March 16, 2003                                                                     © 2003: JAN COX
 
 
 
 
 

There is a tension in the air –
the air that sustains civilization IS tension,
not the animal tension between predator and prey,
but a tension with no physical basis,
a tension that puts distance between men, yet holds humanity together,
a tension that strains cultural relationships, yet causes culture to grow,
a tension that pits idea against idea, but without which, no new ideas would appear.
 

There is a tension in the air  --
there is a tension in man’s brain;
in its non conscious operations the tension is the same one displayed in
animals’ struggle for survival,
in its conscious activity the tension is manifest in thought’s struggle for
supremacy in the realm of thoughts;
every thought wants to be the hunter  --  consuming all other thoughts.
The non conscious instance is necessary for physical survival;
the conscious one required for (first): man’s technology, and its contribution to
his survival (and second): for his culture, and its contribution to his enjoyment of life beyond the pleasurable sensations inherent in survival pertinent activities;
without the non conscious tension in the brain --  a man cannot survive;
without the tension in thought  --  man would survive as he is now in all matters
non physical; he simply could not be the civilized, cultured creature men know, accept, and now expect him to be.
 

To be cultured, civilized and cosmopolitan is to be a creature full of tension  --
and not tension arising from physical fear,
but tension that comes from fear that your thoughts,
and the ones of which your thoughts approve, will not prevail in the arena of ideas;
to be a normal person is to be tense,
tense in the unconscious desire to physically survive,
and also tense in your thoughts’ desire for preeminence.
Men feel the unconscious tension due to the reality that they may have to
do physical combat to survive;
they feel the mental tension due to the requirement of their thoughts having to do battle with other men’s thoughts for the most important world of thoughts to survive.
 

Just as the earth’s food net thrives not only on competition between hunters and prey, but also on that taking place within the groups of hunters and prey themselves,
so too does man’s survival related technology, and his culture survive on
competition between ideas,
the outcome in the first instance being of self evident importance, while in the latter, only of whatever significance men assign to it;
men do not need say that eating is important to keep the practice alive,
but must to sustain art’s viability.
 

All of the above described are but the standard characteristics of
humanity’s primary residency,
but for the would-be transplant,
standard is privately unacceptable, and is a matter that must be more closely studied.
 

The necessary tension-in-the-air in the life of collective man
is one of no benefit to the individual off on his own secret adventure,
and which in his case plays itself out in his consciousness as a meaningless,
pseudo tension ‘twixt: reality & pretend –
‘tween: understanding-what’s-going-on & walking-around-oblivion (put more crudely): tension between: the smarts & the dumbs  --  and not referring to people,
but rather: the smarts & dumbs in YOUR mind --  and the reason ‘twas just labeled, “meaningless” is that the tension has no reality outside the mind.
 

It is not a tension between some smart area of your brain that wants you to
drink water regularly, and some dumb part that says, “Forget it” –
but are dumb & smart parts related solely to man’s mental-only world
(his other, inner-reality),
but here too (for the man with opened eyes/I’s) there is not really a tension,
(a normal example of which would be: one area of your mind saying that
Religion X is the proper one, and another area proclaiming Y) --
a man who realizes what is going on understands there is no tension or conflict between Cinderella and the Stepmother.........well,
none other than that which the dumb parts of the mind make up and attribute thereto,
an activity which the certain man’s refreshed mind no longer takes seriously.
 

Thus there be no actual tension between the dumbs of his mind and the smarts
since he pays no attention to the dumbs;
even in the la la land of the mind  --  it still takes two to fight,
and the awakened man’s inner view of his mind reveals none there but him  --