Subject: De-Levinaxiom
Date: Thu, 12 Feb 1998 19:39:42 PST


We may speak of the ultimate boundary, which is the limit of human 
thought and experience.  But what of that collection of boundaries 
comprising our world of events and experiences?  The simple concept of 
(the boundary of) space is enough to keep us from seeing all there is to 
see in our world.  And what of the boundaries of Thought? -- these are 
the boundaries which prevent us from thinking Unity.  When we think, we 
think in components.  Each mode of thought is related to a finite number 
of things, is in fact defined by the number and nature of things which 
it (thought) encounters.  Thought is not something that penetrates all 
things, or is open to the totality of existence; rather, thought is a 
force to be called upon and utilized in moments of need.  Often, these 
moments of need are purely intellectual, and do not relate in any way to 
the survival of the individual or the species.  In such cases, thinking 
is an exercise performed in a pre-established arena, for the benefit of 
certain spectators.

Now this arena is the product of the boundaries of daily existence; the 
arena is the artificial area left out of being, pushed aside by our 
arbitrarily imposed boundaries.  Our minds operate in modes or keys, so 
to speak; and these modes or keys correspond to certain moods -- moods 
which allow only a select number of types, which relate to something far 
deeper and totally PRIMAL: our state of emergence into pure possibility 
-- our act related to infinity.  That primal act created or brought into 
being a purely private world, infinite and powerful in its own right, 
yet still only another instance of a far greater, more overwhelming 
infinity.

We appropriate boundaries when our thinking progresses -- that is, when 
we transcend.  We are imperialists, all of us.  These boundaries become 
elements of our thought, permanent traces contained within our total 
thinking apparatus.  We draw on these boundaries to prove points.  We 
show our spectators how thoroughly we have absorbed the boundaries of 
thought, yet we keep these boundaries in place so that our discourse 
does not dissolve into pure chaos -- which is pure possibility devoid of 
identity.  If we allowed such a dissolution to take place, we would lose 
our identity or status as thinker, and become mere fuel for the Other.  
Our responsibility to the Other arises from the instinct of 
self-preservation.

We rely upon the Other to interpret us, and to act as an arena in which 
we act out our dance of the tragic world.  And this 'acting out' is a 
BREAKING out -- a destruction of a boundary that formerly separated us 
from the Other, in whose arena we now act and produce an effect.  But 
when the boundary is broken down, we do not enter the Other, or inhabit 
the same world as the Other.  We appropriate, and are in turn 
appropriated by, the Other.  The effect is not one of cancellation, but 
of multiplication of boundaries.  Yet more protective boundaries are set 
up within worlds, and the being of others becomes, to the individual, 
something like a play.  Nothing is really real.  Safety is not real.  
And boundaries, no matter how permissive, are erected with only one 
purpose in mind: the protection of the individual.


Edward Moore

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