This is a brilliant recapitulation and testament to the import of this thread.
Some reflections:
I wish I could underscore this operation, this sentence, a hundred times.
2020-- it is as if it didn't happen. Life goes on. Some of us, however, got our final proof. The Liberal Establishment is daft and cowardly. An impotent, castrated father.
What is lost in the repeated castrations of American intellectual life? The capacity to both experience separation anxiety and longing and nonetheless push forward without forgetting the unity? Isn't there honor in that consciousness? It is deeper than ideology, deeper than DNA; for ultimately, we only have clues but no composite. We don't know who we are, but here we are? And, from that, the questions never cease.
As in the Dao De Jing,
故常無欲，以觀其妙
常有欲，以觀其徼
此兩者，同出而異名
Anciently and without common desire, we see wonder.
Often and with desire, we see borders (the forms).
From both modes simultaneously, the shared origin of all named things appears. (my translation)
How much drama! And comedy! The structure is present in every relationship I've known.
Is it very difficult for a goddess to reflect on this pattern? Any evidence from the stories? Is this impossibility a difference between the gods and us?
If possible and via this reflection, can maturity occur and people act without recourse to Kantian-style maxims and prescribed identity patterns?
What is the cost of that? Loss of innocence, familiar patterns, safety and the ease of artifice?
A new field can emerge. I seem to believe in this-- contrary to the preponderance of evidence.
