Page 61 - Big Idea

The Big Idea – Act 3

have come along to distract me from my usual round of picking over
the scraps left by yesterday’s root-gathering expedition.

INTELLECTUAL: Do you expect me to believe that your mind
took no part in evaluating the proposal to build a new community
here? That the others unwittingly commanded you like a man does a
dog to turn about and follow without a thought?

DEFEATIST: I see no qualitative difference between myself and a
dog. Words pass through my awareness, as do sensations and images,
but words are just another type of sensation or image. One follows
another, sometimes in obvious chains of meaning, sometimes not.
They may be pleasant, they may be painful; I may let them flow, or I
may struggle to dam or alter their course; but I am just a spectator,
an inner eye or ear enjoying a spectacle mounted by unknown—and
unknowable—portions of my anatomy.

INTELLECTUAL: So you do believe in your own insignificance. If
only you could go beyond that to believe in something greater!

DEFEATIST:
Oh, why does it always come down to this?—
Clean your vessel, if you will, but do not leave it empty.

Must human nature abhor a vacuum
Where demonstrably no space exists at all?
Why defile the purity of nihilism?
Why not?—I could answer just as well,
In all honesty (which does not require consistency);
But I have no commitment to that principle,
Or its opposite, or even to no principle at all.

Look: either I am in nature or I am not.
If so, I cannot be other than natural,
No matter what I do or think;
If not, whether only in imagination
Or in some other realm of magical existence,
My belief could not affect the natural world;
No amount of hair-splitting philosophizing
Can refute this fundamental tautology.

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