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Author: Bartleby

The Truth is But A Dream

The Truth is But A Dream

What do you know?
How do you know it?
No matter how you slice it, you believe in clarity, honesty, and accuracy of thought.
No matter how you gin it, you believe in freedom of will and of the need to choose well.
No matter how you pose it, you believe in a kind joy we can share and that must win for any of us to win.

What to do with what you cannot disbelieve?
Believe it blindly and you don’t really understand it, believe it, or even care about it: you retreat into an emotionally clutched story about what you believe, and so slide away from presence in what you actually believe, which is of course prior to all ideas and feelings about what you believe.

What to do with that which disbelieving amounts to disbelieving in your own thought as you cannot but help to understand it?
Doubt it and you doubt yourself. Believe it literally/definitively and you lose it for a boring story that you have to grasp tighter and tighter to keep from seeing that you’re clutching dandelion fluff blowing in the summer breeze, clawing at nothing at all while that which you truly believe slips away from your focus. Doubt it literally or believe it literally and you end up in the same spot: living in stories, incoherent because the bulk of your conscious experience has left the only thought that means anything to you. What is that thought? It is the seed of wisdom and it screams Yes! I can think clear and true and follow the Light better and better! If that is not true, what does anything mean or matter to you? But blindly believe in some collaborating account and you are living in ideas and feelings about the spark within, and those are not at all the same as the spark within.

So how to catch it right? Where’s the nuance we’re looking for?
Not mindless doubting, not mindlessly believing. Not pretending you can ignore the intellect and maintain a workable relationship to this life; but also not pretending the intellect is all there is or that it cannot relate meaningfully to the rest of your experience.

How to catch it right?
One’s thought as a whole coordinating the various aspects of thought around the Light within that alone knows what is real, what matters, how we should live, what we should do. Flowing more and more cleanly off that Light. Not pretending our ideas and feelings are the Light! But working every moment to better and better translate the Light into workable ideas and feelings, that of course know themselves limited and provisional, but also necessary. That’s how you gotta work it when you span what is prior to ideas and feelings, through ideas and feelings, out into the world where you meet the others and affect and are affected by them.

Ah friends, the rapids froth! The raft flows and twists with the madcap rambling roller coaster cold mountain water.

Don’t leave me here all by myself.

AMW

Desert Scene

Desert Scene

Walking in the desert in the nighttime.
Night air so cold when the desert’s deep asleep.
Sand gets hard from the cold.

Sitting in the car, smells like vinyl, feels like the cool stick-and-hold of cool vinyl on cool skin. The headlights train of vehicles lighting up the black and flaring cacti into existence. When you pass by they are draped in dark, fading away, but still standing proud like giant cucumber men.

Who will remember for you?
What’s to remember anymore?
Who will call you “daddy”? What’s the pottery-shatter now?
Now you live like a little gummi spider bouncing on the sticky gummi string.
Now you live like a child waiting for the show out in the cold with the sand underfoot keeping everything almost firm, almost solid

Never mind. The UFOs are all you remember.
The eerie round lights bobbing with the dirt road.
And a million other things that never happened.

AMW

Dear God

Dear God

Dear God in the Highest,

Hi! How are you?

I am fine, but I feel like I’m wasting my life. Any ideas?

What should I do? I can’t think of anything! I could try to be a writer, but what would I write? I feel so tired, like I’m slipping down the drain, fading out. I cannot think. I feel only a wobbly warble throughout. I think all the hot women are hot, but that doesn’t seem to be helping anybody. What should I do? Any ideas?

I live in a comparatively easy situation. Just have to work my 40 hours and pay my electric bill. That’s pretty much all they ask of me. What do you ask of me? I’m sorry about all the people in prison–not that I put them there or anything.

I wish there was a way to make things better. But I can’t even say exactly what the problem is.

Oh well, thanks for listening,

A

[Bartleby’s Poetry Corner]

Footnote on Pure Love & Something Deeperism

Footnote on Pure Love & Something Deeperism

1. Pure Love 2. Something Deeperism Quickest Sketch 3. Continuing The Overview of Something Deeperism 4. Flushing The General Position Out A Little More 5. Ideas to Motivate Adherence to Something Deeperism

You don’t need to read every entry now. Maybe just the first two. That would probably be best for now. In fact, I implore you: just quickly read over the first two sections and go back to the Introduction. If they bore you, just skim them! This is supposed to be a nice fun work of fiction: don’t let the obsessiveness of certain elements within the authorship take that away from us!!

1. Pure Love is the infinite and eternal love that all earthly loves partake of to the degree that they are actually love (to the degree they don’t partake of just Pure Love, earthly loves are tainted by non-infinite, non-eternal aspects of experience). Pure Love gives, supports, lifts-up helps, understands, loves 100%—for free. Human loves to some degree pull-towards and push-away. To the degree they are Pure Love, they do not pull-towards or push-away, but only beam brightly buoyantly effectively through.

2. Something Deeperism is the general position that we humans have insight into the Absolute (the Absolute is what is actually going on / what actually matters / what one should actually do–as opposed to mere opinions-about/perspectives-on what is going on / etc), but not literal / definitive / exclusive insight.

Something Deeperism seeks to clarify the confusion caused by the false debate between faith and reason. Sure: we cannot perfectly translate the Truth into human ideas and feelings; but that doesn’t mean we cannot relate human ideas, feelings, words and actions meaningfully to the Truth; and since the we cannot make sense of, believe in, or care about our own ideas without intellectual and emotional rigor, as well as spiritual (ie: non-mutable, non-relative/perspectival/debatable) Love, we have no choice but to work to better and better translate between ideas, feelings, words, deeds and the Truth.

Something Deeperism posits via clear thought and feeling one’s ideas and words can imperfectly but still adequately relate to feelings even though feelings are wider/deeper/vaguer than ideas and words, clear thinking and feeling can allow one to

If the Truth shines through the human conscious moment and we can through clear thinking and feeling coordinate our ideas, feelings, words and deeds better and better with the Truth, and if the Truth supports our sense that we are all in this together and must be kind to one another and that shared joy is the way: if all that is the case and a person can discover that and how it is the case, humans have a method for choosing one thought over another that is meaningful/interesting/stand-able to human beings. Otherwise, we don’t and we will make no progress in thought and action. So groups should accept those essential dogmas and we should all seek the Truth: the Truth would be both Knowledge and Reality and thus have the stamp of “True!” within it; thus endarounding the problem of the divide between ways of knowing and Reality; of course, the Truth cannot fit into our ideas, feelings, words and deeds, so what we need is not intellectual and emotional assent to the essential dogmas so much as insight into that and how they are the case–indeed confusing ideas and feelings about the Truth actually pushes one into dogmatically clutching ideas and feelings one doesn’t understand, which is antithetical to growth in wisdom: the continual improvement of one’s whole-being coordination of ideas, feelings, words and deeds around the Joy within that alone knows what is going on, what matters, and what should be done.

[A Note on Interchanging Different Descriptions of the Absolute:
We’re here positing that the Truth shines through all things, including each human conscious moment, and that It is prior to ideas and feelings, so we can only point imperfectly [but not therefore necessarily meaninglessly] towards It; so “Love”, “Truth”, “God”, “Light”, “Buddha Nature”, “Joy” can all be used interchangeably–not necessarily as indicating exactly the same thing, but as generally pointing adequately enough towards that which can only be pointed towards, since it is prior to ideas and feelings.]

{A SOMETHING DEEPERISM WITHOUT METAPHYSICS?

Or does that go too far? Sure, that’s the Something Deeperism of this author, but it is not the Something Deeperism of every Something Deeperist. All that is needed to qualify as a Something Deeperist is to agree that that inner sense that I like to call the “seed of wisdom” is actually onto something, and so one shouldn’t fart around in either radical skepticism or blind faith: one should seek to understand that and how this “seed of wisdom” is onto something. Right? Can’t this be done without metaphysics? I dunno: what does “actually onto something” mean? Doesn’t it point towards “actually the case”, towards True? I think humans cannot help but use ideas and feelings in their thoughts and actions; but they also cannot understand, believe in, or even care about their own ideas and feelings without grounding those ideas and feelings on whole-being insight into what is actually going on (the fact that people often delude themselves about what is actually going on is no argument against this position: the whole point is that our insight needs to be adequately based on Truth for it to guide us meaningfully forward–that we often lurch incoherently in one direction while it becomes less and less meaningful to us only points out how we struggle with this task); therefore, I think we humans must accept (necessarily imperfectly) translating inner insights into ideas and feelings, from which it follows that it is wiser to say “I should think clearly” than to say “I have no idea about what is going on”: both are imperfect translations of inner senses of things ultimately prior to ideas about them, but the former includes a path forward and the latter is completely self-defeating. Of course, if you cannot find any Truth in the former, you shouldn’t announce it, but the latter makes no sense, so saying it amounts to forcing confusion into the center; that’s why Something Deeperists suggest working to find a way to gain whole-being insight (ideas and feelings working with and under the adequate guidance of the Absolute–that which alone Knows because It is both Knowledge and Reality) so that you know both that the former is True and in what way it is True.}

So why squawk on and on about how cool you are because nobody knows shit or because you know the Truth. Seems better to relax, say nothing, and try meditation, prayer, loving kindness, maybe even pick a religion that fits where you are and so join a community of like-minded people who can help keep you on track. But, hey: whatever? Right? I’m taking off, I’m heading out the door, I’m going for a walk. These questions slice so deep and what’s down there anyway? I’m afraid I’ve found a bunch of squeaking mice madly dashing into walls and into and over each other while the cleaver breaks them apart and sends their writhing bloody pieces here and there in the general sprawling mayhem.

Another failed introduction to Something Deeperism!

[Back to Intro of “Love at a Reasonable Price”]

3. Continuing the Overview of Something Deeperism Has been moved, for everyone’s sake, to Outtakes!

[Back to Intro of LaaRP]

4. A Few Principles Of Something Deeperism:

Wisdom is possible—at least as a direction. Growing in wisdom is the never-ending process of better and better—through the clear thinking and feeling outlined above—organizing one’s feelings, ideas, words, and deeds around the Truth within (so the rest of one’s experience better and better syncs up with and so understands and follows the Truth at the core of one’s experience).

True dogmas (here “dogma” means a statement about Absolutes—like what is actually going on, what actually matters, or how one should truly live) are not literal, definitive, or exclusive. They point poetically (not perfectly clear, precise, or intellectually verifiable; but not therefore inadequately) toward the Truth, which after all is prior to ideas and feelings about It (ie: “true dogmas” point one’s conscious experience toward adequate insight into the Truth the way a good poem recreate’s the writer’s experience adequately though not literally/definitively within the reader: it is not a mathematical formulation, but the essential has still been communicated).

When one’s thought-as-a-whole is properly organized around the Truth at the core of each human conscious moment, one’s thought-as-a-whole can use the intellect to sketch adequate intellectual pictures of the Truth and how the Truth relates to everything else, and such sketches can help others to get a better sense of the Truth. But they are still just sketches, and unwise conscious moments are still very much able to woefully misunderstand them. So no matter what the source, one must be careful to expect any goodness to come of mindlessly “yessing” the dogma. What is most fundamentally needed is insight; dogmas are only supposed to help people gain, share, and build a shared language for insight into what is really going on, what really matters, and how we should really live—a language for together contemplating questions whose answers are deeper and wider than any ideas, and thus than any dogmas.

Humans with the same stated dogma (examples of stated dogmas: “secular humanist” or “born again Christian”) are never 100% on the same page; and those with different dogmas are still somewhat on the same page; and both people with identical and those with different dogmas can—with good intentions and real effort—get more and more on the same page.

We humans all share the same most fundamental value: seeking and choosing truly better ways of thinking and acting via clear and honest investigation of our inner and outer experiences, with the whole process orchestrated by a deepening insight into that sense within that knows our thoughts and actions truly matter and in what way they truly matter, and the entire process guide-guardrailed by the knowledge that joyful sharing kindness is the way and everything else baloney.

Something Deeperism cannot be intellectually proven, but it can be intellectually motivated. For an attempt at a quick sketch of that see below (#5)

[Back to Intro of LaaRP]

5. Ideas to Motivate Seeking in Individuals and Assuming Truth, Goodness, Beauty, Justice, and most of all Love in groups:

Note that no matter what our outlook, we cannot help but accept/assume some intellectual ideas about what is going on, what matters, and what should be done that we cannot prove intellectually. {In fact, insofar as one doesn’t adequately answer those questions, we can’t really understand, care about, or believe in one’s own thought process (which cannot help but assume insight into those fundamental questions is what it is ultimately working on).} Therefore, we are going to have to accept some dogmas (unproven beliefs accepted as “true enough”) about what is going on, what matters, and what should be done. The only choice available to humans is between dogmas that lead to more coherency and dogmas that lead to less, so we may as well pick dogmas that lead us to more coherent thoughts and actions (ie: thoughts and actions that are more meaningful to the thinker/actor).

Then note that for any idea about what is going on & etc to be coherent, the basic premise of Something Deeperism must be true.

…..

The basic premises of Something Deeperism:

“Truth” and “Goodness” (not those concepts but what they imperfectly but not therefore necessarily inadequately point towards) actually exist and, though they are ultimately prior to ideas and feelings about them and thus not liable to literal/definitive insights, our inborn sense that we can improve our insight into them via clear, honest, pure-hearted thought, contemplation, conversation, and action bounded by valuing kindness, respect, and shared-joy for all is correct. If that premise isn’t True or I cannot find a way to demonstrate to myself that and how it is True, how can I understand, care about, believe in, or otherwise participate in my own thoughts and actions? I can’t. My thought needs insight into that and how that sense of things is True to be meaningful to itself: that is simply the way we humans are constructed {some say you can’t go from your own fundamental experience to the experience of all others, but I can’t make any sense of my thoughts if other people are not essentially like me and [otherwise how can I make sense of all I’ve learned by interacting with them?], so the belief that others are basically like me is also undoubtable: I don’t know that it is True, but I do know that to the degree I do not gain insight into how and that it is True, my own thoughts and actions are meaningless to me.}

But don’t forget that ideas and feelings about what is really true, worthwhile, and preferable are only meaningful to you if you actually understand them; so what is needed is not so much literal answers as whole-being (ideas, feelings, words and deeds under the guidance of the Truth shining within and through each conscious moment). Even supposing literal understanding of the Truth were possible (and how could it be? The Truth is not the same as an idea about the Truth!), merely forcing feelings of certainty atop intellectual assents to literally true dogmas would just lead to misunderstanding those dogmas. What is needed is a whole-being organization around the Light within that alone knows that and how we all matter—an organization that must be self-aware enough to not pretend it can ever consider itself definitive/finished.

…..

Radical skepticism is self-defeating because there’s no point avoiding error unless accuracy is real and actually matters. Blind dogmatism is self-defeating because “what is actually the case” is not the same as ideas and feelings about “what is actually the case” and so belief in a dogma without insight into the way in which it is True actually points you away from meaningful whole-being engagement with “what is actually the case” [regardless of how true the dogma is a dogma can never be “True”; dogmas can only be more or less “true”, though insight can show you the way and degree the dogma points towards what is True]. To avoid the extremes of blind doubt and blind faith, Something Deeperism seeks insight into “what is actually the case” with one’s thought-as-a-whole: the intellect and feelings need to contemplate “what is actually the case” (to notice that they need to relate to “w i a t c” and to consider how to best do that and how to best guard against misunderstanding “w i a t c”) and they can and should also keep working to sketch better and better descriptions of “what is actually the case”, but they must always remember that these sketches are not themselves “what is actually the case” and the process of growing in wisdom must continue, refreshed each moment, until the moment of death.

Everyone is already something of a Something Deeperist. We all realize that to the degree we lack insight into how life is actually meaningful, we cannot understand, believe in, or care about anything we think or do. (Even the most dogmatic skeptic must admit that there’s no way to know how to be a skeptic and no motivation for being one unless there’s something to one’s inner push for accuracy—unless in some sense avoiding error is actually attainable and worth pursuing.) And we all also realize that it is possible, tempting, and self-defeating to get so focused on ideas about why our lives matter that we miss out in engagement with that within that alone understands that and how our lives matter. (Even the most fundamental religious believer will agree that of course they are trying to follow not human ideas about God, but God; and that whenever human ideas and feelings get involved, there is some danger of spiritual misinterpretation and mistake, since, after all, human ideas and feelings are not perfect, but spiritual Truth is.) And we all know that to the degree a society sacrifices accuracy, honesty, kindness and shared joy for anything—including xyz religious or secular dogma—that society works against any meaningful philosophy, religion, or attitude.

Arguing for Something Deeperism is not so much arguing as gently reminding everyone that we all are already to some degree Something Deeperists, and we should remember that, remember that we are all basically the same and in this together, remember that pretending we are not alike enough for respectful communication and collaboration is a cruel lie that undermines us to the degree we countenance it.

We all have to keep pedaling, keep pushing for more real whole-being insight into the kind joy within that alone understands what this life is all about. We cannot never stop seeking for more clarity in thought and action, for more wisdom. We have to keep pedaling.

How great Something Deeperism is! Without it, you wander hopeless lost in meaninglessness. If you imagine you can have no meaningful relationship to the Truth, then you say things like “for all I know, I don’t know anything”, which makes no sense: insofar as you actually believe it, you don’t actually believe it. If, in the other extreme, you imagine that you know the Truth, that It is xyz dogmas that you memorize and live by, you mislabel the Truth—which is actually prior to ideas and feelings and therefore insofar as you equate It 1:1 with xyz idea—, and so you shift your focus away from an active engagement with the Truth and onto ideas that you clench with forced feelings of certainty which you can neither actually understand nor care about (and, anyway, what use is a dogma—even if it were somehow TRUE—if you don’t understand it?). And so how nicely Something Deeperism steps in! How nicely it tidies things up: there is a Truth and you have some insight into It and with clear and honest effort can get more insight into It, but as the Truth is obviously prior to ideas and feelings about It, you don’t need to worry about literally, definitively or exclusively understanding the Truth—indeed, if that’s what you think you are doing, then you are drifting into La La Land, and need to stop! and head back home, back to a whole-being insight into the Truth.]

This fun, informative article was written by Johnny Go Lightly, a terrible influence on his friends and family.

[Back to Intro of LaaRP]

Author & shame: BW
Editor & shame: AMW
Copyright & shame: AMW

Why Something Deeperism? Simple! It is not a self-defeating philosophy but its rivals are.

Why Something Deeperism? Simple! It is not a self-defeating philosophy but its rivals are.

[Something Deeperism Institute]

Some assumptions are undoubtable to human thought. To the degree a human doubts them, they doubt their own thought as they cannot help but understand it, and thus they doubt all their conclusions, and thus they doubt the attempted initial doubt. Those logoi are truly self-defeating!

Note: In the various Examples of Undoubtables below, words are sometimes set off in quotes to stress that we are here using language to point imperfectly (but not therefore necessarily inadequately) ultimately prior to ideas and feelings.

Examples of Undoubtables:
1. You are capable of “truly meaningful” thoughts and actions.
2. Your various aspects of conscious experience (ex: ideas, feelings, vaguer/wider/deeper senses-of-things) can relate meaningfully to one another.
3. Being true to your inner sense towards “aware”, “clear”, “honest”, “accurate”, “truer” and “better” is a viable way to meaningfully choose one thought/action over another.
4. “Truer” and “better” are not completely relative, but are ultimately grounded within endpoints: “Truth” and “Goodness”. (Otherwise “truer” and “better” meander with your whims, and you cannot decisively declare anyone ever wrong or right).
5. You can relate meaningfully to “Truth” and “Goodness”.

[Doubt any of these and you doubt your thought’s inborn procedures for discovering viable thought-/action-paths, and thus you doubt your own thinking as you cannot help but understand it; and so you doubt all your thoughts, and so you doubt the doubt that started all this …
That’s not to say the above examples point perfectly to what they’re referring to. Of course they don’t.
The point is that if you doubt away the inner senses-of-things those examples are pointing towards, you doubt away any workable thought/action process.
Don’t doubt them away: They are your only possible starting point for thoughts and actions that mean anything to you.
Granted: that is not sufficient reason to blindly believe in them. But more on that nuance below.]

[Note that 1-4 build the general system of mystical knowledge:
Rather than waiting for perfect intellectual knowledge of how one should really think and act, the mystic accepts the inner sense towards clarity, honesty, truer and better; and seeks a whole-being insight into an inner Light that alone knows that and in what sense it is True to say, “we are all in this together”.
(“whole-being insight: ideas, feelings, and the Light shining through all things [including each conscious moment] all relating meaningfully with one another, though—since we are finite and the Light, if It is to be the firm foundation for Truth and Goodness that we seek, must be infinite—not relating literally/1:1/definitively with one another.)
The mystic does not renounce intellectual and emotional clarity—without these our thoughts make no sense to themselves.
However, the mystic does put whole-being clarity of attitude and purpose ahead of intellectual knowledge:
We don’t strictly speaking have to know whether or not there is a Reality corresponding to xyz human notion of “Reality”. What we must know is how to think and act in a way that is truly better—that doesn’t just “seem better” to this or that person’s way of thinking and feeling. The danger of self-deceit, of confusing ideas and feelings for the “True Good” remains for self-conscious and purposeful spiritual seekers, as it does for everyone. But, as we just mentioned: more on this later.]

Another Undoubtable:
You and other people are fundamentally the same and can communicate meaningfully.

[If not, what becomes of your understanding of all you’ve learned by interacting with others and their works?
Also, if not, can you stand life? No: to the degree you disbelieve we are all fundamentally the same and able to relate to one another, life becomes absurdly stupid: and to that degree you cannot understand, believe in, or care about your own thinking/acting (See the chapter “How We Learn / Against All Talk of “Philosophical Zombies” in First Essays for more on this.)]

Some Final Examples:
“We are all in this together.”
“Loving Kindness is the Way. “
“Joyful sharing and collaborating is actually preferable.”
“We all can and should treat one another with respect and kindness.”
“What we say and do really does matter.”

[Doubt these fundamental rules of thumb, and you doubt away the only meaning of your life you can understand, care about, or believe in.
This is true of the previous undoubtables too, but the first and second category also lead to obvious logical and ethical (in the widest sense of what one should do, shorn of any a priori assumptions about what “truly preferable” is supposed to look like) paradoxes; while trying to doubt this final category of undoubtables leads only to obvious emotional/a-Reality-I-can-stand conundrums—at least that I easily perceive. I dunno: search yourself.]

To the degree an individual doubts the undoubtables, she doubts the meaningfulnes and viability of her own inborn thought-process/system-for-choosing-one-possibility-over-another; to this degree, she doubts all her thoughts, including her attempted doubts; to this degree she wanders in the meaningless chaos of thoughts she cannot understand, believe in, or care about; to this degree, she loses the ability to travel with her own thoughts to her own conclusions: she ghosts-away in boring, self-imposed confusions and hands the steering wheel of her thought over to animal caprices, which are often mean, stupid, and boring.

Naturally, an assumption’s procedural undoubtability doesn’t prove it either true or True.
And forcing yourself to believe something without adequately demonstrating its accuracy to yourself also breaks a fundamental rule of human thought and so leads to the abyss of self-confusion.
Furthermore, we are speaking here of fundamental notions experienced at a level deeper than ideas and feelings, which conceptual language therefore can never literally/definitively describe.
And we are seeking to ground our feeling/thinking/grounding an Absolute Truth, which our finite minds/hearts/bodies could never fully grasp.
Forcing yourself to believe the literal Truth of xyz undoubtable dogma will only result in tightly clutching an idea you don’t understand.

Forcing a feeling of certainty onto an idea you don’t even really fathom, let alone care about, is not at all the same as meaningfully relating your ideas and feelings to an undoubtable sense of things well enough that your ideas and feelings win real insight into the way in which that undoubtable sense is True (assuming it is True).
But that internal spiritual discovery is the prerequisite for you (you = your thought-as-a-whole = your combined conscious and unconscious experience) to understand, believe, care about, and meaningfully steer and journey-with your own thinking/acting.

Accordingly, Something Deeperism forbids doubting the undoubtables, but it also forbids forcing literal beliefs upon yourself. Instead, Something Deeperism suggests you work to better and better coordinate your ideas and feelings around that sense within that knows what and how life “actually matters”. It suggests you recognize that we of course need ideas to help us make decisions in human life, but ideas are only useful as provisional structures for gaining and living-out more and more whole-being insight into that and in what sense it is True to say, for example, “Love is Real”.

Blindly believing or disbelieving the undoubtables will just confuse us. Instead, Something Deeperism suggests accepting them provisionally as part of a whole-being (ideas, feelings and the Light within) effort to center ourselves around the Light within (whose Reality we again accept provisionally) that alone Knows that and in what sense we are all in this together.

The goal is to organize one’s feeling/thinking/acting around the Light well enough that one’s thought as a whole can grasp the “Truth” to the point that one’s feeling, thinking, speaking, and acting are essentially in accord with the “Truth”. Such a goal could never be fully realized (we are finite and the Truth infinite), but one could move more and more in the right direction, allowing for feeling/thinking/acting that was more and more meaningful to oneself / more and more “Beautiful/True/Good/Just/LovingKind”.

I say “provisionally”, but only half mean it:
Part of the motion of Something Deeperism is what we’ve spelled out above:
A results-demanding wager on the only path of thinking and acting that can mean something to human beings: An aware, honest, accurate, competent, kind, joyful, generous whole-being coordination of ideas and feelings around the perfect Light within that alone Knows what’s what, and that our imperfect ideas and feelings can relate to (imperfectly—but not therefore necessarily inadequately);
However, Something Deeperism is also about prioritizing what we know deeper and wider — if perhaps less intellectually capturably/provably — than our certainties and uncertainties:
That still, silent, uplifting YesILoveYou! from God to all of us, from all of us to God, and from all of us to one another.

Let’s choose our dogmas well. Let’s not choose dogmas that confuse our thought, such as “Nothing is True”, or “Nothing matters”, or “It is literally True that life matters and if you believe that you are right and otherwise wrong”. Let’s instead choose ideas that we can understand and work with, such as “I am going to keep working to gain more and more whole-being insight into in what way it is True that life matters”.

Let’s reject radical skepticism and dogmatic literalism for a constant whole being quest to better and better understand that and in what way it is basically True to say “We are all in this together and must treat everyone equally: with complete respect, love and unflinching kindness.” Let’s choose thought-/action-paths that allow for meaningful progress in thoughts and actions.

Author Lost to Time and Chance
Copyright: AMW

[This essay can be found in “A Readable Reader”, “First Loves: Vol 1 of Love at a Reasonable Rate” and “First Essays”. See Buy Our Books! for more.]

[Something Deeperism Institute]

Something Deeperism: A Quick Intro [FAILED]

Something Deeperism: A Quick Intro [FAILED]

Something Deeperism is a general intellectual position along the lines of:

“I can and should follow my own inner-pushes towards accuracy, honesty, Truth, Goodness, and Pure Love–guard-railing that seeking with my inner-sense that other people are essentially the same as I am, and that respect, kindness, self- and other-compassion, and open-minded/-hearted communal joy are Correct. In this way, I can make progress in life’s meaning: I can gain more and more active insight into what is really going on, what really matters, and how I should really live.

“What would make life worth living and justify choosing any action over another is one thing alone: the Joyful Sharing Love at the heart of the conscious moment. Therefore, I cannot perfectly translate what-is-most-important into ideas and feelings, as what-is-most-important is prior to ideas and feelings. However, imperfect is not the same as inadequate and I can neither relate to this human life without using ideas and feelings, nor can I understand, care about or believe in my thoughts and actions without adequate spiritual insight; therefore, I must find a way to show my whole self (ideas, feelings, inner senses, and the Light within that alone knows what is actually truly preferable: all those elements working together) not only that these principles (ie: every assumption I’m here making) are True, but also how they are True.

“And so the only way forward is to organize my ideas and feelings better and better around the Light within, keeping in mind that I must constantly fight against the human tendency to confuse ideas and feelings about the Light for the Light: I must never stop pushing for more awareness, honesty, joy, Love, kindness, shared joy: for more and more open-hearted/-minded seeking and sharing.”

Much of that mantra is poetic: it points past ideas and feelings towards what is prior to them. However, all worldviews have a poetic base. What actually matters to people are notions–spoken or unspoken, admitted or denied–about what is really going on, what actually matters, and how one should actually live. Whether we form the thought, and even if we form contradictory thoughts, we cannot help but base our lives on attempts to answer those questions. The only choice we have is whether we pull those questions out in the open, thus giving ourselves a chance to think and act coherently, or we hide from the questions by pretending we’ve already got them all figured out. We evade those fundamental questions by focussing on ideas and feelings about what we should believe and do (even the self-aware or -unaware choice of pursuing a blithe thoughtfulness is actually also an assumption about what one should believe and do) so much that we lose sight of the whole-being insight into the Truth/Light/PureLove/TrueGood/God/BuddhaNature (all these concepts point imperfectly but not therefore necessarily inadequately towards what we’re trying to get at here).

Human wisdom is a thing of degrees. We must keep working to see more clearly and act better.

That is the general attitude of Something Deeperism: To the degree I lack whole-being insight into that and how Truth, Goodness, Beauty, Justice, Respectful Helping Kindly Shared Joy are True, I cannot care about understand, believe in, or even care about my own thoughts and actions. So the only choice is to seek wisdom, and if that sense within towards clarity, honesty, accuracy and kindness of thought is not the way towards wisdom, I have no path towards wisdom that I can understand, believe in, or even care about. So the only choice is to accept the spiritual calling, to love the Lord your God with all your heart and strength and mind, and your neighbor–who is just like you and thus also belongs to God–as yourself. The only possible way forward is to get serious about awareness, honesty, kindness.

What about for groups? Well, we all have different ideas about what is True and what Matters, and what doctrines one requires to adequately align oneself with what’s knowable and preferable, but can we not all agree that we are all in this together and that all of our philosophies and religions are only valuable to the degree they ratify and provide a structure for living those values without which none of us can stand life? Can we not all agree on accuracy, honesty, compassion, respect, kindness, rule of law as nourished by a free people freely seeking the Law? Can we not all agree that forcing beliefs onto people is corrupting because it tempts people to lie to themselves and others about their experiences of what is most sacred to them? But can we also not all agree that we still all must and in fact do share some fundamental spiritual values: “It matters what I say and do”, “Aware, clear, honest, accurate thought is the way forward”, “kindness is right”, “we are all in this together and so should be respectful of and kind towards one another and we should appreciate each other and share community and enjoy each other’s company”. Things like that. Things without which we have nothing: let’s accept them and admit we don’t perfectly understand them and that it is a stupid and cruel distortion to pretend like our fellows do not have the same basic rights and duties imprinted within their hearts-of-hearts.

Author: Spelunker Stewart
Copyright: AMW

A Creek [“crick”] Freewrite

A Creek [“crick”] Freewrite

When in our darkest hour, standing at the windowsill, looking towards the heavens, for an answer. When by the bubbling creek and debris, old cement slabs and rusted steel wrapped around a solid cement barrel, trees fallen some still sprouting green, broken glass and mouthy detergent bottles, everyone waiting in line.

I got to the bend first, after hearing the shout-out, a war yelp as he would always cry, no matter how small the find. Found him there, hunched over a log down in the creek diverting water and losing its bottom layer of thick criss-crossing park. What’s he see? What’s over there? His coon skin cap is on the bank, carefully set high and dry on a stone five feet from water’s edge: taking no chances! I wade over, creek is cold only early springtime now. “What? What is it?” He doesn’t look up, but flaps me over with the near hand. I push through the moving water, avoiding slippery stones, sliding my feet over them to solid sandy ground.

A group of minnows–little silver almost translucent wriggling darts, like what we see all over the place–are stopped up in a triangle made by a smoothed shale stone and the slanting fallen tree. Why don’t they reverse themselves? Do they want to be there? Hard to believe the current’s too strong. Just a regular creeky winding skip-along flow. Is this interesting? Is this worth noting? Worth sharing?

“They’re stuck!”

“They’re probably just afraid of you: you’re blocking their exit!”

“No: I found ‘em like that.”

“Clear out, so they can leave.”

“I’m not hurting ‘em”

Who cares? Why are down here wading in the creek? Why wear a coonskin hat when it is too warm to need any kind of hat at all? And his giant bowie knife with the serrated backside and the silver steel granulated handle, inside the black leather scabbord with the safety loop snapped shut over the top of the flashy crossguard and the square sharpening stone carefully snapped into the front pocket? Why?

King Lear With Less Errors: Act I: Scene 4 & 5

King Lear With Less Errors: Act I: Scene 4 & 5

SCENE IV. A hall in the same.
Enter KENT, disguised
KENT
If but as well I other accents borrow,
That can my speech defuse, my good intent
May carry through itself to that full issue
For which I razed my likeness. Now, medd’ling Kent,
who’s thought departed with Cordelia’s camp,
will a vigil, cloaked and armed, dogged hold.
Horns within. Enter KING LEAR, Knights, and Attendants
KING LEAR
Let me not stay a jot for dinner; go get it ready.
Exit an Attendant
How now! what art thou?
KENT
A man, sir.
KING LEAR
What dost thou profess? what wouldst thou with us?
KENT
I do profess to be no less than I seem; to serve
him truly that will put me in trust: to love him
that is honest; to converse with him that is wise,
and says little; to fear judgment; to fight when I
cannot choose; and to eat no fish.
KING LEAR
What art thou?
KENT
A very honest-hearted fellow, and as poor as the king.
KING LEAR
If thou be as poor for a subject as he is for a
king, thou art poor enough. What wouldst thou?
KENT
Service.
KING LEAR
Who wouldst thou serve?
KENT
You.
KING LEAR
Dost thou know me, fellow?
KENT
No, sir; but you have that in your countenance
which I would fain call master.
KING LEAR
What’s that?
KENT
Authority.
KING LEAR
What services canst thou do?
KENT
I can keep honest counsel, ride, run, mar a curious
tale in telling it, and deliver a plain message
bluntly: that which ordinary men are fit for, I am
qualified in; and the best of me is diligence.
KING LEAR
How old art thou?
KENT
Not so young, sir, to love a woman for singing, nor
so old to dote on her for any thing: I have years
on my back forty eight.
KING LEAR
Follow me; thou shalt serve me: if I like thee no
worse after dinner, I will not part from thee yet.
Dinner, ho, dinner! Where’s my knave? my fool?
Go you, and call my fool hither.
Exit an Attendant
Enter OSWALD
You, you, sirrah, where’s my daughter?
OSWALD
So please you,–
Exit
KING LEAR
What says the fellow there? Call the clotpoll back.
Exit a Knight
Where’s my fool, ho? I think the world’s asleep.
Re-enter Knight
How now! where’s that mongrel?
Knight
He says, my lord, your daughter is not well.
KING LEAR
Why came not the slave back to me when I called him.
Knight
Sir, he answered me in the roundest manner, he would
not.
KING LEAR
He would not!
Knight
My lord, I know not what the matter is; but, to my
judgment, your highness is not entertained with that
ceremonious affection as you were wont; there’s a
great abatement of kindness appears as well in the
general dependants as in the duke himself also and
your daughter.
KING LEAR
Ha! sayest thou so?
Knight
I beseech you, pardon me, my lord, if I be mistaken;
for my duty cannot be silent when I think your
highness wronged.
KING LEAR
Thou but rememberest me of mine own conception: I
have perceived a most faint neglect of late; which I
have rather blamed as mine own jealous curiosity
than as a very pretence and purpose of unkindness:
I will look further into’t. But where’s my fool? I
have not seen him this two days.
Knight
Since my young lady’s going into France, sir, the
fool hath much pined away.
KING LEAR
No more of that; I have noted it well. Go you, and
tell my daughter I would speak with her.
Exit an Attendant
Go you, call hither my fool.
Exit an Attendant
Re-enter OSWALD
O, you sir, you, come you hither, sir: who am I,
sir?
OSWALD
My lady’s father.
KING LEAR
‘My lady’s father’! my lord’s knave: your
whoreson dog! you slave! you cur!
OSWALD
I am none of these, my lord; I beseech your pardon.
KING LEAR
Do you bandy looks with me, you rascal?
Striking him
OSWALD
I’ll not be struck, my lord.
KENT
Nor tripped neither, you base football player.
Tripping up his heels
KING LEAR
I thank thee, fellow; thou servest me, and I’ll
love thee.
KENT
Come, sir, arise, away! I’ll teach you differences:
away, away! if you will measure your lubber’s
length again, tarry: but away! go to; have you
wisdom? so.
Pushes OSWALD out
KING LEAR
Now, my friendly knave, I thank thee: there’s
earnest of thy service.
Giving KENT money
Enter Fool
Fool
Let me hire him too: here’s my coxcomb.
Offering KENT his cap
KING LEAR
How now, my pretty knave! how dost thou?
Fool
Sirrah, you were best take my coxcomb.
KENT
Why, fool?
Fool
Why, for taking one’s part that’s out of favour:
nay, an thou canst not smile as the wind sits,
thou’lt catch cold shortly:
How now, nuncle! Would I had three coxcombs and three daughters!
KING LEAR
Why, my boy?
Fool
If I gave them all my living, I’ld keep my coxcombs
myself. There’s mine; beg another of thy daughters.
KING LEAR
Take heed, sirrah; the whip.
Fool
Truth’s a dog must to kennel; he must be whipped
out, when Lady the brach may stand by the fire and stink.
KING LEAR
A pestilent gall to me!
Fool
Sirrah, I’ll teach thee a speech.
KING LEAR
Do.
Fool
Mark it, nuncle:
Have more than thou showest,
Speak less than thou knowest,
Lend less than thou owest,
Ride more than thou goest,
Learn more than thou trowest,
Set less than thou throwest;
Leave thy drink and thy whore,
And keep in-a-door,
And thou shalt have more
Than two tens to a score.
KENT
This is nothing, fool.
Fool
Then ’tis like the breath of an unfee’d lawyer; you
gave me nothing for’t. Can you make no use of
nothing, nuncle?
KING LEAR
Why, no, boy; nothing can be made out of nothing.
Fool
[To KENT] Prithee, tell him, so much the rent of
his land comes to: he will not believe a fool.
KING LEAR
A bitter fool!
Fool
Dost thou know the difference, my boy, between a
bitter fool and a sweet fool?
KING LEAR
No, lad; teach me.
Fool
That lord that counsell’d thee
To give away thy land,
Come place him here by me,
Do thou for him stand:
The sweet and bitter fool
Will presently appear;
The one in motley here,
The other found out there.
KING LEAR
Dost thou call me fool, boy?
Fool
All thy other titles thou hast given away; that
thou wast born with.
KENT
This is not altogether fool, my lord.
Fool
No, faith, lords and great men will not let me; if
I had a monopoly out, they would have part on’t:
and ladies too, they will not let me have all fool
to myself; they’ll be snatching. Give me an egg,
nuncle, and I’ll give thee two crowns.
KING LEAR
What two crowns shall they be?
Fool
Why, after I have cut the egg i’ the middle, and eat
up the meat, the two crowns of the egg. When thou
clovest thy crown one two three, and gavest away
All parts, thou borest thy ass on thy back o’er
the dirt: thou hadst little wit in thy bald crown,
when thou gavest thy golden one away. If I speak
like myself in this, let him be whipped that first
finds it so.
Singing
Fools had ne’er less wit in a year;
For wise men are grown foppish,
They know not how their wits to wear,
Their manners are so apish.
KING LEAR
When were you wont to be so full of songs, sirrah?
Fool
I have used it, nuncle, ever since thou madest thy
daughters thy mothers: for when thou gavest them
the rod, and put’st down thine own breeches,
Singing
Then they for sudden joy did weep,
And I for sorrow sung,
That such a king should play bo-peep,
And go the fools among.
Prithee, nuncle, keep a schoolmaster that can teach
thy fool to lie: I would fain learn to lie.
KING LEAR
An you lie, sirrah, we’ll have you whipped.
Fool
I marvel what kin thou and thy daughters are:
they’ll have me whipped for speaking true, thou’lt
have me whipped for lying; and sometimes I am
whipped for holding my peace. I had rather be any
kind o’ thing than a fool: and yet I would not be
thee, nuncle; thou hast pared thy wit o’ all sides,
and left nothing i’ the middle: here comes one o’
the parings.
Enter GONERIL
KING LEAR
How now, daughter! what makes that frontlet on?
Methinks you are too much of late i’ the frown.
Fool
Thou wast a pretty fellow when thou hadst no need to
care for her frowning; now thou art an O without a
figure: I am better than thou art now; I am a fool,
thou art nothing.
To GONERIL
Yes, forsooth, I will hold my tongue; so your face
bids me, though you say nothing. Mum, mum,
He that keeps nor crust nor crum,
Weary of all, shall want some.
Pointing to KING LEAR
That’s a shealed peascod.
GONERIL
Not only, sir, this your all-licensed fool,
But other of your insolent retinue
Do hourly carp and quarrel; breaking forth
In rank and not-to-be endured riots. Sir,
I had thought, by making this well known unto you,
To have found a safe redress; but now grow fearful,
By what yourself too late have spoke and done.
That you protect this course, and put it on
By your allowance; which if you should, the fault
Would not ‘scape censure, nor the redresses sleep,
Which, in the tender of a wholesome weal,
Might in their working do you that offence,
Which else were shame, that then necessity
Will call discreet proceeding.
Fool
For, you trow, nuncle,
The hedge-sparrow fed the cuckoo so long,
That it’s had it head bit off by it young.
So, out went the candle, and we were left darkling.
KING LEAR
Are you our daughter?
GONERIL
Come, sir,
I would you would make use of that good wisdom,
Whereof I know you are fraught; and put away
These dispositions, that of late transform you
From what you rightly are.
Fool
May not an ass know when the cart
draws the horse? Whoop, Jug! I love thee.
KING LEAR
Doth any here know me? This is not Lear:
Doth Lear walk thus? speak thus? Where are his eyes?
Either his notion weakens, his discernings
Are lethargied–Ha! waking? ’tis not so.
Who is it that can tell me who I am?
Fool
Lear’s shadow.
KING LEAR
I would learn that; for, by the
marks of sovereignty, knowledge, and reason,
I should be false persuaded I had daughters.
Fool
Which they will make an obedient father.
KING LEAR
Your name, fair gentlewoman?
GONERIL
This admiration, sir, is much o’ the savour
Of other your new pranks. I do beseech you
To understand my purposes aright:
As you are old and reverend, you should be wise.
Here do you keep a hundred knights and squires;
Men so disorder’d, so debosh’d and bold,
That this our court, infected with their manners,
Shows like a riotous inn: epicurism and lust
Make it more like a tavern or a brothel
Than a graced palace. The shame itself doth speak
For instant remedy: be then desired
By her, that else will take the thing she begs,
A little to disquantity your train;
And the remainder, that shall still depend,
To be such men as may besort your age,
And know themselves and you.
KING LEAR
Darkness and devils!
Saddle my horses; call my train together:
Degenerate bastard! I’ll not trouble thee.
Let Regan a daughter to her father be!
GONERIL
You strike my people; and your disorder’d rabble
Make servants of their betters.
Enter ALBANY
KING LEAR
Woe, that too late repents,–
To ALBANY
O, sir, are you come?
Is it your will? Speak, sir. Prepare my horses.
Ingratitude, thou marble-hearted fiend,
More hideous when thou show’st thee in a child
Than the sea-monster!
ALBANY
Pray, sir, be patient.
KING LEAR
[To GONERIL] Detested kite! thou liest.
My train are men of choice and rarest parts,
That all particulars of duty know,
And in the most exact regard support
The worships of their name. O most proud fault,
That, like an engine, wrench’d my frame of nature
From the fix’d place; drew from mind all sense,
And king a pauper made. O Lear, Lear, Lear!
Beat at this gate, that let thy folly in,
Striking his head
And thy dear judgment out! Go, go, my people.
ALBANY
My lord, I am guiltless, as I am ignorant
Of what hath moved you.
KING LEAR
It may be so, my lord.
Hear, nature, hear; dear goddess, hear!
Suspend thy purpose, if thou didst intend
To make this creature fruitful!
Into her womb convey sterility!
Dry up in her the organs of increase;
And from her derogate body never spring
A babe to honour her! If she must teem,
Create her child of spleen; that it may live,
And be a thwart disnatured torment to her!
Let it stamp wrinkles in her brow of youth;
With cadent tears fret channels in her cheeks;
Turn all her mother’s pains and benefits
To laughter and contempt; that she may feel
How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is
To have a thankless child! Away, away!
Exit
ALBANY
Now, gods that we adore, whereof comes this?
GONERIL
Never afflict yourself to know the cause;
But let his disposition have that scope
That dotage gives it.
Re-enter KING LEAR
KING LEAR
What, fifty of my followers at a clap!
Within a fortnight!
ALBANY
What’s the matter, sir?
KING LEAR
I’ll tell thee:
To GONERIL
Life and death! I am ashamed
That thou hast power to shake my manhood thus;
That these hot tears, which break from me perforce,
Should make thee worth them. Blasts and fogs upon thee!
The untented woundings of a father’s curse
Pierce every sense about thee! Old fond eyes,
Beweep this cause again, I’ll pluck ye out,
And cast you, with the waters that you lose,
To temper clay. Yea, it is come to this?
Let is be so: yet have I left a neighbor here,
Who, I am sure, is kind and comfortable:
When she shall hear this of thee, with her nails
She’ll flay thy wolvish visage. Thou shalt find
That I’ll resume the shape which thou dost think
I have cast off for ever: thou shalt,
I warrant thee.
Exeunt KING LEAR, KENT, and Attendants
GONERIL
Do you mark that, my lord?
ALBANY
I cannot be so partial, Goneril,
To the great love I bear you,–
GONERIL
Pray you, content. What, Oswald, ho!
To the Fool
You, sir, more knave than fool, after your master.
Fool
Nuncle Lear, nuncle Lear, tarry and take the fool
with thee.
A fox, when one has caught her,
And such a daughter,
Should sure to the slaughter,
If my cap would buy a halter:
So the fool follows after.
Exit
GONERIL
This man hath had good counsel:–a hundred knights!
‘Tis politic and safe to let him keep
At point a hundred knights: yes, that, on every dream,
Each buzz, each fancy, each complaint, dislike,
He may enguard his dotage with their powers,
And hold our lives in mercy. Oswald, I say!
ALBANY
Well, you may fear too far.
GONERIL
Safer than trust too far:
Let me still take away the harms I fear,
Not fear still to be taken: I know his heart.
What he hath utter’d I have writ my sister
If she sustain him and his hundred knights
When I have show’d the unfitness,–
Re-enter OSWALD
How now, Oswald!
What, have you writ that letter to my sister?
OSWALD
Yes, madam.
GONERIL
Take you some company, and away to horse:
Inform her full of my particular fear;
And thereto add such reasons of your own
As may compact it more. Get you gone;
And hasten your return.
Exit OSWALD
No, no, my lord,
This milky gentleness and course of yours
Though I condemn not, yet, under pardon,
You are much more attask’d for want of wisdom
Than praised for harmful mildness.
ALBANY
How far your eyes may pierce I can not tell:
Striving to better, oft we mar what’s well.
GONERIL
Nay, then–
ALBANY
Well, well; the event.
Exeunt

SCENE V. Court before the same.
Enter KING LEAR, KENT, and Fool
KING LEAR
Go you before to Gloucester with these letters.
Acquaint my daughter no further with any thing you
know than comes from her demand out of the letter.
If your diligence be not speedy, I shall be there afore you.
KENT
I will not sleep, my lord, till I have delivered
your letter.
Exit
Fool
If a man’s brains were in’s heels, were’t not in
danger of kibes?
KING LEAR
Ay, boy.
Fool
Then, I prithee, be merry; thy wit shall ne’er go
slip-shod.
KING LEAR
Ha, ha, ha!
Fool
Shalt see thy other daughter will use thee kindly;
for though she’s as like this as a crab’s like an
apple, yet I can tell what I can tell.
KING LEAR
Why, what canst thou tell, my boy?
Fool
She will taste as like this as a crab does to a
crab. Thou canst tell why one’s nose stands i’
the middle on’s face?
KING LEAR
No.
Fool
Why, to keep one’s eyes of either side’s nose; that
what a man cannot smell out, he may spy into.
KING LEAR
I did her wrong–
Fool
Canst tell how an oyster makes his shell?
KING LEAR
No.
Fool
Nor I neither; but I can tell why a snail has a house.
KING LEAR
Why?
Fool
Why, to put his head in; not to give it away to his
daughters, and leave his horns without a case.
KING LEAR
I will forget my nature. So kind a father! Be my
horses ready?
Fool
Thy asses are gone about ’em. The reason why the
seven stars are no more than seven is a pretty reason.
KING LEAR
Because they are not eight?
Fool
Yes, indeed: thou wouldst make a good fool.
KING LEAR
To take ‘t again perforce! Monster ingratitude!
Fool
If thou wert my fool, nuncle, I’ld have thee beaten
for being old before thy time.
KING LEAR
How’s that?
Fool
Thou shouldst not have been old till thou hadst
been wise.
KING LEAR
O, let me not be mad, not mad, sweet heaven
Keep me in temper: I would not be mad!
Enter Gentleman
How now! are the horses ready?
Gentleman
Ready, my lord.
KING LEAR
Come, boy.
Fool
She that’s a maid now, and laughs at my departure,
Shall not be a maid long, unless things be cut shorter.
Exeunt

King Lear With Less Error – Act 1, Scene 3

King Lear With Less Error – Act 1, Scene 3

SCENE III. The Duke of Albany’s palace.
Enter GONERIL, and OSWALD, her steward
GONERIL
Did my father strike my gentleman for chiding of his fool?
OSWALD
Yes, madam.
GONERIL
By day and night he wrongs me; every hour
He flashes into one gross crime or other,
That sets us all at odds: I’ll not endure it:
His knights grow riotous, and himself upbraids us
On every trifle. When he returns from hunting,
I will not speak with him; say I am sick:
If you come slack of former services,
You shall do well; the fault of it I’ll answer.
OSWALD
He’s coming, madam; I hear him.
Horns within
GONERIL
Put on what weary negligence you please,
You and your fellows; I’ll have it come to question:
If he dislike it, let him to our Regan,
Whose mind and mine, I know, in that are one,
Not to be over-ruled. Idle old man,
That still would manage those authorities
That he hath given away! Now, by my life,
Old fools are babes again; and must be used
With cheques as flatteries,–when they are seen abused.
Remember what I tell you.
OSWALD
Well, madam.
GONERIL
And let his knights have colder looks among you;
What grows of it, no matter; advise your fellows so:
I would breed from hence occasions, and I shall,
That I may speak: I’ll write straight to friend Regan
To hold my very course. Prepare for dinner.
Exeunt
OSWALD
And when Cordelia, more lenient and loved,
from France’s golden yawns to somber sky
returns?
GONERIL
Cordelia! Easy is the love she sends
From past the sea! Our father well in hand
We’ll hold, and France his wife the same.
And when her frolic she fin’lly resolves
To pause, Cordelia shall our peace and hers
Approve. Be sure of it!

King Lear With Less Errors – Act I, Scene 2

King Lear With Less Errors – Act I, Scene 2

SCENE II. The Earl of Gloucester’s castle.
Enter EDMUND, with a letter
EDMUND
Thou, nature, art my goddess; to thy law
My services are bound. Wherefore should I
Stand in the plague of custom, and permit
The curiosity of nations to deprive me,
For that I am some twelve or fourteen moon-shines
Lag of a brother? Why bastard? wherefore base?
When my dimensions are as well compact,
My mind as generous, and my shape as true,
As honest madam’s issue? Why brand they us
With base? with baseness? bastardy? base, base?
Who, in the lusty stealth of nature, take
More composition and fierce quality
Than doth, within a dull, stale, tired bed,
Go to the creating a whole tribe of fops,
Got ‘tween asleep and wake? Well, then,
Legitimate Edgar, I must have your land:
Our father’s love is to the bastard Edmund
As to the legitimate: fine word,–legitimate!
Well, my legitimate, if this letter speed,
And my invention thrive, Edmund the base
Shall top the legitimate. I grow; I prosper:
Now, gods, stand up for bastards!
Enter GLOUCESTER
GLOUCESTER
The King himself reversing fast as bolt
does zag ‘tween earth and cloud. With jolly pomp
He names his spinning “cunning”, though all seems
Upon the gad. Edmund, how now! what news?
EDMUND
So please your lordship, none.
Putting up the letter
GLOUCESTER
Why so earnestly seek you to put up that letter?
EDMUND
I know no news, my lord.
GLOUCESTER
What paper were you reading?
EDMUND
Nothing, my lord.
GLOUCESTER
No? What needed, then, that terrible dispatch of
it into your pocket? the quality of nothing hath
not such need to hide itself. Let’s see: come,
if it be nothing, I shall not need spectacles.
EDMUND
I beseech you, sir, pardon me: it is a letter
from my brother, that I have not all o’er-read;
and for so much as I have perused, I find it not
fit for your o’er-looking.
GLOUCESTER
Give me the letter, sir.
EDMUND
I shall offend, either to detain or give it. The
contents, as in part I understand them, are to blame.
GLOUCESTER
Let’s see, let’s see.
EDMUND
I hope, for my brother’s justification, he wrote
this but as an essay or taste of my virtue.
GLOUCESTER
[Reads] ‘This policy and reverence of age makes
the world bitter to the best of our times; keeps
our fortunes from us till our oldness cannot relish
them. I begin to find an idle and fond bondage
in the oppression of aged tyranny; who sways, not
as it hath power, but as it is suffered. Come to
me, that of this I may speak more. If our father
would sleep till I waked him, you should half his
revenue for ever, and live the beloved of your
brother, EDGAR.’
Hum–conspiracy!–‘Sleep till I waked him,–you
should enjoy half his revenue,’–My son Edgar!
Had he a hand to write this? a heart and brain
to breed it in?–When came this to you? who
brought it?
EDMUND
It was not brought me, my lord; there’s the
cunning of it; I found it thrown in at the
casement of my closet.
GLOUCESTER
You know the character to be your brother’s?
EDMUND
If the matter were good, my lord, I durst swear
it were his; but, in respect of that, I would
fain think it were not.
GLOUCESTER
It is his.
EDMUND
It is his hand, my lord; but I hope his heart is
not in the contents.
GLOUCESTER
Hath he never heretofore sounded you in this business?
EDMUND
Never, my lord: but I have heard him oft
maintain it to be fit, that, sons at perfect age,
and fathers declining, the father should be as
ward to the son, and the son manage his revenue.
GLOUCESTER
O villain, villain! His very opinion in the
letter! Abhorred villain! Unnatural, detested,
brutish villain! worse than brutish! Go, sirrah,
seek him; I’ll apprehend him: abominable villain!
Where is he?
EDMUND
I do not well know, my lord. If it shall please
you to suspend your indignation against my
brother till you can derive from him better
testimony of his intent, you shall run a certain
course; where, if you violently proceed against
him, mistaking his purpose, it would make a great
gap in your own honour, and shake in pieces the
heart of his obedience. I dare pawn down my life
for him, that he hath wrote this to feel my
affection to your honour, and to no further
pretence of danger.
GLOUCESTER
Think you so?
EDMUND
If your honour judge it meet, I will place you
where you shall hear us confer of this, and by an
auricular assurance have your satisfaction; and
that without any further delay than this very evening.
GLOUCESTER
He cannot be such a monster–
EDMUND
Nor is not, sure.
GLOUCESTER
To his father, that so tenderly and entirely
loves him. Heaven and earth! Edmund, seek him
out: wind me into him, I pray you: frame the
business after your own wisdom. I would unstate
myself, to be in a due resolution.
EDMUND
I will seek him, sir, presently: convey the
business as I shall find means and acquaint you withal.
GLOUCESTER
These late eclipses in the sun and moon portend
no good to us: though the wisdom of nature can
reason it thus and thus, yet nature finds itself
scourged by the sequent effects: love cools,
friendship falls off, brothers divide: in
cities, mutinies; in countries, discord; in
palaces, treason; and the bond cracked ‘twixt son
and father. This villain of mine comes under the
prediction; there’s son against father: Weep!
For we have past the best hour of our time!
Machinations, hollowness, treachery, and all
ruinous disorders, follow us disquietly to our
graves. Find out this villain, Edmund; it shall
lose thee nothing; do it carefully. And the
deep cold November air by hot summer wind
First poked, then prodded, then parted. ‘Tis strange.
Exit
EDMUND
This is the excellent foppery of the world, that,
when we are sick in fortune,–often the surfeit
of our own behavior,–we make guilty of our
disasters the sun, the moon, and the stars: as
if we were villains by necessity; fools by
heavenly compulsion; knaves, thieves, and
treachers, by spherical predominance; drunkards,
liars, and adulterers, by an enforced obedience of
planetary influence; and all that we are evil in,
by a divine thrusting on: an admirable evasion
of whoremaster man, to lay his goatish
disposition to the charge of a star! My
father compounded with my mother under the
dragon’s tail; and my nativity was under Ursa
major; so that it follows, I am rough and
lecherous. Tut, I should have been that I am,
had the maidenliest star in the firmament
twinkled on my bastardizing. Edgar–
Enter EDGAR
And pat he comes like the catastrophe of the old
comedy: my cue is villanous melancholy, with a
sigh like Tom o’ Bedlam. O, these eclipses do
portend these divisions! fa, sol, la, mi.
EDGAR
How now, brother Edmund! what serious
contemplation are you in?
EDMUND
I am thinking, brother, of a prediction I read
this other day, what should follow these eclipses.
EDGAR
Do you busy yourself about that?
EDMUND
I promise you, the effects he writes of succeed
unhappily; as of unnaturalness between the child
and the parent; death, dearth, dissolutions of
ancient amities; divisions in state, menaces and
maledictions against king and nobles; needless
diffidences, banishment of friends, dissipation
of cohorts, nuptial breaches, and I know not what.
EDGAR
How long have you been a sectary astronomical?
EDMUND
Come, come; when saw you my father last?
EDGAR
Why, the night gone by.
EDMUND
Spake you with him?
EDGAR
Ay, two hours together.
EDMUND
Parted you in good terms? Found you no
displeasure in him by word or countenance?
EDGAR
None at all.
EDMUND
Bethink yourself wherein you may have offended
him: and at my entreaty forbear his presence
till some little time hath qualified the heat of
his displeasure; which at this instant so rageth
in him, that with the mischief of your person it
would scarcely allay.
EDGAR
Some villain hath done me wrong.
EDMUND
That’s my fear. I pray you, have a continent
forbearance till the speed of his rage goes
slower; and, as I say, retire with me to my
lodging, from whence I will fitly bring you to
hear my lord speak: pray ye, go; there’s my key:
if you do stir abroad, go armed.
EDGAR
Armed, brother!
EDMUND
Brother, I advise you to the best; go armed: I
am no honest man if there be any good meaning
towards you: I have told you what I have seen
and heard, but faintly–nothing like the image
and horror of it: pray you, away.
EDGAR
Shall I hear from you anon?
EDMUND
I do serve you in this business.
Exit EDGAR
A credulous father! and a brother noble,
Whose nature is so far from doing harms,
That he suspects none: on whose foolish honesty
My practises ride easy! I see the business.
Let me, if not by birth, have lands by wit:
All with me’s meet that I can fashion fit.
Exit