My best aphorism is also my worst nightmare: Civilization is the process of turning the incomprehensible into the arbitrary.
Ever since I thought that thought I’ve been trying to unthink it. It is not a comforting thought. Turns history into a horror movie.
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Pretty good thought. I might tweak it thus:
"Civilization turns the terrifying into the arbitrary via comprehensibility."
The progress of civilization has been shaped by people marching against the gradient of terror, not ignorance.
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It's our current conceit that individual absolute comprehension is at (or near) the apex.
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Your brain: “the department of unthinking has received your request and it currently pending review. Please hold”
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I know it’s tactless to ask an explanation of an aphorism but I cannot resist. First of all, what does this aphorism mean so that even a dim witted one can understand. And why is it horrifying? I have a feeling that this aphorism is potentially mind blowing once I understand it
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Like many things in life, the incomprehensible can have more than one valence: beauty or horror, utopia or dystopia. Perhaps both at once.
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Welcome to the James Joyce club. Whisky on the table if you need it.
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It's your aphorism so you must be finding solace in it but I find the word arbitrary, well, arbitrary.
"Into mundane" makes more sense to me.
The first steam engine we know of was a part of some Roman festival, and today we use the special relatively theory for GPS.
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