The character of this piece has not been well drawn in the specifics that pertain to him and to him alone, but have been drawn in type, a die if you will, casting–no pun intended, unless there is an unconscious intention to what I say, and I guess I could agree with that without having to defer to a determinist view in the matter of the manner in which I speak, but there will always be a kind of yin/yang of determinism and free-will in everything we do, no? What was it about the pun–yes! This character could be drawn, as all characters must be drawn whether they are true and historical or fictive and thus not true in the pedantic sense of trueness we hold dearly for our lives depend as we assume on facts, facts and more facts, give us nothing but facts. What he says should say enough for you about who he is, what he is, why he is could also be clear, clarity in this way means that inferences must be made, a certain number of if-then clauses to be strung as links in a chain–I remember when we thought of evolution as a chain, then as a tree; there were those of the chain ilk who thought in terms of ladders; even Darwin thought about descent; our language mentions descendants; I am a descendant of many lines, however branch-like they have been extended through time . . . what he says should be all anyone needs to hear–let hearing stand for reading; I do hear voices when I read; I do read aloud a lot, often mouthing words when I do not actually raise my voice to a decibel discernible to others not in my skin. What he says he says on paper in long hand, not in neatly typed words, and the pages he writes on are unlined, as he used to like writing on unlined pages in journals filled with hundreds of pages of unlined paper. I recall the inscription quote from Juan Ramon Jimenez that Bradbury had used for Fahrenheit 451, something like, if they give you lined paper, write the other way.
Here now is his very short essay into the nature of an individual’s macrocosmic relationship to his society, his government, to his ethnicity, his religion, his political affiliations, to all other human beings in this earth who live now have lived and will ever live . . .
There will always be an untotalizable sum in the irreducible individual human being. Every person is a sum greater than his parts, a sum greater than the numerically advantaged institutions that often bear their weight metaphysically on him, that put him at a great disadvantage when this individuality is not seized and acted on, when this macrocosmic individuality is repeatedly disrespected. Institutions are at an advantage over individuals in numbers counted or in size measured. But with this metaphysically superior macrocosmic relationship that the individual person has, that he then can add to the weight and density of the people, the weight of the state can be displaced, set aside, not made to bear its crushing collapse on a person or the people (the latter when made to abdicate this special relationship they have with the state for another state supporting relationship the people have as the public). Whenever freedom is bureaucratically administered, arithmetically managed, it becomes an ever elusive kind of freedom, one that exists in name only.
Freedom cannot be summed or summarized; no it cannot. Freedom is non-totalizable. There is no arithmetic for accurate measuring; there is no calculus even for its quantification. In this way freedom remains apart from bureaucratic decisions; no bureaucracy anywhere in the world, inside any system of politics, can manage freedom and democracy in any way that maintains the highest ideals for freedom and democracy. Freedom is something only realizable in a metaphysics of individuality honored and respected above any collectivism.
Here in our contemporary America, though, individuality has become divisible, at least in our minds made to think about freedom and democracy. When American bureaucrats are made to manage the affairs of our freedom, democracy begins to be dismantled and freedom is easily fragmented for everybody.
In this here America of the State, by the State, for the State, so help it Mammon, to serve the Power and Monied elite, there is no longer any sense that I am we, or that the individual–the simple, separate person–is macrocosm to the microcosms of the people and certainly the public; macrocosm to the microcosms of religion, of politics, of definitely the state and its agents in the government. Yes, I am not only we but macrocosmic to all relationships politically and morally established. All institutions are microcosms in comparison with me, with you, with another, this or that other. I am we firstly and lastly because you are we and he is we and she is we.
It is precisely because of this macrocosmic relationship to all social institutions that everyone has, solely and not exclusively, that one’s responsibility, politically, increases; that one’s responsibility socially remains high and obligatory. So long as I am we the people, I cannot choose apathy or delinquency in political matters that affect not only myself but others. Because I have this paradoxical metaphysical relationship to social institutions, I must act; I must be engaged, engage’, as the existentialists would have said and understood.
What his name is is also unimportant? Just as it is also unimportant to know his religion, his ethnicity, his nationality–although I can tell you that the essay has been written in English, and that it is American English, as you can tell,or should be able to if you went to school as I have, university for a graduate degree in English–who I am and mostly what I am is equally unimportant.
A conclusion is a walling up, an enclosure put around something, also a kind of imprisoning, perhaps also a damming up like something that stops the flow. Conclusus is just that, an enclosure.
The Falling Leaf Review 