As I lay awake unable to sleep, in order to grow more tired I do something that I know that I am not supposed to do: go to the computer ... (this and television are stimulants, they are the last things that one should toy with for sleep).
So, quickly: the reason that I am sleepless is due to pain. With all due discretion I'll forgo details, but those close to me know about my health issues and can tell you that I am no stranger to pain. Reflecting on some of my posts below that celebrate the ecological ethic of life and relation, growth, and empathy with other beings' perspectives, it is times like these that I am starkly reminded of "the dark side": we should acknowledge, too, the extinction of perspectives, of pain and death. See for example my post on Schopenhauer, another one of my favorite philosophers.
Robert S. Corrington, creator of the school known as ecstatic naturalism, states that we should be careful not to "sugarcoat" nature - that is we should not over-emphasize a strictly comfy place in the cosmos for the human. It just takes one jolt, an experience (Dewey and his naive optimism) to quickly remind you that we are all finite, we die, and its all part of the process (thus one other way to establish ontological parity - that in the sense that our singular existences can be extinguished at any moment, contingently - death is a reality equally shared).
Perhaps this adds even more value to what we may want to cherish. Pain and suffering are alive and well, and they, too, serve as methods of contrast in the aesthetic experience of value.
Hopefully I'll be able to get some sleep.
Perhaps this adds even more value to what we may want to cherish. Pain and suffering are alive and well, and they, too, serve as methods of contrast in the aesthetic experience of value.
Hopefully I'll be able to get some sleep.
