In the first democratic debate, Hillary Clinton said she was “a progressive who likes to get things done.” Let’s hope they will be less plutocratic than the “things” done by her husband. Meanwhile the question came up from others that going to Mars, or similar colossal techno-scientific progress had no humanitarian value. Before a more organized rebuttal, here goes my poetical opinion:
***
Science, Mars, Or Moral Bust
Many are the passions
Many are the tragedies
Against tragedies goodness,
All too often contend in vain.
Lest emotions move men and fate
Out of complacency, indifference,
Careers, self-admiring seriousness,
And obey the call of love for mind, sentience..
Yet, even when passions move us,
Towards the noblest goals, with the best intentions
All too often we find there is nothing
We can do at all, against pain and suffering:
When our magic, our science, come short..
To feel right and think right,
Does not mean we can do right.
For enabling goodness we need the powers,
The very powers which feed from,
By, and with, the Dark Side.
Power itself is dark.
Yet noble, and fundamentally us.
So yes, by any means,
Go to Mars.
It will nurture new emotions,
Wealth of transcendent emotions,
Not just lofty and intricate thoughts,
Humanity define.
We have always gone to Mars,
Ever since we left leafy trees.
We will stop,
Only when our fundamental lust,
What defines us,
Progress,
Dies with us.
Tags: Mars, Morality, Poetry, Progress, SAcience, Technology
Patrice Ayme's Thoughts 
October 15, 2015 at 12:17 am |
You really are getting quite good! š
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October 15, 2015 at 2:48 am |
Thanks Paul, you are very touching… And very kind. Took me a while, all too long, to translate my esteem for poetry into actual words… And at a great peril to feed the beast some more… BTW, if you want a quickie post since you are so busy, don’t hesitate to re-post my:
as you said you would… since I want everybody to learn about the blob, instead of just complaining about the miserable weather they got in Scotland over summer (LAST summer…) It’s important for people to understand that the greenhouse gases disruption is not just about global warming…
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October 15, 2015 at 5:18 am |
Patrice, your Atlantic post is being republished over at my place in just under 2 hours time. But it wasn’t a “quickie” as I rather got carried away by my introduction. The Atlantic holds some treasured personal memories, as you will shortly discover!
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October 15, 2015 at 12:25 pm |
Your observations and general approach, Paul, are always treasured. Your description of sailing, especially solo, came out vivid, more telling than the ones we got from experts. I sure cannot imagine me heading on a boat, alone, on a sea (although I did solo climbing as recently as last summer, sailing is another world; to start with, I fear waves: I was thrown out at sea once by one among rocks, in a storm…)
Anyway thanks for reproducing my cold blob post.
P
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October 16, 2015 at 12:25 am |
Patrice,
Noble narrative and logical exposition do not a poem make… however, it is a concise summary of your philosophical concepts -which is very helpful and worthwhile.
If I may – it’s through the senses that metaphors are painted and words transcended, writer’s rooted details like holograms levitate in reader’s lived earthy memories. I’m offering up constructive criticism of your poem because my poetry also tend to be highly abstract and idealistic, so I speak from experience… do keep writing.
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October 16, 2015 at 1:17 am |
As you say, Andrej, I feel Patrice uses her poetry to express more concisely, more artistically her wisdom. Everything to be commended about that. It’s coming out beautifully, and it’s useful for me to understand what I am looking for.
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October 16, 2015 at 5:23 pm |
Thanks for encouraging me to write, Andrej. I do think that poetical thinking, including, but not restricted to metaphorical thinking, is more general, and, in that sense precursory to causal thinking. That’s all I am trying to achieve. By “poetry” I thus mean the most general thinking.
Poetry — meaning the aggregate of instances from which the idea of poetry is deduced by every new poet — has been increasingly enlarged for many centuries. The instances are numerous, varied and contradictory as instances of love; but just as ‘love’ is a word of powerful enough magic to make the true lover forget all its baser and falser, usages, so is ‘poetry’ for the true poet. [Robert Graves, “The White Goddess”]
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October 16, 2015 at 1:09 am |
Wow. It seems to me you are now busy inventing a new poetical form which speaks with the power of truth. As all pioneers, the flames of those deranged by this new art, will try to disparage your works. Please don’t listen to them, keep on going beyond what was done before, cool and unperturbed
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October 16, 2015 at 1:36 am |
gmax,
You are but a blind follower – it’s kind of scary you can’t express anything but wonder for Patrice, have you ever heard of critical thinking? It might help you in reaching some understanding of reality, you are nothing but a minion… I was expressing gratitude for the clarity of the proposed ideas, but not every sentence is poetry – nor is every follower meant to be blind and without critique, that’s how things improve and poetry becomes more then personal exposition…
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October 16, 2015 at 2:21 am |
Andrej, I am sorry to scare you. I just like very much what she is doing. And if you want critique, lemme tell you she ignored some of the questions I put to her recently, and I did not like that at all. Here, you see? She did not try to claim what she was doing was this, that, or the other thing, she just did it. How do you define poetry, anyway? Metaphors galore? Rhymes? No hard feelings! š
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October 16, 2015 at 2:31 am |
Gmax,
as you can tell I don’t hold back when I feel strongly about something – glad you can take it without cringing… I would never claim to be able to define poetry – and I also like what Patrice does by distilling writing into pure ideas with few words. Brilliant – what I’d learned in creative writing classes etc – and what I’d love to read let’s say, is a poem based on one of P’s epic runs in the mountains – would make great writing i venture, rhythmic breathing and sweat, sensations, striving, mountains… just pushing further in our humanity – since a talent is always shaped by environment as well!
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October 16, 2015 at 5:32 pm |
Sorry, but I have lots to do. Your questions were not ignored, far from it, I could not find time to answer them properly. But I thank you for them, and your general support. I probably mulled responses, but had no time to write them. Sometimes answering properly one person on one point takes a full essay…
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October 16, 2015 at 5:34 pm |
I appreciate critique, whether constructive or not, and often, whether injurious or not.
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October 16, 2015 at 9:05 pm |
Privilege of Being, By Robert Hass – Berkeley’s finest http://articles.latimes.com/1999/feb/14/books/bk-7893
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October 17, 2015 at 2:02 am |
No doubt interesting, and I appreciate. Bring forth more … Yet this particular idea, that love does not transcend everything, including loneliness, is not the sort of love I want to breathe.
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