– Children are too easy, it’s the easiest way to achieve something, but then we will never move and will die of hunger on this island – sooner or later, it is going to happen as said in your lecture by… – here Alan mentioned the name which I completely forgot, but whose lectures he really liked – I was looking for these lectures later but couldn’t find, or I might not have wanted to find, – you must listen to them. He actually speaks about illusions which surround us.
– Yes, but I meant those illusions that are only in ourselves, and the problem itself never leaves our mentality. As if it exists only in us. Why do you think that we are surrounded by some worlds? – I had a feeling that I was talking to Alan for the first time, although, I had already had this impression before.
I gradually started to lose the thread of our conversation and started to concentrate on my own soul. Only some words and sensations were left in my memory after this dialogue. “Maybe, you don’t want to develop your idea yourself?”. “No, I meant a completely different thing”. “I think you go aside from the real way”. “What is the criterion of this way?”. “We can prove it. You can’t prove philosophy – it’s just a fib and yet another illusion”. “I don’t think so, do you want to go abroad the island?”. “Yes, this exit is the most important for our island, though being a dangerous enterprise”. “Whyever did you start to have such thoughts?”. “I was observing a bee flying in our flat, that was banging the glass to fly away but couldn’t notice an open window in two metres. It was so silly and limited. I didn’t help it because my help would have killed its will. I was just watching her hit and thought that we are banging in the same way. We are no less unhappy than this bee. Suddenly I was so furious with these snotty thoughts – I wanted to jump out of the window myself, but then returned to my human consciousness and understood that the window is our border”.
Earlier I liked various analogies, which seem to help to understand the topic, but later, when Alan did what he did, I found their dangerous meaning. Analogies are an attempt to manifest your thought for another person and they serve as an excellent way to explain, but any explanation is justification, even a scientific one is justification, which we recourse to admit our inability to understand a deeper truth than a shallow comparison of a person to a bee. But “I decided to go abroad and even if I go alone, so be it” and “I am used to being not understood by people, to inability of achieving synergy with them, although I expected another reaction from you, but you just stuck too deep in your thinking – lately I haven’t understood it at all”.
Ursula
Following my spiritual weakness, I agreed to think about my participation in the mission, although I was sure of my resounding refusal, again, due to my cowardice – contemplation of a faint-hearted philosopher was much nicer to me than useless bravado of newly-minted knights, but inside I agreed to observe the project process and take part in its preparation. I also hoped that Alan would face the strict principles of his beloved, who would take decisive measures in order to nip this project in the bud. Ursula. Incredibly skinny, a bit taller than Alan and with an eagle face. She was a real stalker in life, a strategist in communication, a curious child in thinking, and in my imagination was always presented as an amazon grown up in the wild forests abroad the island. Her original light mannerism shifted my understanding of beauty, and I started learning to find charm in all faces – both men’s and women’s, gradually removing the layers of sociality and intellectuality from genuine features, which have the traces of the life which moves parallelly with our social fate. That face, in which Ursula created her own kingdom with steadfast principles, felt in all her caprices, which I observed beyond the gate of their relationship. She spent most of her life in that kingdom, thus making the public feel the absence, where we can easily guess the arrogance, egotism and even the lack of intellect or – what is even worse for a social human – originality.
Symbolics of a social human is the most developed branch of science, of which nobody even speaks, because one swims in it like a fish in water or as an experienced comedian in the world of human vices. This symbolics fills our minds, which yearn for a real human, but cannot accept him, so we invent notions which, as we think, accurately describe a human soul – selfishness, avarice, gluttony and so on. But let us imagine that a man considers himself kind and in the moment of distraction forgets to leave a tip in a wonderful restaurant, where he had a date with a woman, who, following even a more ancient science than the symbolics of a social human, starts to rebuke him with her look, and he, not suspecting the mysterious conclusions, which circle around his head like a halo, constantly reminds himself of his kindness.
And the broken process of mutual trust makes her think about her companion’s greed, and him, starting to feel light detachment, think about insufficient effort that he makes. He begins to show what best he considers in himself – kindness, and on the peak of mutual misunderstanding, she declares him cheap, and he – because of the eternal man’s weakness in front of a woman – starts to justify himself not understanding what the reason of this deduction is, implanting the opinion that he is cheap into himself, and that kindness is the reason of his meanness, and he himself is the meanness in its genuine sense, as if descended from Giotto’s frescos, and, to cut this image out of his heart, our hero turns to the divine power of god Susanoo’s legendary blade, but in fact he cuts the way back to himself and begins to live in an illusory world of a “social human”, where the abyss between opinions of different people is smaller than the abyss between a thought and one person’s thought of a thought. In this world of Giotto’s images, we rather tend to believe the others than ourselves, and so people’s exterior attitude to us is so contagious: someone’s distorted fantasy or their genius is closer to us than comprehension of our shortages or our genius. And, as Little Prince, we are thrown to the different planets of human vices – that is how the symbolics of a social human works.
But if we want to return to our inner empire, we will need Ursula’s power, who had a natural talent not to notice this strange symbolics, and so had to find her principles and create her notions. To tell Ursula about his idea, Alan called me on the pretext of going to the cinema together. After the film (I can’t remember which one), he shared his idea.
– You are an absolute fool! – she replied to his offer.
– I will take you.
– Thank you, you are quite thoughtful. Might we have a baby and take him with us? Or better, I will become pregnant and give birth right there – he will be the first child born abroad. I like your aspirations not to become a bore but don’t be an idiot – at least you need a decent plan.
– We’ll do it. See, it is our possibility to wade to the unknown. People have strived for that in all times. Right now in front of us is a phenomenon which has already changed lives of all people, and if we don’t learn to be friends with it, to understand it, we will all soon die of boredom. We will build an ideal society of idiots. How can one think of an ideal society when we are on verge of a super-breakthrough? Especially when the government gives money to anybody who wants to go there.
After the film we were sitting in a small café. Observing Alan, when he was presenting Ursula his points, I felt uneasy of my presence next to their electric looks. And I thought that the birth of “divine” and “cosmic” in a man’s mind has the same way as giving a woman her mental shape. In a man’s mind, a woman is always in the process of evolution and objectification – in the process very similar to art, so a man, to a greater degree, creates but not perceives a woman. At first, he senses only a light spirit of dissimilarity between these angels and his own vicious