Sunday, October 31, 2004

Revolutions

Time is cyclical - that's according to medieval English philosophy and myth, an idea prevalent in the Arthurian legends, Celtic, Greek and Christian ideologies. It is perhaps why people say history repeats itself. And it truly does ...

Life itself is then a series of revolutions - cycles destined to repeat themselves. There may be difference but those differences are merely superficial, a superstructure that hides a base of similarity (to employ Marxist terminology). Difference is, as Derrida writes, bounded in differance - the difference is always only deferred.

Perhaps that's why people find life boring; they complain about the sameness of things around them, of the mundane existence they live, of the commonplace, the known turned familiar.

Yet it is human nature to seek the familiar and the stable. That is the paradox of human desire: we want stability yet we loathe it and long for difference; when faced with change, we fear it and want to return to the familiar, the mundane. It is, as Jung says, the return to the foetal.

What can we say of human nature ...?

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