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history is the drama of genius,
In a genuine story there is no law that makes any act necessary.
verity.
Manichaeism
True conversions consist in the choice of a new audience, that is, of a new world. All that was once familiar is now seen in startlingly new ways.
Explanation is an antagonistic encounter that succeeds by defeating an opponent.
the demand for obedience is inherently evil.
It is by way of such end-of-history thinking that the discovered laws of behavior to which persons conform become the scripted laws of behavior to which they must conform.
they do not die at the end, but in the course of play.
the garden.
maximized spontaneity.
Machines do not, of course, make us into machines when we operate them; we make ourselves into machinery in order to operate them.
Most consumer products are “styled” inasmuch as they actually standardize the activity or the taste of the consumer.
we use machines against ourselves.
When machinery functions perfectly it ceases to be there—but so do we. Radios and films allow us to be where we are not and not be where we are.
Automobiles do not make travel possible, but make it possible for us to move locations without traveling.
Weapons are the equipment of finite games designed in such a way that they do not maximize the play but eliminate it.
Gardening is not outcome-oriented. A successful harvest is not the end of a garden’s existence, but only a phase of it.
We see nature as genius when we see as genius.
myth reintroduces the silence that makes original discourse possible.
all this firm knowledge does not expunge myth, but floats in it.
peregrinus,
the journey that made knowledge possible
Our first response to hearing a story is the desire to tell it ourselves—the greater the story the greater the desire.
Whole civilizations rise from stories—and can rise from nothing else.
When we look into a story to find its meaning, it is always a meaning we have brought with us to look at.
Myths of irrepressible resonance have lost all trace of an author.
The gospel can be heard nowhere except from those who themselves have heard it. Although I might hear New York in your voice, there is no possibility I could hear New York by itself.
myth is the highest form of our listening to each other,
listening is far more valued by religion than speaking. Fides ex auditu. Faith comes by listening, Paul said.
We do not listen to a loudspeaker for what is being said, but only because it is all that is being said. Magisterial speech is amplified speech; it is speech that silences.