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Marc -- I recently watched (listened to) an interview of Alan Watts
by Studs Turkel<br>
on Youtube.<br>
Turns out it was his last interview as he (Watts) died a short while
later<br>
He had some very interesting views on events of the time. For
instance, he thought<br>
that Ghandi was one of the most violent men ever. You may want to
check it out.<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
<br>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 3/21/21 12:59 PM, Yasskin Marc
wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:EE7F3F5E-8015-4955-8EFC-8A4F18D2D6DA@mindspring.com">
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
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=""
moz-do-not-send="true">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"
class=""
align="left">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"
class=""
align="left">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"
class=""
align="left">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"
class=""
align="left">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"
class=""
align="left">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"
class=""
align="left">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"
class=""
align="left">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>
<table class="share"
style="-webkit-text-size-adjust:
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collapse !important;"
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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"
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#8C8C8C
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class="share_wide_stay" style="display: inline-block;padding: 0 10px;">/</span><a
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style="-webkit-text-size-adjust: 100%;-ms-text-size-adjust: 100%;color:
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<!--DONATION MODULE-->
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style="display:
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class="">donating=loving</h2>
For 15 years,
I have been
spending
hundreds of
hours and
thousands of
dollars each
month to keep
<em class="">Brain
Pickings</em>
going. It has
remained free
and ad-free
and alive
thanks to
patronage from
readers. I
have no staff,
no interns, no
assistant — a
thoroughly
one-woman
labor of love
that is also
my life and my
livelihood. If
this labor
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life more
livable in any
way, please
consider
aiding its
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!important;">monthly
donation</h2>
<span
style="color:#ffffff"
class="">You
can become a
Sustaining
Patron with a
recurring
monthly
donation of
your choosing,
between a cup
of tea and a
Brooklyn
lunch.</span>
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!important;">one-time
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class="">Or
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Supporter with
a one-time
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any amount.</span>
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class="">
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Partial to
Bitcoin? You
can beam some
bit-love my
way: <strong
class="">197usDS6AsL9wDKxtGM6xaWjmR5ejgqem7</strong>
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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"
class=""
align="left">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"
class=""
align="left">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"
class=""
align="left">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"
class=""
align="left">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"
class=""
align="left">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"
class=""
align="left">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"
class=""
align="left">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>
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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"
class=""
align="left">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"
class=""
align="left">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"
class=""
align="left">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"
class=""
align="left">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"
class=""
align="left">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"
class=""
align="left">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"
class=""
align="left">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"
class=""
align="left">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"
class=""
align="left">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"
class=""
align="left">The
artist… is always
making discoveries and
spends his life
observing nature.</p>
</blockquote>
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cellspacing="0"
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Partial to
Bitcoin? You
can beam some
bit-love my
way: <strong
class="">197usDS6AsL9wDKxtGM6xaWjmR5ejgqem7</strong>
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<h1 style="display:
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solid #E19B9B;margin: 0
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SMALL, DELIGHTFUL SIDE
PROJECT:</h1>
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bold;line-height:
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solid #E19B9B;margin: 0
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7px;text-align:
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NEW CHILDREN’S BOOK BY
YOURS TRULY:</h1>
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16px;line-height:
165%;text-align: left;"
class=""><a
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with the Right
Heart: A True
Story</em></strong></a>
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