Hope can twist our souls into believing anything is possible. It is often selfish and imprudent. Hope for some-thing or some-one can spring up out of a soul dissatisfied; one malcontent. For to hope for some circumstance to come about is, perhaps, in essence to make a statement about the lack of satisfaction one is receiving in the present moment. In these cases, hope should be deferred – - it should be thrust back, for such hope deteriorates the present, it makes a mockery of it. Such hope occurs in the sense that one makes the verdict (often on their own accord) about a certain situation that it is necessarily bad – - that this or that could be better, or he or she has so much potential, and so forth. Said hope actually flirts with the most decadent of evils – - malcontent. In this moment of dissatisfaction one is completely distant, numb and weightless. It is here that one shuts herself off from the Divine presence to live for some distant belief that some-thing or some-one will come through for her, and bring relief to the hoping individual from that which is forcing him to hope – - it is a hoping for something to return for the sake of one’s own relief from suffering. Relief that should come at any cost, for one never opts unto dissatisfaction. Shame that something so precious and lovely as hope can become, under our very noses, twisted into the antinomy that actually edits our future by bracketing out virtue in the name of virtue.
“HC SVNT DRACONES” – - “HERE BE DRAGONS”
“Philosophy…” “is conceived as an art of living. No one who refuses wisdom knows what living means.”
-Jean-Yves Lacoste
Though the phrase “HC SVNT DRACONES” was rarely used by Ancient and Medieval cartographers, it was quite frequent that one would draw horrendous looking dragons in the locations on the map which represented the reality of a place in which the modern world was yet to explore. The dragon, then, represented something of a gatekeeper to this unknown, uncharted territory. The presence of a dragon on the map delineated a boundary – - “thus far shall one roam, but no further!” As such, the unknown here shows itself intimately related to fear. Though the dragon bespeaks terror, there is within that terror a comfort and thankfulness for it. The dragon speaks to us- – with firey breath, of course – - comforting words already known, anticipated and prejudiced; already believed. The dragon is hid behind, and it shines ‘round about us. It guards and protects the innocent and naïve, the coward and candy-ass. The foreign is never approached, for it requires the possibility of impossibility – - we fear the foreign. Perhaps here we might be able to read in Jean-Yves Lacoste words:
“We can learn only to the extent that we can let the unanticipated put our expectations and our prejudices in question. Authentic discovery punches a hole in the circle, since only pseudo-questions carry their own answers ready and waiting in their bosoms. Pre-understanding without honest admission of non-understanding will hardly invite more than the most meagre discoveries. Yet it is necessary for questions to be asked, and that means there must be a field of dialogue where the speech that answers my questions can become my very own speech. Who am I, that the speech of theology addressed to me, however rudely, is capable of securing my adherence? Equally, how must theological speech be framed if what it offers has to serve as an answer to a question?”
The foreign requires that one walk with inquiry, into inquiry for the sake of wisdom. This blog takes up the genre of essay, which Montaigne described as a “record of various and changeable occurrences…in apprenticeship and on trial.” This Blog sets off in an exploratory way, with little reluctance; with hope in attaining Sophia, and always recognizing the dialectic between speculation and wisdom.
Jason Alvis