Returning to the Cave

Philosophy, politics, literature, social theories. Quotes from great thinkers and the like. Posts signed R.J. Davey are my own brand of potentially intellectual bullshit.

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And he knew, also, what the old man was thinking as his tears flowed, and he, Rieux, thought it too: that a loveless world is a dead world, and always there comes an hour when one is weary of prisons, of one's work, and of devotion to duty, and all one craves for is a loved face, the warmth and wonder of a loving heart.

Albert Camus, The Plague

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“We're born alone, we live alone, we die alone. Only through our love and friendship can we create the illusion for the moment that we're not alone.”

- Orson Welles 

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Reality and the Shadows

The absence of form and definition within the shadows found at night are not truly an absence of form and definition of the things that are there in the harsh reality of day: they are merely a part of the true form of what is there and is not there at one and the same time.

All opposites are one and the same thing. What is revealed in day and hidden at night always exists. To understand and appreciate one, we must also understand and appreciate the other.

Of course, there may be something untoward lurking within that shadow that is not there by day (though this is always human and never supernatural) and we may be being watched when we look out at them from within our houses, but they only ever exist there for the most temporary of moments.

R.J. Davey 02.09.2020.

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The intellectual was rejected and persecuted at the precise moment when the facts became incontrovertible, when it was forbidden to say that the emperor had no clothes.

Michel Foucault

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Edward Hopper, Cape Cod Morning (1950)

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From that point on, it could be said that the plague became the affair of us all. Up to then, despite the surprise and anxiety that these unusual events had brought us, everyone had gone on with his business, as well as he could, in the usual place. And that no doubt  would continue. But, once the gates were closed, they all noticed that they were in the same boat, including the narrator himself, and that they had to adjust to the fact. This is how, for example, a quite individual feeling such as being separated from a loved one suddenly became, in the very first weeks, the feeling of a whole people and, together with fear, the greatest agony of that long period of exile.

Albert Camus, The Plague

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Sometimes it seems to me that consciousness is largely defined by memory. We are always looking backward: the present never truly exists apart from in the world around us for but a fleeting moment and we cannot experience it properly, such is the nature of the absurd. Even when the thought arises and our sluggish brains notice this, it has already passed, is already fading as the neurons have fired and their electrical energy dissipates. Our peculiar, individual fate as thinking animals is to be locked inside a prison made of mirrors, looking at an image of ourselves which is already dead. So many once familiar faces now blank and mannequin-like, so many sunsets now faded to night.

R.J. Davey 23/08/2020

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We are asleep. Our Life is a dream. But we wake up sometimes, just enough to know that we are dreaming.

Ludwig Wittgenstein

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There is no sun without shadow, and it is essential to know the night.

Albert Camus 

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A Thought on Reparations

Reparations are about righting the wrongs of history. They are about admitting that how your ancestors treated others was wrong and it is ultimately a part of growing as a society and a culture. They are about balancing the accounts of history. They may never bring back the thousands lost to injustice but they will help to improve the lives of their descendants immeasurably. There shouldn’t even be a question as to why they are needed. To ask the question “why” shows that you have not taken on board the lessons of history.

R.J. Davey 14/08/2020

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Isolation and the Human Experience

The default state of human experience is, ultimately, isolation. We come into the world alone and we exit in the same way. Our innermost thoughts and desires are never fully realised, never truly shared with or understood by others. It has always been thus; it will always be so.

No matter who is around us we are, still, tragically walking through a city at night whilst everyone else sleeps or passes us by without every truly seeing us. Even those we sit next to in a late night diner or buy cigarettes off in an all-night convenience store will fade from view once the door to the establishment closes after us. We find ourselves once more standing alone in the emptying street.

The trick is not to let it lead us to despair but to realise that this is just the way things are underneath the sheen of the everyday world. All there is is the absurd. Even laughter and meaning can be found in the briefest of meetings. Comfort can be found in a hot cup of coffee and if you stay out late enough, you will always see the sunrise. Keep walking through that city.

R.J. Davey 10/08/2020

Painting: Nighthawks by Edward Hopper (1942)

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The struggle itself towards the heights is enough to fill a mans heart.

Albert Camus

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“All war is a symptom of man's failure as a thinking animal.” ― John Steinbeck

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"Is it possible, in the final analysis, for one human being to achieve perfect understanding of another? We can invest enormous time and energy in serious efforts to know another person, but in the end, how close can we come to that person's essence? We convince ourselves that we know the other person well, but do we really know anything important about anyone?"

— Haruki Murakami, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

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With every increase in the degree of consciousness, and in proportion to that increase, the intensity of despair increases: the more consciousness the more intense the despair

Soren Kierkegaard

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“If a man has his eyes bound, you can encourage him as much as you like to stare through the bandage, but he'll never see anything.” ― Franz Kafka, The Castle

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“The secret of genius is to carry the spirit of the child into old age, which means never losing your enthusiasm.” ― Aldous Huxley