to
separate myself from my feelings.</p>
</blockquote><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;color: #262626;font-family:
Georgia,serif;font-size:
16px;line-height: 165%;text-align:
left;" class="">Without the motive forces of
pleasure and pain, it might at first
appear paradoxical to make any
decisions at all — a contradiction
that makes it impossible to choose
between options as we navigate even
the most basic realities of life:
Why choose to take the umbrella into
the downpour, why choose to eat this
piece of mango and not this piece of
cardboard? But Watts observes that
the only real contradiction is of
our own making as we cede the
present to an imagined future. More
than half a century before
psychologists came to study <a href="https://brainpickings.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1&id=c7b41a9f2b&e=abb58e6917" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;color:
#C33737;text-decoration:
underline;" moz-do-not-send="true" class="">how
your present self is sabotaging
your future happiness</a>, Watts
offers the personal counterpart to
Albert Camus’s astute political
observation that <a href="https://brainpickings.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1&id=1153a0c55f&e=abb58e6917" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;color:
#C33737;text-decoration:
underline;" moz-do-not-send="true" class="">“real
generosity toward the future lies
in giving all to the present,”</a>
and writes:</p>
<blockquote style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;display:
block;-webkit-margin-before:
0;-webkit-margin-after:
0;-webkit-margin-start:
40px;-webkit-margin-end: 0;" class=""><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;color: #595959;font-family:
Arial,Sans-serif;font-size:
15px;line-height: 170%;text-align:
left;" class=""><img src="https://gallery.mailchimp.com/13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1/images/2e292385-dc1c-4cfe-b95e-845f6f98c2ec.png" alt="2e292385-dc1c-4cfe-b95e-845f6f98c2ec.png" style="-ms-interpolation-mode:
bicubic;border: 0;height:
auto;line-height: 100%;outline:
none;text-decoration:
none;padding: 5px 30px 10px
0;display: inline;width: 50px
!important;" moz-do-not-send="true" align="left" class="">I fall straight
into contradiction when I try to
act and decide in order to be
happy, when I make “being pleased”
my future goal. For the more my
actions are directed towards
future pleasures, the more I am
incapable of enjoying any
pleasures at all. For all
pleasures are present, and nothing
save complete awareness of the
present can even begin to
guarantee future happiness.</p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;color: #595959;font-family:
Arial,Sans-serif;font-size:
15px;line-height: 170%;text-align:
left;" class="">[…]</p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;color: #595959;font-family:
Arial,Sans-serif;font-size:
15px;line-height: 170%;text-align:
left;" class="">You can only live in one
moment at a time, and you cannot
think simultaneously about
listening to the waves and whether
you are enjoying listening to the
waves. Contradictions of this kind
are the only real types of action
without freedom.</p>
</blockquote>
<img src="https://i0.wp.com/www.brainpickings.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/margaretcook_leavesofgrass25.jpg?resize=680%2C851" alt="margaretcook_leavesofgrass25.jpg?resize=680%2C851" style="-ms-interpolation-mode:
bicubic;border: 0;height:
auto;line-height: 100%;outline:
none;text-decoration: none;display:
inline;width: 100%;" moz-do-not-send="true" class=""><p class="caption" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;color: #595959;font-family:
Arial,Sans-serif;font-size:
11px;line-height: 165%;text-align:
left;border-bottom: 1px solid
#bfbfbf;padding: 0 0
4px;font-weight:
bold;-webkit-margin-before: .35em;">Art
by Margaret C. Cook from a <a href="https://brainpickings.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1&id=e8901b4feb&e=abb58e6917" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;color:
#C33737;text-decoration:
underline;" moz-do-not-send="true" class="">rare
1913 edition</a> of Walt Whitman’s
<em class="">Leaves of Grass</em>. (Available
<a href="https://brainpickings.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1&id=62b84a9a80&e=abb58e6917" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;color:
#C33737;text-decoration:
underline;" moz-do-not-send="true" class="">as
a print</a>)</p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;color: #262626;font-family:
Georgia,serif;font-size:
16px;line-height: 165%;text-align:
left;" class="">Only with such a
recalibration of our reflexive view
of freedom does James Baldwin’s
insistence that <a href="https://brainpickings.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1&id=bf28356050&e=abb58e6917" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;color:
#C33737;text-decoration:
underline;" moz-do-not-send="true" class="">“people
are as free as they want to be”</a>
begin to unfold its layered meaning
like a Zen koan, to be turned over
in the mind until the deceptively
simple shape unfolds its
origami-folded scroll of deep truth.
</p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;color: #262626;font-family:
Georgia,serif;font-size:
16px;line-height: 165%;text-align:
left;" class="">In what may be the most
elegant refutation of the particular
strain of hubris that embraces
determinism in order to wring from
it the self-permission for living
with delirious freedom from
responsibility, Watts writes:</p>
<blockquote style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;display:
block;-webkit-margin-before:
0;-webkit-margin-after:
0;-webkit-margin-start:
40px;-webkit-margin-end: 0;" class=""><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;color: #595959;font-family:
Arial,Sans-serif;font-size:
15px;line-height: 170%;text-align:
left;" class=""><img src="https://gallery.mailchimp.com/13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1/images/2e292385-dc1c-4cfe-b95e-845f6f98c2ec.png" alt="2e292385-dc1c-4cfe-b95e-845f6f98c2ec.png" style="-ms-interpolation-mode:
bicubic;border: 0;height:
auto;line-height: 100%;outline:
none;text-decoration:
none;padding: 5px 30px 10px
0;display: inline;width: 50px
!important;" moz-do-not-send="true" align="left" class="">There is another
theory of determinism which states
that all our actions are motivated
by “unconscious mental
mechanisms,” and that for this
reason even the most spontaneous
decisions are not free. This is
but another example of
split-mindedness, for what is the
difference between “me” and
“mental mechanisms” whether
conscious or unconscious? Who is
being moved by these processes?
The notion that anyone is being
motivated comes from the
persisting illusion of “I.” The
real man<a href="https://brainpickings.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1&id=f2aef5b3ec&e=abb58e6917" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;color:
#C33737;text-decoration:
underline;" moz-do-not-send="true" class="">*</a>,
the
organism-in-relation-to-the-universe,
<em class="">is</em> this unconscious
motivation. And because he <em class="">is</em>
it, he is not being moved <em class="">by</em>
it.</p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;color: #595959;font-family:
Arial,Sans-serif;font-size:
15px;line-height: 170%;text-align:
left;" class="">[…]</p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;color: #595959;font-family:
Arial,Sans-serif;font-size:
15px;line-height: 170%;text-align:
left;" class="">Events look inevitable in
retrospect because when they have
happened, nothing can change them.
Yet the fact that I can make safe
bets could prove equally well that
events are not <em class="">determined</em>
but <em class="">consistent</em>. In other
words, the universal process acts
freely and spontaneously at every
moment, but tends to throw out
events in regular, and so
predictable, sequences.</p>
</blockquote><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;color: #262626;font-family:
Georgia,serif;font-size:
16px;line-height: 165%;text-align:
left;" class="">Only by such a
misapprehension of freedom, Watts
observes, do we ever feel unfree:
When we enter a state that causes us
psychological pain, our immediate
impulse is to get the “I” out of the
pain, which is invariably a
resistance to the present moment as
it is; because we cannot will a
different psychological state, we
reach for an easy escape: a drink, a
drug, a compulsive scroll through an
Instagram feed. All the ways in
which we try to abate our feelings
of abject loneliness and boredom and
inadequacy by escaping from the
present moment where they unfold are
motivated by the fear that those
intolerable feelings will subsume
us. And yet the instant we become
motivated by fear, we become unfree
— we are prisoners of fear. We are
only free within the bounds of the
present moment, with all of its
disquieting feelings, because only
in that moment can they dissipate
into the totality of integrated
reality, leaving no divide between
us as feelers and the feelings being
felt, and therefore no painful
contrast between preferred state and
actual state. Watts writes:</p>
<blockquote style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;display:
block;-webkit-margin-before:
0;-webkit-margin-after:
0;-webkit-margin-start:
40px;-webkit-margin-end: 0;" class=""><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;color: #595959;font-family:
Arial,Sans-serif;font-size:
15px;line-height: 170%;text-align:
left;" class=""><img src="https://gallery.mailchimp.com/13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1/images/2e292385-dc1c-4cfe-b95e-845f6f98c2ec.png" alt="2e292385-dc1c-4cfe-b95e-845f6f98c2ec.png" style="-ms-interpolation-mode:
bicubic;border: 0;height:
auto;line-height: 100%;outline:
none;text-decoration:
none;padding: 5px 30px 10px
0;display: inline;width: 50px
!important;" moz-do-not-send="true" align="left" class="">So long as the mind
believes in the possibility of
escape from what it is at this
moment, there can be no freedom.</p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;color: #595959;font-family:
Arial,Sans-serif;font-size:
15px;line-height: 170%;text-align:
left;" class="">[…]</p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;color: #595959;font-family:
Arial,Sans-serif;font-size:
15px;line-height: 170%;text-align:
left;" class="">It <em class="">sounds</em> as if
it were the most abject fatalism
to have to admit that I am what I
am, and that no escape or division
is possible. It seems that if I <em class="">am</em>
afraid, then I am “stuck” with
fear. But in fact I am chained to
the fear only so long as I am
trying to get away from it. On the
other hand, when I do not try to
get away I discover that there is
nothing “stuck” or fixed about the
reality of the moment. When I am
aware of this feeling without
naming it, without calling it
“fear,” “bad,” “negative,” etc.,
it changes instantly into
something else, and life moves
freely ahead. The feeling no
longer perpetuates itself by
creating the feeler behind it.</p>
</blockquote>
<img src="https://i0.wp.com/www.brainpickings.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/thomaswright_galaxies3.jpg?resize=680%2C977" alt="thomaswright_galaxies3.jpg?resize=680%2C977" style="-ms-interpolation-mode:
bicubic;border: 0;height:
auto;line-height: 100%;outline:
none;text-decoration: none;display:
inline;width: 100%;" moz-do-not-send="true" class=""><p class="caption" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;color: #595959;font-family:
Arial,Sans-serif;font-size:
11px;line-height: 165%;text-align:
left;border-bottom: 1px solid
#bfbfbf;padding: 0 0
4px;font-weight:
bold;-webkit-margin-before: .35em;">Art
by Thomas Wright from his <a href="https://brainpickings.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1&id=7ca02fcd7d&e=abb58e6917" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;color:
#C33737;text-decoration:
underline;" moz-do-not-send="true" class=""><em class="">Original
Theory or New Hypothesis of the
Universe</em></a>, 1750.
(Available as <a href="https://brainpickings.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1&id=dfe603dab1&e=abb58e6917" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;color:
#C33737;text-decoration:
underline;" moz-do-not-send="true" class="">a
print</a> and as <a href="https://brainpickings.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1&id=c13afde82e&e=abb58e6917" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;color:
#C33737;text-decoration:
underline;" moz-do-not-send="true" class="">a
face mask</a>.)</p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;color: #262626;font-family:
Georgia,serif;font-size:
16px;line-height: 165%;text-align:
left;" class="">To dissolve into this total
reality of the moment is the
crucible of freedom, which is in
turn the crucible of love. In
consonance with Toni Morrison’s
insistence that the deepest measure
of freedom is <a href="https://brainpickings.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1&id=cc38ed491b&e=abb58e6917" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;color:
#C33737;text-decoration:
underline;" moz-do-not-send="true" class="">loving
anything and anyone you choose to
love</a> and with that classic,
exquisite Adrienne Rich sonnet line
— <a href="https://brainpickings.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1&id=e2119d37e4&e=abb58e6917" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;color:
#C33737;text-decoration:
underline;" moz-do-not-send="true" class="">“no
one’s fated or doomed to love
anyone”</a> — Watts considers the
ultimate reward of this undivided
mind:</p>
<blockquote style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;display:
block;-webkit-margin-before:
0;-webkit-margin-after:
0;-webkit-margin-start:
40px;-webkit-margin-end: 0;" class=""><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;color: #595959;font-family:
Arial,Sans-serif;font-size:
15px;line-height: 170%;text-align:
left;" class=""><img src="https://gallery.mailchimp.com/13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1/images/2e292385-dc1c-4cfe-b95e-845f6f98c2ec.png" alt="2e292385-dc1c-4cfe-b95e-845f6f98c2ec.png" style="-ms-interpolation-mode:
bicubic;border: 0;height:
auto;line-height: 100%;outline:
none;text-decoration:
none;padding: 5px 30px 10px
0;display: inline;width: 50px
!important;" moz-do-not-send="true" align="left" class="">The further truth
that the undivided mind is aware
of experience as a unity, of the
world as itself, and that the
whole nature of mind and awareness
is to be one with what it knows,
suggests a state that would
usually be called love… Love is
the organizing and unifying
principle which makes the world a
<em class="">uni</em>verse and the
disintegrated mass a community. It
is the very essence and character
of mind, and becomes manifest in
action when the mind is whole…
This, rather than any mere
emotion, is the power and
principle of free action.</p>
</blockquote><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;color: #262626;font-family:
Georgia,serif;font-size:
16px;line-height: 165%;text-align:
left;" class="">Complement this fragment of
the timelessly rewarding <a href="https://brainpickings.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1&id=464ef1fa8c&e=abb58e6917" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;color:
#C33737;text-decoration:
underline;" moz-do-not-send="true" class=""><strong class=""><em class="">The
Wisdom of Insecurity</em></strong></a>
with Watts on <a href="https://brainpickings.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1&id=aec3eaf38f&e=abb58e6917" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;color:
#C33737;text-decoration:
underline;" moz-do-not-send="true" class="">learning
not to think in terms of gain and
loss</a> and <a href="https://brainpickings.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1&id=564cf7ee4d&e=abb58e6917" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;color:
#C33737;text-decoration:
underline;" moz-do-not-send="true" class="">finding
meaning by accepting the
meaninglessness of life</a>, then
revisit Seneca on <a href="https://brainpickings.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1&id=6da9acbfe8&e=abb58e6917" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;color:
#C33737;text-decoration:
underline;" moz-do-not-send="true" class="">the
antidote to anxiety</a> and
astronomer Rebecca Elson’s almost
unbearably beautiful poem <a href="https://brainpickings.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1&id=a30c3b8496&e=abb58e6917" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;color:
#C33737;text-decoration:
underline;" moz-do-not-send="true" class="">“Antidotes
to Fear of Death.”</a> </p>
</div>
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uppercase;text-align:
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#bfbfbf;margin: 10px 40px
40px;padding: 15px 20px;color:
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none !important;" moz-do-not-send="true" class="">Forward
to a friend</a><span class="share_wide_stay" style="display:
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</span><a href="https://mailchi.mp/brainpickings/alan-watts-eula-biss-newton?fblike=fblike-bd6ef2de&e=abb58e6917&socialproxy=https%3A%2F%2Fus2.campaign-archive.com%2Fsocial-proxy%2Ffacebook-like%3Fu%3D13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1%26id%3Db3f29a7027%26url%3Dhttps%253A%252F%252Fwww.brainpickings.org%252F2021%252F03%252F16%252Falan-watts-freedom-fear-love%252F%26title%3Dhttps%253A%252F%252Fwww.brainpickings.org%252F2021%252F03%252F16..." title="Like
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monthly
donation of
your choosing,
between a cup
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Brooklyn
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!important;">one-time
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<span style="color:#ffffff" class="">Or
you can become
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Supporter with
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<h1 style="display: block;font-family:
Georgia,serif;font-size:
21px;font-style: normal;font-weight:
bold;line-height: 125%;letter-spacing:
normal;border-bottom: 1px solid
#E19B9B;margin: 0 40px;padding: 0 0
7px;text-align: left;color: #262626
!important;" class=""><a href="https://brainpickings.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1&id=f7b3681d59&e=abb58e6917" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;color: #C33737
!important;text-decoration: none
!important;" moz-do-not-send="true" class="">The
Herd, the Hive, and the Human
Spirit: Eula Biss on Immunity,
Sanity, and Health as Communal Trust</a>
</h1>
<div class="entry_content" style="margin: 0 40px;"><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;color: #262626;font-family:
Georgia,serif;font-size:
16px;line-height: 165%;text-align:
left;" class=""><a href="https://brainpickings.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1&id=2793d38d1e&e=abb58e6917" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;color:
#C33737;text-decoration:
underline;" moz-do-not-send="true" class=""><img src="https://i0.wp.com/www.brainpickings.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/eulabiss_onimmunity.jpg?fit=320%2C480" class="cover with-border" alt="eulabiss_onimmunity.jpg?fit=320%2C480" style="-ms-interpolation-mode:
bicubic;border: 1px solid
#d9d9d9;height:
auto;line-height: 100%;outline:
none;text-decoration:
none;display: inline;width:
150px;margin: 5px 0 10px 30px;" moz-do-not-send="true" align="right"></a> </p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;color: #262626;font-family:
Georgia,serif;font-size:
16px;line-height: 165%;text-align:
left;" class="">Months after Rachel Carson’s
<em class="">Silent Spring</em> <a href="https://brainpickings.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1&id=bfa200c961&e=abb58e6917" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;color:
#C33737;text-decoration:
underline;" moz-do-not-send="true" class="">awakened
humanity to the delicate
interdependence of nature</a>, Dr.
King awakened humanity to our
delicate dependence on each other. <a href="https://brainpickings.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1&id=f7e554fa6e&e=abb58e6917" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;color:
#C33737;text-decoration:
underline;" moz-do-not-send="true" class="">“We
are caught in an inescapable
network of mutuality [and]
whatever affects one directly,
affects all indirectly,”</a> he
wrote from his cell at the
Birmingham City Jail.</p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;color: #262626;font-family:
Georgia,serif;font-size:
16px;line-height: 165%;text-align:
left;" class="">When Robert Hooke looked at a
piece of cork through an early
handcrafted leather-and-gold
microscope in 1665, he named the
strange irregular “pores” of its
honeycomb-like tissue structure <em class="">cells</em>,
after the small adjacent spaces in
which monks spend their voluntary
solitary confinement. It would take
another two centuries for scientists
to discover that cells are the basic
biological units of life, that they
are in constant osmotic
communication with one another, and
that they replicate themselves to
become new cells, each a whispered
word from the language in which life
talks to the future.</p>
<img src="https://i1.wp.com/www.brainpickings.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/RobertHooke_Micrographia_cork.jpg?resize=680%2C1007" alt="RobertHooke_Micrographia_cork.jpg?resize=680%2C1007" style="-ms-interpolation-mode:
bicubic;border: 0;height:
auto;line-height: 100%;outline:
none;text-decoration: none;display:
inline;width: 100%;" moz-do-not-send="true" class=""><p class="caption" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;color: #595959;font-family:
Arial,Sans-serif;font-size:
11px;line-height: 165%;text-align:
left;border-bottom: 1px solid
#bfbfbf;padding: 0 0
4px;font-weight:
bold;-webkit-margin-before: .35em;">Cork
structure from Robert Hooke’s <em class="">Micrographia</em>,
1665. (Available <a href="https://brainpickings.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1&id=6042f0ccfe&e=abb58e6917" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;color:
#C33737;text-decoration:
underline;" moz-do-not-send="true" class="">as
a print</a>.)</p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;color: #262626;font-family:
Georgia,serif;font-size:
16px;line-height: 165%;text-align:
left;" class="">Biological and social, our
interdependence is a defining
feature not only of our
civilization, not only of our
species and all living species, but
of life itself — life the
physiological process and life the
psychosocial phenomenon. <a href="https://brainpickings.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1&id=055786d7c2&e=abb58e6917" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;color:
#C33737;text-decoration:
underline;" moz-do-not-send="true" class="">“Every
atom belonging to me as good
belongs to you,”</a> Walt Whitman
exulted in the golden age of
chemistry — the new science he saw
as “the elevating, beautiful, study…
which involves the essences of
creation.” Meanwhile, the
development of cell theory was
revolutionizing biology, making of
this philosophical field as old as
Aristotle an even newer science that
illuminated the essence of life.
Cells became to biology what atoms
were to chemistry. Biology ushered
in the revelation that every cell
belonging to me as good — as
healthy, as vital, as fit for
replication — belongs to you. </p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;color: #262626;font-family:
Georgia,serif;font-size:
16px;line-height: 165%;text-align:
left;" class="">That delicate interdependence
of life and lives, with its tangled
roots in biology and cultural
history, is what <strong class="">Eula Biss</strong>
explores in <a href="https://brainpickings.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1&id=e4d6f47d38&e=abb58e6917" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;color:
#C33737;text-decoration:
underline;" moz-do-not-send="true" class=""><strong class=""><em class="">On
Immunity: An Inoculation</em></strong></a>
(<a href="https://brainpickings.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1&id=1e70ed4014&e=abb58e6917" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;color:
#C33737;text-decoration:
underline;" moz-do-not-send="true" class=""><em class="">public
library</em></a>) — a book of
penetrating and poetic insight,
drawn with that rare scholarship
capable of correcting the warped
cultural hindsight we call history;
a book of staggering foresight,
conceived in the wake of the H1N1
flu pandemic, yet speaking with
astonishing prescience to the
complex epidemiological realities
and social dynamics of the COVID-19
pandemic unfolding more than five
years after its publication. </p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;color: #262626;font-family:
Georgia,serif;font-size:
16px;line-height: 165%;text-align:
left;" class="">For Biss — the daughter of a
medical scientist and a poet — even
her own biological inheritance as a
universal donor with type O negative
blood becomes a potent metaphor for
the mechanism of vaccination, a lens
through which to view the permeable
membrane between the biological and
social realities of immunity. With
an eye to the blood banks that
collect her donations to save other
lives, she writes:</p>
<blockquote style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;display:
block;-webkit-margin-before:
0;-webkit-margin-after:
0;-webkit-margin-start:
40px;-webkit-margin-end: 0;" class=""><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;color: #595959;font-family:
Arial,Sans-serif;font-size:
15px;line-height: 170%;text-align:
left;" class=""><img src="https://gallery.mailchimp.com/13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1/images/2e292385-dc1c-4cfe-b95e-845f6f98c2ec.png" alt="2e292385-dc1c-4cfe-b95e-845f6f98c2ec.png" style="-ms-interpolation-mode:
bicubic;border: 0;height:
auto;line-height: 100%;outline:
none;text-decoration:
none;padding: 5px 30px 10px
0;display: inline;width: 50px
!important;" moz-do-not-send="true" align="left" class="">If we imagine the
action of a vaccine not just in
terms of how it affects a single
body, but also in terms of how it
affects the collective body of a
community, it is fair to think of
vaccination as a kind of banking
of immunity. Contributions to this
bank are donations to those who
cannot or will not be protected by
their own immunity. This is the
principle of <em class="">herd immunity</em>,
and it is through herd immunity
that mass vaccination becomes far
more effective than individual
vaccination.</p>
</blockquote><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;color: #262626;font-family:
Georgia,serif;font-size:
16px;line-height: 165%;text-align:
left;" class="">It is a rather unfortunate
term for an unassailable scientific
principle — we humans, especially in
this culture of rugged individualism
nursed on <a href="https://brainpickings.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1&id=3e4cd26a21&e=abb58e6917" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;color:
#C33737;text-decoration:
underline;" moz-do-not-send="true" class="">the
Emersonian ideal of self-reliance</a>,
bristle at thinking of ourselves as
members of a herd. In our <a href="https://brainpickings.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1&id=0f74059735&e=abb58e6917" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;color:
#C33737;text-decoration:
underline;" moz-do-not-send="true" class="">long
history of thinking with animals</a>,
herd animals have been the butt of
our derogatory metaphors for
mindless conformity. </p>
<img src="https://i1.wp.com/www.brainpickings.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/louisi_tallec00.jpg?zoom=2&w=680" alt="louisi_tallec00.jpg?zoom=2&w=680" style="-ms-interpolation-mode:
bicubic;border: 0;height:
auto;line-height: 100%;outline:
none;text-decoration: none;display:
inline;width: 100%;" moz-do-not-send="true" class=""><p class="caption" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;color: #595959;font-family:
Arial,Sans-serif;font-size:
11px;line-height: 165%;text-align:
left;border-bottom: 1px solid
#bfbfbf;padding: 0 0
4px;font-weight:
bold;-webkit-margin-before: .35em;">Art
by Olivier Tallec from <a href="https://brainpickings.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1&id=593bf1aeac&e=abb58e6917" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;color:
#C33737;text-decoration:
underline;" moz-do-not-send="true" class=""><em class="">Louis
I, King of the Sheep</em></a> </p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;color: #262626;font-family:
Georgia,serif;font-size:
16px;line-height: 165%;text-align:
left;" class="">And yet inside the
unfortunate linguistic container, an
unfaltering biological reality
resides: On large enough a scale,
even a fairy ineffective vaccine
that fails to produce immunity in
some individuals will slow down the
spread of infection in the
community; as the virus fails to
replicate itself in more and more
new hosts, the vaccine will
eventually halt it altogether. In
consequence, even such a mediocre
vaccine will protect all members of
the community, even those for whom
inoculation has not worked as
intended on the individual level.
This is why it is more dangerous to
be the vaccinated animal amid a
largely unvaccinated herd than the
other way around. Biss writes:</p>
<blockquote style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;display:
block;-webkit-margin-before:
0;-webkit-margin-after:
0;-webkit-margin-start:
40px;-webkit-margin-end: 0;" class=""><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;color: #595959;font-family:
Arial,Sans-serif;font-size:
15px;line-height: 170%;text-align:
left;" class=""><img src="https://gallery.mailchimp.com/13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1/images/2e292385-dc1c-4cfe-b95e-845f6f98c2ec.png" alt="2e292385-dc1c-4cfe-b95e-845f6f98c2ec.png" style="-ms-interpolation-mode:
bicubic;border: 0;height:
auto;line-height: 100%;outline:
none;text-decoration:
none;padding: 5px 30px 10px
0;display: inline;width: 50px
!important;" moz-do-not-send="true" align="left" class="">The unvaccinated
person is protected by the bodies
around her, bodies through which
disease is not circulating. But a
vaccinated person surrounded by
bodies that host disease is left
vulnerable to vaccine failure or
fading immunity. We are protected
not so much by our own skin, but
by what is beyond it. The
boundaries between our bodies
begin to dissolve here. Donations
of blood and organs move between
us, exiting one body and entering
another, and so too with immunity,
which is a common trust as much as
it is a private account. Those of
us who draw on collective immunity
owe our health to our neighbors.</p>
</blockquote><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;color: #262626;font-family:
Georgia,serif;font-size:
16px;line-height: 165%;text-align:
left;" class="">With an eye to the origin of
herd immunity theory — a theory
developed in the 1840s by a doctor
treating smallpox, which has taken
manyfold more human lives than any
other infectious disease in the
history of our species and which has
since been eradicated — Biss
proposes an alternative, both more
poetic and more precise, to the
imperfect term that so perfectly
describes the biosocial reality:</p>
<blockquote style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;display:
block;-webkit-margin-before:
0;-webkit-margin-after:
0;-webkit-margin-start:
40px;-webkit-margin-end: 0;" class=""><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;color: #595959;font-family:
Arial,Sans-serif;font-size:
15px;line-height: 170%;text-align:
left;" class=""><img src="https://gallery.mailchimp.com/13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1/images/2e292385-dc1c-4cfe-b95e-845f6f98c2ec.png" alt="2e292385-dc1c-4cfe-b95e-845f6f98c2ec.png" style="-ms-interpolation-mode:
bicubic;border: 0;height:
auto;line-height: 100%;outline:
none;text-decoration:
none;padding: 5px 30px 10px
0;display: inline;width: 50px
!important;" moz-do-not-send="true" align="left" class="">Herd immunity, an
observable phenomenon, now seems
implausible only if we think of
our bodies as inherently
disconnected from other bodies.
Which, of course, we do. </p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;color: #595959;font-family:
Arial,Sans-serif;font-size:
15px;line-height: 170%;text-align:
left;" class="">The very expression <em class="">herd
immunity</em> suggests that we
are cattle, waiting, perhaps, to
be sent to slaughter. And it
invites an unfortunate association
with the term <em class="">herd mentality</em>,
a stampede toward stupidity. The
herd, we assume, is foolish. Those
of us who eschew the herd
mentality tend to prefer a
frontier mentality in which we
imagine our bodies as isolated
homesteads that we tend either
well or badly. The health of the
homestead next to ours does not
affect us, this thinking suggests,
so long as ours is well tended. </p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;color: #595959;font-family:
Arial,Sans-serif;font-size:
15px;line-height: 170%;text-align:
left;" class="">If we were to exchange the
metaphor of the herd for a hive,
perhaps the concept of shared
immunity might be more appealing.
Honeybees are matriarchal,
environmental do-gooders who also
happen to be entirely
interdependent. The health of any
individual bee, as we know from
the recent epidemic of colony
collapse, depends on the health of
the hive.</p>
</blockquote>
<img src="https://i0.wp.com/www.brainpickings.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/sougy_bee.jpg?resize=680%2C879" alt="sougy_bee.jpg?resize=680%2C879" style="-ms-interpolation-mode:
bicubic;border: 0;height:
auto;line-height: 100%;outline:
none;text-decoration: none;display:
inline;width: 100%;" moz-do-not-send="true" class=""><p class="caption" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;color: #595959;font-family:
Arial,Sans-serif;font-size:
11px;line-height: 165%;text-align:
left;border-bottom: 1px solid
#bfbfbf;padding: 0 0
4px;font-weight:
bold;-webkit-margin-before: .35em;">Diagram
of bee anatomy by French artist Paul
Sougy, 1962. (Available <a href="https://brainpickings.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1&id=ff1df1b8e5&e=abb58e6917" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;color:
#C33737;text-decoration:
underline;" moz-do-not-send="true" class="">as
a print</a>.)</p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;color: #262626;font-family:
Georgia,serif;font-size:
16px;line-height: 165%;text-align:
left;" class="">Biss quotes a succinct
summation by her father, a doctor:</p>
<blockquote style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;display:
block;-webkit-margin-before:
0;-webkit-margin-after:
0;-webkit-margin-start:
40px;-webkit-margin-end: 0;" class=""><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;color: #595959;font-family:
Arial,Sans-serif;font-size:
15px;line-height: 170%;text-align:
left;" class=""><img src="https://gallery.mailchimp.com/13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1/images/2e292385-dc1c-4cfe-b95e-845f6f98c2ec.png" alt="2e292385-dc1c-4cfe-b95e-845f6f98c2ec.png" style="-ms-interpolation-mode:
bicubic;border: 0;height:
auto;line-height: 100%;outline:
none;text-decoration:
none;padding: 5px 30px 10px
0;display: inline;width: 50px
!important;" moz-do-not-send="true" align="left" class="">Vaccination works
by enlisting a majority in the
protection of a minority.</p>
</blockquote><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;color: #262626;font-family:
Georgia,serif;font-size:
16px;line-height: 165%;text-align:
left;" class="">No one person has done more
to undermine this vital mutuality of
protection than Andrew Wakefield —
the British gastroenterologist who,
in the 1990s, infected the hive mind
with his causal claims linking
vaccines and autism. Preying on the
understandable human impulse toward
concretizing blame for amorphous and
ambiguous problems, the theory went
viral before multiple subsequent
studies debunked his results, before
it was exposed that Wakefield was
paid for his research by a lawyer
readying a lawsuit against a vaccine
maker, before the General Medical
Council of the United Kingdom
concluded its investigation with the
verdict that Wakefield had been
“irresponsible and dishonest” in
conducting and publishing his work.</p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;color: #262626;font-family:
Georgia,serif;font-size:
16px;line-height: 165%;text-align:
left;" class="">Despite the scientific and
ethical denunciation of Wakefield’s
study, its ideological meme had
already spread beyond retrieval.
(Richard Dawkins coined the word <em class="">meme</em>
in 1976 by <a href="https://brainpickings.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1&id=1a61935e8d&e=abb58e6917" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;color:
#C33737;text-decoration:
underline;" moz-do-not-send="true" class="">borrowing
from biology</a> — a word that
came alive anew a quarter century
later in the context of “viral”
content on the internet, which has
its own roots in epidemiology.) A
quarter century later, echoes of
Wakefield’s disproven falsehoods
bellow with formidable vocality.
That group of voices is often
referred to as the anti-vaccination
movement, but I find the term <em class="">movement</em>
extremely ill-suited — such
groupthink is not in movement but
static, frozen in time and frozen
with fear, petrified in the cultural
amber of a time before the Age of
Reason and lashed about by the same
errors of magical thinking, willful
blindness, and confusion of
causation and correlation that made
our medieval ancestors take comets
for indisputable omens of future
events and left-handedness for
indisputable evidence of possession
by the Devil. </p>
<img src="https://i2.wp.com/www.brainpickings.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/comet9.jpg?resize=680%2C798" alt="comet9.jpg?resize=680%2C798" style="-ms-interpolation-mode:
bicubic;border: 0;height:
auto;line-height: 100%;outline:
none;text-decoration: none;display:
inline;width: 100%;" moz-do-not-send="true" class=""><p class="caption" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;color: #595959;font-family:
Arial,Sans-serif;font-size:
11px;line-height: 165%;text-align:
left;border-bottom: 1px solid
#bfbfbf;padding: 0 0
4px;font-weight:
bold;-webkit-margin-before: .35em;">Art
from <a href="https://brainpickings.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1&id=50a05a98fd&e=abb58e6917" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;color:
#C33737;text-decoration:
underline;" moz-do-not-send="true" class=""><em class="">The
Comet Book</em></a>, 1587.
(Available <a href="https://brainpickings.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1&id=ca6d7a96ec&e=abb58e6917" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;color:
#C33737;text-decoration:
underline;" moz-do-not-send="true" class="">as
a print</a>).</p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;color: #262626;font-family:
Georgia,serif;font-size:
16px;line-height: 165%;text-align:
left;" class="">Biss is more generous in her
own assessment of anti-vaccination:</p>
<blockquote style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;display:
block;-webkit-margin-before:
0;-webkit-margin-after:
0;-webkit-margin-start:
40px;-webkit-margin-end: 0;" class=""><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;color: #595959;font-family:
Arial,Sans-serif;font-size:
15px;line-height: 170%;text-align:
left;" class=""><img src="https://gallery.mailchimp.com/13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1/images/2e292385-dc1c-4cfe-b95e-845f6f98c2ec.png" alt="2e292385-dc1c-4cfe-b95e-845f6f98c2ec.png" style="-ms-interpolation-mode:
bicubic;border: 0;height:
auto;line-height: 100%;outline:
none;text-decoration:
none;padding: 5px 30px 10px
0;display: inline;width: 50px
!important;" moz-do-not-send="true" align="left" class="">Those who went on
to use Wakefield’s inconclusive
work to support the notion that
vaccines cause autism are not
guilty of ignorance or science
denial so much as they are guilty
of using weak science as it has
always been used — to lend false
credibility to an idea that we
want to believe for other reasons.</p>
</blockquote><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;color: #262626;font-family:
Georgia,serif;font-size:
16px;line-height: 165%;text-align:
left;" class="">Writing shortly after the
birth of the Occupy movement — the
self-described “99%” launching “an
ongoing global protest of
capitalism” — she considers a
friend’s half-joke, half-koan about
vaccination as a matter of “occupy
immune system,” and reflects on the
basic moral syllogism of
anti-vaccination as a political
stance claiming to protest the
capitalist forces behind modern
medicine:</p>
<blockquote style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;display:
block;-webkit-margin-before:
0;-webkit-margin-after:
0;-webkit-margin-start:
40px;-webkit-margin-end: 0;" class=""><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;color: #595959;font-family:
Arial,Sans-serif;font-size:
15px;line-height: 170%;text-align:
left;" class=""><img src="https://gallery.mailchimp.com/13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1/images/2e292385-dc1c-4cfe-b95e-845f6f98c2ec.png" alt="2e292385-dc1c-4cfe-b95e-845f6f98c2ec.png" style="-ms-interpolation-mode:
bicubic;border: 0;height:
auto;line-height: 100%;outline:
none;text-decoration:
none;padding: 5px 30px 10px
0;display: inline;width: 50px
!important;" moz-do-not-send="true" align="left" class="">Immunity is a
public space. And it can be
occupied by those who choose not
to carry immunity. For some… a
refusal to vaccinate falls under a
broader resistance to capitalism.
But refusing immunity as a form of
civil disobedience bears an
unsettling resemblance to the very
structure the Occupy movement
seeks to disrupt — a privileged 1
percent are sheltered from risk
while they draw resources from the
other 99 percent.</p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;color: #595959;font-family:
Arial,Sans-serif;font-size:
15px;line-height: 170%;text-align:
left;" class="">[…]</p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;color: #595959;font-family:
Arial,Sans-serif;font-size:
15px;line-height: 170%;text-align:
left;" class="">We are justified in feeling
threatened by the unlimited
expansion of industry, and we are
justified in fearing that our
interests are secondary to
corporate interests. But refusal
of vaccination undermines a system
that is not actually typical of
capitalism. It is a system in
which both the burdens and the
benefits are shared across the
entire population. Vaccination
allows us to use the products of
capitalism for purposes that are
counter to the pressures of
capital.</p>
</blockquote>
<img src="https://i0.wp.com/www.brainpickings.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/honeybee_MariaPopova.jpg?resize=680%2C680" alt="honeybee_MariaPopova.jpg?resize=680%2C680" style="-ms-interpolation-mode:
bicubic;border: 0;height:
auto;line-height: 100%;outline:
none;text-decoration: none;display:
inline;width: 100%;" moz-do-not-send="true" class=""><p class="caption" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;color: #595959;font-family:
Arial,Sans-serif;font-size:
11px;line-height: 165%;text-align:
left;border-bottom: 1px solid
#bfbfbf;padding: 0 0
4px;font-weight:
bold;-webkit-margin-before: .35em;"><em class="">Emissary</em>
by Maria Popova</p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;color: #262626;font-family:
Georgia,serif;font-size:
16px;line-height: 165%;text-align:
left;" class="">In a lovely antidote to the
tragic human tendency toward
cynicism — that <a href="https://brainpickings.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1&id=aa5b8aec46&e=abb58e6917" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;color:
#C33737;text-decoration:
underline;" moz-do-not-send="true" class="">
touchingly misguided and
ineffective effort at
self-protection</a>, that
particularly virulent <a href="https://brainpickings.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1&id=efa1ffb65f&e=abb58e6917" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;color:
#C33737;text-decoration:
underline;" moz-do-not-send="true" class="">strain
of cowardice</a> to which our
culture has grown increasingly
hospitable as it has grown
increasingly impatient with the slow
and vulnerable work of nuance — Biss
adds:</p>
<blockquote style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;display:
block;-webkit-margin-before:
0;-webkit-margin-after:
0;-webkit-margin-start:
40px;-webkit-margin-end: 0;" class=""><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;color: #595959;font-family:
Arial,Sans-serif;font-size:
15px;line-height: 170%;text-align:
left;" class=""><img src="https://gallery.mailchimp.com/13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1/images/2e292385-dc1c-4cfe-b95e-845f6f98c2ec.png" alt="2e292385-dc1c-4cfe-b95e-845f6f98c2ec.png" style="-ms-interpolation-mode:
bicubic;border: 0;height:
auto;line-height: 100%;outline:
none;text-decoration:
none;padding: 5px 30px 10px
0;display: inline;width: 50px
!important;" moz-do-not-send="true" align="left" class="">That so many of us
find it entirely plausible that a
vast network of researchers and
health officials and doctors
worldwide would willfully harm
children for money is evidence of
what capitalism is really taking
from us. Capitalism has already
impoverished the working people
who generate wealth for others.
And capitalism has already
impoverished us culturally,
robbing unmarketable art of its
value. But when we begin to see
the pressures of capitalism as
innate laws of human motivation,
when we begin to believe that
everyone is owned, then we are
truly impoverished.</p>
</blockquote><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;color: #262626;font-family:
Georgia,serif;font-size:
16px;line-height: 165%;text-align:
left;" class="">Complement <a href="https://brainpickings.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1&id=3b3663b4e0&e=abb58e6917" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;color:
#C33737;text-decoration:
underline;" moz-do-not-send="true" class=""><strong class=""><em class="">On
Immunity</em></strong></a> — a
redemptive and salutary read in its
entirety — with Virginia Woolf on <a href="https://brainpickings.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1&id=2aee7a9cb0&e=abb58e6917" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;color:
#C33737;text-decoration:
underline;" moz-do-not-send="true" class="">illness
as a portal to self-understanding</a>
and Bessel van der Kolk on <a href="https://brainpickings.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1&id=c124318721&e=abb58e6917" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;color:
#C33737;text-decoration:
underline;" moz-do-not-send="true" class="">the
science of how our minds and our
bodies converge in healing</a>,
then revisit Adrienne Rich on <a href="https://brainpickings.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1&id=e63d66c5f9&e=abb58e6917" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;color:
#C33737;text-decoration:
underline;" moz-do-not-send="true" class="">resisting
capitalism through the arts of the
possible</a>.</p>
</div>
<table class="share" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
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<td style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
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<h3 style="display:
block;font-family:
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normal;font-weight:
normal;line-height:
150%;letter-spacing:
1px;text-transform:
uppercase;text-align:
left;border: 1px solid
#bfbfbf;margin: 10px 40px
40px;padding: 15px 20px;color:
#8C8C8C !important;" class=""> <a href="http://us2.forward-to-friend.com/forward?u=13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1&id=b3f29a7027&e=abb58e6917" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;color:
#8C8C8C
!important;text-decoration:
none !important;" moz-do-not-send="true" class="">Forward
to a friend</a><span class="share_wide_stay" style="display:
inline-block;padding: 0
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Online</a><span class="share_wide" style="display:
inline-block;padding: 0
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</span><a href="https://mailchi.mp/brainpickings/alan-watts-eula-biss-newton?fblike=fblike-bbe18e98&e=abb58e6917&socialproxy=https%3A%2F%2Fus2.campaign-archive.com%2Fsocial-proxy%2Ffacebook-like%3Fu%3D13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1%26id%3Db3f29a7027%26url%3Dhttps%253A%252F%252Fwww.brainpickings.org%252F2021%252F03%252F19%252Feula-biss-on-immunity%252F%26title%3Dhttps%253A%252F%252Fwww.brainpickings.org%252F2021%252F03%252F19..." title="Like
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<h1 style="display: block;font-family:
Georgia,serif;font-size:
21px;font-style: normal;font-weight:
bold;line-height: 125%;letter-spacing:
normal;border-bottom: 1px solid
#E19B9B;margin: 0 40px;padding: 0 0
7px;text-align: left;color: #262626
!important;" class=""><a href="https://brainpickings.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1&id=3a1e0fbdbd&e=abb58e6917" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;color: #C33737
!important;text-decoration: none
!important;" moz-do-not-send="true" class="">A
Cenotaph for Newton: The Poetry of
Public Spaces, the Architecture of
Shadow, and How Trees Inspired the
World’s First Planetarium Design</a>
</h1>
<div class="entry_content" style="margin: 0 40px;"><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;color: #262626;font-family:
Georgia,serif;font-size:
16px;line-height: 165%;text-align:
left;" class=""><a href="https://brainpickings.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1&id=8bfb31be84&e=abb58e6917" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;color:
#C33737;text-decoration:
underline;" moz-do-not-send="true" class=""><img src="https://i1.wp.com/www.brainpickings.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/boullee_architectureart.jpg?fit=320%2C417" class="cover" alt="boullee_architectureart.jpg?fit=320%2C417" style="-ms-interpolation-mode:
bicubic;border: 0;height:
auto;line-height: 100%;outline:
none;text-decoration:
none;display: inline;width:
150px;margin: 5px 0 10px 30px;" moz-do-not-send="true" align="right"></a> </p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;color: #262626;font-family:
Georgia,serif;font-size:
16px;line-height: 165%;text-align:
left;" class="">Nineteen years after the
publication of Isaac Newton’s
epoch-making <em class="">Principia</em> —
in England, in Latin — the prodigy
mathematician <a href="https://brainpickings.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1&id=531b3dd63a&e=abb58e6917" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;color:
#C33737;text-decoration:
underline;" moz-do-not-send="true" class="">Émilie
du Châtelet</a> set out to
translate his ideas into her native
French, making them more
comprehensible in the process. Her
more-than-translation — which
includes several of her mathematical
corrections and clarifications of
Newton’s imprecisions, and which
remains the only comprehensive
edition in French to this day —
popularized his ideas in France and,
from this epicenter of the
Enlightenment, spread them
centripetally throughout the rest of
the Continent, rendering Newton
himself an emblem of the
Enlightenment the sweep of which he
never lived to see. </p>
<img src="https://i2.wp.com/www.brainpickings.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/blake_newton.jpg?zoom=2&w=680" alt="blake_newton.jpg?zoom=2&w=680" style="-ms-interpolation-mode:
bicubic;border: 0;height:
auto;line-height: 100%;outline:
none;text-decoration: none;display:
inline;width: 100%;" moz-do-not-send="true" class=""><p class="caption" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;color: #595959;font-family:
Arial,Sans-serif;font-size:
11px;line-height: 165%;text-align:
left;border-bottom: 1px solid
#bfbfbf;padding: 0 0
4px;font-weight:
bold;-webkit-margin-before: .35em;"><em class="">Newton</em>
by William Blake (Tate Britain)</p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;color: #262626;font-family:
Georgia,serif;font-size:
16px;line-height: 165%;text-align:
left;" class="">Not long after Du Châtelet’s
untimely death, her legacy reached
one of her most gifted compatriots —
the visionary architect <strong class="">Étienne-Louis
Boullée</strong> (February 12,
1728–February 4, 1799), who fell
under Newton’s spell. Determined to
honor Newton with a worthy cenotaph
— a memorial tomb for a person
buried elsewhere — he designed a
sphere 500 feet in diameter, taller
than the Pyramids of Giza, nested
into a colossal pedestal and
encircled by hundreds of cypress
trees, giving it the transfixing
illusion of being both half-buried
into the Earth and hovering unmoored
from gravity. It was also, in
essence, the world’s first domed
planetarium design.</p>
<img src="https://i0.wp.com/www.brainpickings.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/boullee_newtoncenotaph7.jpg?resize=680%2C411" alt="boullee_newtoncenotaph7.jpg?resize=680%2C411" style="-ms-interpolation-mode:
bicubic;border: 0;height:
auto;line-height: 100%;outline:
none;text-decoration: none;display:
inline;width: 100%;" moz-do-not-send="true" class=""><p class="caption" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;color: #595959;font-family:
Arial,Sans-serif;font-size:
11px;line-height: 165%;text-align:
left;border-bottom: 1px solid
#bfbfbf;padding: 0 0
4px;font-weight:
bold;-webkit-margin-before: .35em;">Image
courtesy of Bibliothèque nationale
de France.</p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;color: #262626;font-family:
Georgia,serif;font-size:
16px;line-height: 165%;text-align:
left;" class="">The cenotaph was a touching
gesture in the first place — a
Frenchman honoring a genius born of
and interred in England, a nation
with which Boullée’s own had been in
near-ceaseless war for centuries,
with those tensions at an all-time
high at the time of his design,
thanks to the American Revolutionary
War. Doubly touching was his choice
of a sphere: One of Newton’s most
revolutionary contributions — the
mathematical inference that because
gravity is weaker at the equator,
the shape of the Earth must be
spherical — had defied France’s
greatest son, René Descartes, who
maintained that the Earth was
egg-shaped. When Boullée was still a
boy, a young Frenchman — Émilie du
Châtelet’s mathematics tutor — had
joined a perilous Arctic expedition
to prove Newton correct. Two
centuries later, in the wake of the
world’s grimmest war yet, <a href="https://brainpickings.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1&id=9096933894&e=abb58e6917" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;color:
#C33737;text-decoration:
underline;" moz-do-not-send="true" class="">a
queer Quaker Englishman would do
the same</a>, risking his life to
defend the epoch-making theory of a
German Jew — the theory of
relativity that ultimately subverted
Newton. Another world war later,
Einstein himself would appeal to
what he called <a href="https://brainpickings.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1&id=cc7d3ebeb1&e=abb58e6917" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;color:
#C33737;text-decoration:
underline;" moz-do-not-send="true" class="">“the
common language of science”</a> —
that truth-seeking contact with
nature and reality that transcends
all borders and all nationalisms,
the impulse that animated Boullée’s
bold homage to Newton.</p>
<img src="https://i1.wp.com/www.brainpickings.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/boullee_newtoncenotaph5.jpg?resize=680%2C655" alt="boullee_newtoncenotaph5.jpg?resize=680%2C655" style="-ms-interpolation-mode:
bicubic;border: 0;height:
auto;line-height: 100%;outline:
none;text-decoration: none;display:
inline;width: 100%;" moz-do-not-send="true" class=""><p class="caption" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;color: #595959;font-family:
Arial,Sans-serif;font-size:
11px;line-height: 165%;text-align:
left;border-bottom: 1px solid
#bfbfbf;padding: 0 0
4px;font-weight:
bold;-webkit-margin-before: .35em;">Cenotaph
side cross-section. Image courtesy
of Bibliothèque nationale de France.</p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;color: #262626;font-family:
Georgia,serif;font-size:
16px;line-height: 165%;text-align:
left;" class="">While governed by the credo
that “our buildings — and our public
buildings in particular — should be
to some extent poems,” Boullée also
believed that science could magnify
the poetry of public spaces, which
must at bottom reflect the
principles of the grand designer:
Nature. A century before the teenage
Virginia Woolf wrote that <a href="https://brainpickings.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1&id=8427116b16&e=abb58e6917" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;color:
#C33737;text-decoration:
underline;" moz-do-not-send="true" class="">“all
the Arts… imitate as far as they
can the one great truth that all
can see,”</a> Boullée insisted:</p>
<blockquote style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;display:
block;-webkit-margin-before:
0;-webkit-margin-after:
0;-webkit-margin-start:
40px;-webkit-margin-end: 0;" class=""><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;color: #595959;font-family:
Arial,Sans-serif;font-size:
15px;line-height: 170%;text-align:
left;" class=""><img src="https://gallery.mailchimp.com/13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1/images/2e292385-dc1c-4cfe-b95e-845f6f98c2ec.png" alt="2e292385-dc1c-4cfe-b95e-845f6f98c2ec.png" style="-ms-interpolation-mode:
bicubic;border: 0;height:
auto;line-height: 100%;outline:
none;text-decoration:
none;padding: 5px 30px 10px
0;display: inline;width: 50px
!important;" moz-do-not-send="true" align="left" class="">No idea exists that
does not derive from nature… It is
impossible to create architectural
imagery without a profound
knowledge of nature: the Poetry of
architecture lies in natural
effects. That is what makes
architecture an art and that art
sublime.</p>
</blockquote><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;color: #262626;font-family:
Georgia,serif;font-size:
16px;line-height: 165%;text-align:
left;" class="">Architecture in the modern
sense was then a young art, because
<a href="https://brainpickings.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1&id=af86805e4f&e=abb58e6917" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;color:
#C33737;text-decoration:
underline;" moz-do-not-send="true" class="">the
art-science of perspective was so
novel</a>. Newton’s optics,
derived directly from the laws of
nature, had revolutionized it all.
Boullée came to define architecture
as “the art of creating perspectives
by the arrangement of volumes,” but
a highly poetic art: </p>
<blockquote style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;display:
block;-webkit-margin-before:
0;-webkit-margin-after:
0;-webkit-margin-start:
40px;-webkit-margin-end: 0;" class=""><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;color: #595959;font-family:
Arial,Sans-serif;font-size:
15px;line-height: 170%;text-align:
left;" class=""><img src="https://gallery.mailchimp.com/13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1/images/2e292385-dc1c-4cfe-b95e-845f6f98c2ec.png" alt="2e292385-dc1c-4cfe-b95e-845f6f98c2ec.png" style="-ms-interpolation-mode:
bicubic;border: 0;height:
auto;line-height: 100%;outline:
none;text-decoration:
none;padding: 5px 30px 10px
0;display: inline;width: 50px
!important;" moz-do-not-send="true" align="left" class="">The real talent of
an architect lies in incorporating
in his work the sublime attraction
of Poetry.</p>
</blockquote><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;color: #262626;font-family:
Georgia,serif;font-size:
16px;line-height: 165%;text-align:
left;" class="">The poetry of architecture,
he argued, resides in using
perspective and light in such a way
that “our senses are reminded of
nature.” He interpreted the laws of
nature, as clarified by Newton’s
optics and mathematics, to intimate
that no shape embodies this serenade
to the senses with greater power and
precision than the sphere:</p>
<blockquote style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;display:
block;-webkit-margin-before:
0;-webkit-margin-after:
0;-webkit-margin-start:
40px;-webkit-margin-end: 0;" class=""><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;color: #595959;font-family:
Arial,Sans-serif;font-size:
15px;line-height: 170%;text-align:
left;" class=""><img src="https://gallery.mailchimp.com/13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1/images/2e292385-dc1c-4cfe-b95e-845f6f98c2ec.png" alt="2e292385-dc1c-4cfe-b95e-845f6f98c2ec.png" style="-ms-interpolation-mode:
bicubic;border: 0;height:
auto;line-height: 100%;outline:
none;text-decoration:
none;padding: 5px 30px 10px
0;display: inline;width: 50px
!important;" moz-do-not-send="true" align="left" class="">A sphere is, in all
respects, the image of perfection.
It combines strict symmetry with
the most perfect regularity and
the greatest possible variety; its
form is developed to the fullest
extent and is the simplest that
exists; its shape is outlined by
the most agreeable contour and,
finally, the light effects that it
produces are so beautifully
graduated that they could not
possibly be softer, more agreeable
or more varied. These unique
advantages, which the sphere
derives from nature, have an
immeasurable hold over our senses.</p>
</blockquote>
<img src="https://i0.wp.com/www.brainpickings.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/boullee_newtoncenotaph2.jpg?resize=680%2C404" alt="boullee_newtoncenotaph2.jpg?resize=680%2C404" style="-ms-interpolation-mode:
bicubic;border: 0;height:
auto;line-height: 100%;outline:
none;text-decoration: none;display:
inline;width: 100%;" moz-do-not-send="true" class=""><p class="caption" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;color: #595959;font-family:
Arial,Sans-serif;font-size:
11px;line-height: 165%;text-align:
left;border-bottom: 1px solid
#bfbfbf;padding: 0 0
4px;font-weight:
bold;-webkit-margin-before: .35em;">Image
courtesy of Bibliothèque nationale
de France.</p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;color: #262626;font-family:
Georgia,serif;font-size:
16px;line-height: 165%;text-align:
left;" class="">And so Boullée predicated his
cenotaph for Newton on an enormous
sphere that would convey his
ultimate intent for the temple — to
arouse in the visitor’s soul
“feelings in keeping with religious
ceremonies,” a sense of grandeur
leaving them “moved by such an
excess of sensibility… that all the
faculties of our soul are disturbed
to such an extent that we feel it is
departing from our body” — an effect
always best achieved not by an
enormity of sheer size and space but
by a considered contrast of scales.
No building, he observed, “calls for
the Poetry of architecture” more
than a memorial to the dead.
Believing that architecture, like
all art, should ultimately serve to
enlarge our sense of aliveness, and
that we are never more alive than
when we are rooted in our creaturely
senses, Boullée insisted that the
key to this sense of grandeur lies
in applying the principles of
nature’s mathematics with poetic
subtlety — the principles laid bare
in the <em class="">Principia</em>, the
principles that “derive from order,
the symbol of wisdom.” He wrote: </p>
<blockquote style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;display:
block;-webkit-margin-before:
0;-webkit-margin-after:
0;-webkit-margin-start:
40px;-webkit-margin-end: 0;" class=""><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;color: #595959;font-family:
Arial,Sans-serif;font-size:
15px;line-height: 170%;text-align:
left;" class=""><img src="https://gallery.mailchimp.com/13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1/images/2e292385-dc1c-4cfe-b95e-845f6f98c2ec.png" alt="2e292385-dc1c-4cfe-b95e-845f6f98c2ec.png" style="-ms-interpolation-mode:
bicubic;border: 0;height:
auto;line-height: 100%;outline:
none;text-decoration:
none;padding: 5px 30px 10px
0;display: inline;width: 50px
!important;" moz-do-not-send="true" align="left" class="">Symmetry… is what
results from the order that
extends in every direction and
multiplies them at our glance
until we can no longer count them.
By extending the sweep of an
avenue so that its end is out of
sight, the laws of optics and the
effects of perspective given an
impression of immensity; at each
step, the objects appear in a new
guise and our pleasure is renewed
by a succession of different
vistas. Finally, by some miracle
which in fact is the result of our
own movement but which we
attribute to the objects around
us, the latter seem to move with
us, as if we had imparted Life to
them.</p>
</blockquote>
<img src="https://i0.wp.com/www.brainpickings.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/boullee_newtoncenotaph1.jpg?resize=680%2C667" alt="boullee_newtoncenotaph1.jpg?resize=680%2C667" style="-ms-interpolation-mode:
bicubic;border: 0;height:
auto;line-height: 100%;outline:
none;text-decoration: none;display:
inline;width: 100%;" moz-do-not-send="true" class=""><p class="caption" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;color: #595959;font-family:
Arial,Sans-serif;font-size:
11px;line-height: 165%;text-align:
left;border-bottom: 1px solid
#bfbfbf;padding: 0 0
4px;font-weight:
bold;-webkit-margin-before: .35em;">Aerial
cross-section. Image courtesy of
Bibliothèque nationale de France.</p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;color: #262626;font-family:
Georgia,serif;font-size:
16px;line-height: 165%;text-align:
left;" class="">But my favorite part of the
story is that Boullée found his
formative inspiration, not only for
the Newton cenotaph and but for his
entire creative philosophy, in an
unusual encounter with trees — those
<a href="https://brainpickings.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1&id=c491abed79&e=abb58e6917" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;color:
#C33737;text-decoration:
underline;" moz-do-not-send="true" class="">profoundest
of teachers</a>.</p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;color: #262626;font-family:
Georgia,serif;font-size:
16px;line-height: 165%;text-align:
left;" class="">One evening, heavy with
grief, Boullée went for a walk along
the edge of a forest. Under the
moonlight, he noticed his shadow. He
had seen his shadow a thousand times
before, but the peculiar lens of his
psychic state rendered it entirely
new — a living artwork of “extreme
melancholy.” Looking around, he saw
the shadows of the trees in this new
light, too, etching onto the ground
the profound drama of life. The
entire scene was suddenly awash in
“all that is sombre in nature.” He
had seen the state of his soul
mirrored back by the natural world,
as we so often do in those rawest
moments when we are stripped to the
base of our being, grounded into our
creaturely senses. </p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;color: #262626;font-family:
Georgia,serif;font-size:
16px;line-height: 165%;text-align:
left;" class="">This was the moment of
Boullée’s artistic awakening — that
moment of revelation when, as
Virginia Woolf wrote in her <a href="https://brainpickings.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1&id=9d88eef4bc&e=abb58e6917" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;color:
#C33737;text-decoration:
underline;" moz-do-not-send="true" class="">exquisite
account of her own artistic
awakening</a>, something lifts
“the cotton wool of daily life” and
we see the familiar world afresh.
Boullée recounted:</p>
<blockquote style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;display:
block;-webkit-margin-before:
0;-webkit-margin-after:
0;-webkit-margin-start:
40px;-webkit-margin-end: 0;" class=""><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;color: #595959;font-family:
Arial,Sans-serif;font-size:
15px;line-height: 170%;text-align:
left;" class=""><img src="https://gallery.mailchimp.com/13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1/images/2e292385-dc1c-4cfe-b95e-845f6f98c2ec.png" alt="2e292385-dc1c-4cfe-b95e-845f6f98c2ec.png" style="-ms-interpolation-mode:
bicubic;border: 0;height:
auto;line-height: 100%;outline:
none;text-decoration:
none;padding: 5px 30px 10px
0;display: inline;width: 50px
!important;" moz-do-not-send="true" align="left" class="">The mass of objects
stood out in black against the
extreme wanness of the light.
Nature offered itself to my gaze
in mourning. I was struck by the
sensations I was experiencing and
immediately began to wonder how to
apply this, especially to
architecture. I tried to find a
composition made up of the effect
of shadows. To achieve this, I
imagined the light (as I had
observed it in nature) giving back
to me all that my imagination
could think of. That was how I
proceeded when I was seeking to
discover this new type of
architecture.</p>
</blockquote><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;color: #262626;font-family:
Georgia,serif;font-size:
16px;line-height: 165%;text-align:
left;" class="">He called this new
architecture “the architecture of
shadow.” His vision for Newton’s
cenotaph was its grand testament:</p>
<blockquote style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;display:
block;-webkit-margin-before:
0;-webkit-margin-after:
0;-webkit-margin-start:
40px;-webkit-margin-end: 0;" class=""><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;color: #595959;font-family:
Arial,Sans-serif;font-size:
15px;line-height: 170%;text-align:
left;" class=""><img src="https://gallery.mailchimp.com/13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1/images/2e292385-dc1c-4cfe-b95e-845f6f98c2ec.png" alt="2e292385-dc1c-4cfe-b95e-845f6f98c2ec.png" style="-ms-interpolation-mode:
bicubic;border: 0;height:
auto;line-height: 100%;outline:
none;text-decoration:
none;padding: 5px 30px 10px
0;display: inline;width: 50px
!important;" moz-do-not-send="true" align="left" class="">I attempted to
create the greatest of all
effects, that of immensity; for
that is what gives us lofty
thoughts as we contemplate the
Creator and give us celestial
sensations.</p>
</blockquote><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;color: #262626;font-family:
Georgia,serif;font-size:
16px;line-height: 165%;text-align:
left;" class="">He attempted, more than that,
to honor Newton on his own terms, by
the essence of his genius:</p>
<blockquote style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;display:
block;-webkit-margin-before:
0;-webkit-margin-after:
0;-webkit-margin-start:
40px;-webkit-margin-end: 0;" class=""><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;color: #595959;font-family:
Arial,Sans-serif;font-size:
15px;line-height: 170%;text-align:
left;" class=""><img src="https://gallery.mailchimp.com/13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1/images/2e292385-dc1c-4cfe-b95e-845f6f98c2ec.png" alt="2e292385-dc1c-4cfe-b95e-845f6f98c2ec.png" style="-ms-interpolation-mode:
bicubic;border: 0;height:
auto;line-height: 100%;outline:
none;text-decoration:
none;padding: 5px 30px 10px
0;display: inline;width: 50px
!important;" moz-do-not-send="true" align="left" class="">O Newton! With the
range of your intelligence and the
sublime nature of your Genius, you
have defined the shape of the
earth; I have conceived the idea
of enveloping you with your
discovery… your own self. How can
I find outside you anything worthy
of you?</p>
</blockquote>
<img src="https://i0.wp.com/www.brainpickings.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/boullee_newtoncenotaph4.jpg?resize=680%2C411" alt="boullee_newtoncenotaph4.jpg?resize=680%2C411" style="-ms-interpolation-mode:
bicubic;border: 0;height:
auto;line-height: 100%;outline:
none;text-decoration: none;display:
inline;width: 100%;" moz-do-not-send="true" class=""><p class="caption" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;color: #595959;font-family:
Arial,Sans-serif;font-size:
11px;line-height: 165%;text-align:
left;border-bottom: 1px solid
#bfbfbf;padding: 0 0
4px;font-weight:
bold;-webkit-margin-before: .35em;">Image
courtesy of Bibliothèque nationale
de France.</p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;color: #262626;font-family:
Georgia,serif;font-size:
16px;line-height: 165%;text-align:
left;" class="">In a further homage to
Newton’s legacy, with Boullée
regarded as a “divine system” of
laws, he chose to suspend a sole
spherical lamp over the tomb as the
only decoration in the entire
monument — anything else, he felt,
would be “committing sacrilege.” The
contrast of scales — the smaller
sphere of the lamp inside the
enormous sphere of the building —
would dramatize the contrast of
light and shadow, just as the
moonlight had done that fateful
night of artistic revelation by the
trees. This would give the visitor
the sense that they are “as if by
magic floating in the air, borne in
the wake of images in the immensity
of space.” Boullée considered the
play of light the vital element in
this enchantment:</p>
<blockquote style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;display:
block;-webkit-margin-before:
0;-webkit-margin-after:
0;-webkit-margin-start:
40px;-webkit-margin-end: 0;" class=""><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;color: #595959;font-family:
Arial,Sans-serif;font-size:
15px;line-height: 170%;text-align:
left;" class=""><img src="https://gallery.mailchimp.com/13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1/images/2e292385-dc1c-4cfe-b95e-845f6f98c2ec.png" alt="2e292385-dc1c-4cfe-b95e-845f6f98c2ec.png" style="-ms-interpolation-mode:
bicubic;border: 0;height:
auto;line-height: 100%;outline:
none;text-decoration:
none;padding: 5px 30px 10px
0;display: inline;width: 50px
!important;" moz-do-not-send="true" align="left" class="">It is light that
produces impressions which arouse
in us various contradictory
sensations depending on whether
they are brilliant or sombre. If I
could manage to diffuse in my
temple magnificent light effects I
would fill the onlooker with joy;
but if, on the contrary, my temple
had only sombre effects, I would
fill him with sadness. If I could
avoid direct light and arrange for
its presence without the onlooker
being aware of its source, the
ensuing effect of mysterious
daylight would produce
inconceivable impression and, in a
sense, a truly enchanting magic
quality.</p>
</blockquote><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;color: #262626;font-family:
Georgia,serif;font-size:
16px;line-height: 165%;text-align:
left;" class="">At a time long before readily
available electric light and
light-projection, he leaned on
Newton’s optics to envision
something that was part Stonehenge
and part Hayden Planetarium. A
century and a half before the first
modern planetarium dome, Boullée
dotted the black interior of his
dome with an intricate arrangement
of tiny holes reflecting the
positions of the constellations and
the planets, streaming in daylight
to create an enchanting nightscape
inside. But unlike the modern
counterpart, Boullée’s was a
reversible planetarium — at night,
the sole spherical light would
irradiate the tiny holes from the
other direction, making the dome
appear as a self-contained universe
if viewed from above. This, lest we
forget, was the golden age of
aeronautics, when hot-air balloons
first defied gravity to lift the
human animal into the sky. </p>
<img src="https://i0.wp.com/www.brainpickings.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/boullee_newtoncenotaph6.jpg?resize=680%2C412" alt="boullee_newtoncenotaph6.jpg?resize=680%2C412" style="-ms-interpolation-mode:
bicubic;border: 0;height:
auto;line-height: 100%;outline:
none;text-decoration: none;display:
inline;width: 100%;" moz-do-not-send="true" class=""><p class="caption" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;color: #595959;font-family:
Arial,Sans-serif;font-size:
11px;line-height: 165%;text-align:
left;border-bottom: 1px solid
#bfbfbf;padding: 0 0
4px;font-weight:
bold;-webkit-margin-before: .35em;">Side
cross-section. Image courtesy of
Bibliothèque nationale de France.</p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;color: #262626;font-family:
Georgia,serif;font-size:
16px;line-height: 165%;text-align:
left;" class="">Too visionary for its era,
the cenotaph was never built, but
Boullée’s ink-and-wash drawings
circulated widely in the final
decade of his life, eliciting both
gasping admiration and merciless
derision — the fate of the true
visionary. With the publication of
his <a href="https://brainpickings.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1&id=609b62cf49&e=abb58e6917" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;color:
#C33737;text-decoration:
underline;" moz-do-not-send="true" class="">impassioned
and insightful writings</a> nearly
two centuries after his death,
translated by Helen Rosenau, his
vision went on to inspire
generations of modern artists and
architects with a new way of
thinking about the poetry of public
spaces and the relationship between
nature and human creativity.</p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;color: #262626;font-family:
Georgia,serif;font-size:
16px;line-height: 165%;text-align:
left;" class="">In a sentiment evocative of
another pioneer’s lamentation —
Harriet Hosmer’s astute remark that
<a href="https://brainpickings.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1&id=570a920527&e=abb58e6917" style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;color:
#C33737;text-decoration:
underline;" moz-do-not-send="true" class="">“if
one knew but one-half the
difficulties an artist has to
surmount… the public would be less
ready to censure him for his
shortcomings or slow advancement”</a>
— Boullée wrote of his critics:</p>
<blockquote style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;display:
block;-webkit-margin-before:
0;-webkit-margin-after:
0;-webkit-margin-start:
40px;-webkit-margin-end: 0;" class=""><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;color: #595959;font-family:
Arial,Sans-serif;font-size:
15px;line-height: 170%;text-align:
left;" class=""><img src="https://gallery.mailchimp.com/13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1/images/2e292385-dc1c-4cfe-b95e-845f6f98c2ec.png" alt="2e292385-dc1c-4cfe-b95e-845f6f98c2ec.png" style="-ms-interpolation-mode:
bicubic;border: 0;height:
auto;line-height: 100%;outline:
none;text-decoration:
none;padding: 5px 30px 10px
0;display: inline;width: 50px
!important;" moz-do-not-send="true" align="left" class="">No one is more
exacting than a man who is not
conversant with a given art for he
is unable to imagine all the
difficulties the artist has to
overcome.</p>
</blockquote><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;color: #262626;font-family:
Georgia,serif;font-size:
16px;line-height: 165%;text-align:
left;" class="">His ultimate satisfaction was
not the reception or execution of
his designs, but the inexhaustible
source of their inspiration — the
elemental wellspring of the creative
impulse behind all art and all
science, that richest and readiest
reward of our aliveness:</p>
<blockquote style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;display:
block;-webkit-margin-before:
0;-webkit-margin-after:
0;-webkit-margin-start:
40px;-webkit-margin-end: 0;" class=""><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;color: #595959;font-family:
Arial,Sans-serif;font-size:
15px;line-height: 170%;text-align:
left;" class=""><img src="https://gallery.mailchimp.com/13eb080d8a315477042e0d5b1/images/2e292385-dc1c-4cfe-b95e-845f6f98c2ec.png" alt="2e292385-dc1c-4cfe-b95e-845f6f98c2ec.png" style="-ms-interpolation-mode:
bicubic;border: 0;height:
auto;line-height: 100%;outline:
none;text-decoration:
none;padding: 5px 30px 10px
0;display: inline;width: 50px
!important;" moz-do-not-send="true" align="left" class="">The artist… is
always making discoveries and
spends his life observing nature.</p>
</blockquote>
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<h1 style="display: block;font-family:
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!important;" class="">A SMALL, DELIGHTFUL SIDE
PROJECT:</h1>
<div class="entry_content" style="margin: 0 40px;"><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
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underline;" moz-do-not-send="true" class=""><strong class=""><em class="">Vintage
Science Face Masks Benefiting
the Nature Conservancy (New
Designs Added)</em></strong></a>
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<h1 style="display: block;font-family:
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BY YOURS TRULY:</h1>
<div class="entry_content" style="margin: 0 40px;"><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
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100%;color: #262626;font-family:
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16px;line-height: 165%;text-align:
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100%;-ms-text-size-adjust:
100%;color:
#C33737;text-decoration:
underline;" moz-do-not-send="true" class=""><strong class=""><em class="">The
Snail with the Right Heart: A
True Story</em></strong></a> </p><p style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
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