Drudging thru the faux radiating light this morning over breakfast, I spy a post by my favorite Dr Camille Paglia in response to a poll of philosophers hosted by The Independent. She had written on the demise of philosophy and as well, the exclusion of women from the poll and from our stories, women, Hypatia of Alexandra, Anne, Lady Conway and deBeauvoir, among notable others who challenged, sometimes followed, the greatest of our thinkers from Plotinus thru Descartes to Sartre... Her endeavor to include the names she listed is so noble and notable that I hestitate to respond, yet I hear something missing from her understanding and view.
First, I disagree heartily that philosophy is withering in antiquity. Antiquity is alive and well in this very modern world, archetypes still moving and motivating us beyond our small wills into larger dances. Anaerobic academia does have its teeth around her foot, but they are rotting out and she is too powerful to let that do more than tickle, irritate, then shake it off. Who, she? Look carefully at the word. She is Sophia, Wisdom, some say Queen of the World. Her image has remained with us thru centruries of art and imagination, thru the most desperate and degraded times, to hold us in our fates and spur us to our destinies.
Now, granted she is stressed a bit by our ignoring of her in her radiant fullness, and yes, we have lost deep understanding of her in our race to find that we are a race, myriad misegentated tribes, a hybrid species that shares the grand imagination called dreamtime, her great realm, but that is no reason to let ourselves into a funk about this, to deny our love for her, our love, philo - Sophia, our love of Wisdom. Yet, phobias accompany her, leagues of them, loudly chanting and chattering, keeping us in our cells by phone day and night hooked on this faux light, forgetting to see radiance in the surrounds, the miracle that there is life in our soils, our air, our water. As I know it, she is alive in us and with us, moving from information to knowledge, and from that gnosis to wisdom. Many of us just do not see her.
For one instance, we have not blown ourselves into a nuclear winter, yet. Since we do know that we are capable of these acts, she must be holding us back, or teaching us restraint, or distracting us, or playing. I am grateful for her invisible hand and will work to keep myself in that grace.
Philosophy is not only in the realm of Apollo, cold, thin, ice; she moves between and amongst, more like Paul Revere, Hermes, maybe Eros, connecting, infecting, recollecting a world we seem to have forgotten, but which is there when we find ourselves to the side of the action, paused in the midst of it, gasping, grasping for something beyond the excruciating pressure of here and now, maybe just a breath. Philosophy is around, about, shot thru daily life. She does not see us only at the tip of Olympus with Zeus and his crew. She envelopes those in the fields, thru Demeter and Persephone, in the damp vales, with Dionysus, those just off the ground with Pan, in his ich. Then, the sea, with tossed out Hephaestes, Neptune, on and on we go, even the ones who think they are the only One are included, Jupiterian in the expansive monotonies that follow, exhausted, forever struggling that they are. She always includes the lessers, those fallen into a gap, lost to core.
I wish to state that Sophia can be served from many patterns, from many ways and landscapes, not just from the thin air of spiritual heights, but ensouled depths and funky midlands too. The rationales and strategies for ways of life that are ‘practical’ is more than ever needed, to help us thru the messes we are in, these moving information catastrophes of our time demanding that we change our ways and ideas, crafting decent ones, composting the rest and allowing levity to surface from the deep darkness of our slimmy paranoias, another day of conversation, another moment of laughter bubbling through the tears tearing our hearts. Many women work on and play with that from anywhere, all and anyone else for that matters. If the love of Sophia be relegated to ice regions, it can crystalize there to snow upon us that fluffy stuff, tickling our noses and sharpening our senses to spot us on to our tasks. Thank you, Dr Paglia, for remembering these voices which get you moving...us, too.
Comments