I haven't seen all of the films that claim to be Star Wars films, and I don't really have a clear recollection of any of them other than the three actual Star Wars films, but one moment from one of the others comes to my mind. The "young Obi-Wan" is in the middle of a pitched battle, when suddenly a door, or at any rate, a glass barrier between chambers, descends. "Young Obi-Wan" looks around, ascertains the situation, and then drops to one knee and bows his head, calming his spirit and waiting for the interposition to be lifted. A fiction attempting to convinced us of its own verisimilitude might show an element of frustration, so we would believe he is actually a fighter in a battle, but either the film declines to demonstrate this, or it seeks to demonstrate that he is a different type of fighter. When I first saw this, as I recall, I was very much in the sword training dojo, so I took that lesson to heart.
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The uncanny feeling of the sea change that set in a couple of days ago, perhaps partially a phenomenon of my own consciousness after the difficulties of the last blizzard, does invite a certain ease of comportment. This morning, though, I had a very different sense. For some reason, one of the national churches that I encountered on the recent travels was very present to me when I awakened. I recalled the holy places that I had visited, and seemed to have a peculiar access to the memories in my own mind.
A small springtime in the local weather today, almost 50 degrees.
When the slog grows long, and the mind perhaps begins to play tricks (or is being buoyed along by things that have nothing to do with you as an individual), life becomes like a recurrent walk through a village, a task that can seem either easy or difficult -- but we forget that access to the things of the village (the church, the tavern, the scholars' library) is the point, and then the day, even for those working at their utmost, becomes simply a long tread through the place without seeking access to the things of the place themselves.
During a period of adversity perhaps ten years ago, I made a point to walk, every morning, past a shop with a front window filled with bags and barrels of spices. There are two elements here: the continued force of the journey, and the desire to have access to the thing itself. If I had simply continued to walk to the window each morning as a point of discipline, I would have lost. At any rate, this sense of access, that which I had rather powerfully tis morning in another context, is very, very important. Particularly in reading and writing. Else the eyes just glide over the page, or we file the abstract arguments of the text away in our mind. For things to be worthwhile, for the game to be worth the candle, even the most abtruse philosophy must have a real relevance to the living questions that you have always felt, even before and beneath language.
A final danger: this last sensibility of essence can also be a powerful means of deception. But the mental discipline of scholarship exists to guard against such things. It is not just that there is always a duality -- the second reality is there to guard and protect you against the first, immanent sensibility by ensuring its validity.
One example. Rights, in the American tradition, are said to be self-evident. What might this mean? Well, if you look at the things the Framers were reading, specifically Locke's second Treatise, you'll see that truths are divided between self-evident truths and essential truths, and that the second type of truth is thought to be very dangerous, as it is easily the tool of the tyrant, urging his people to believe in the things that elude rational understanding.
We value things, and we know things. And valuing things and knowing things have to do with each other, and are essential to each other.
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"Gently down the stream." (Star Trek V)