Creative Writing 1: Epistemology.

All displays of excellence peer into the divine. Wealth, status, and other markers of success are crude forms of distinction. I understood this much. But one surveys the natural beauty of the river valley, or observes the practiced blade of a surgeon, and is filled with awe. This affect is the sublime. Knowledge, then, is a mere attempt at capturing the sublime into words. And epistemology, the most rudimentary field, cuts a streak of light across the formless and empty, the darkness over the surface of the deep. Having glanced at the sublime but lacking a way to reproduce it seemed to drive my obsession even further. It was a vain activity, but I pursued it nonetheless. 

You see, I was always dreaming about powerful people. Even in my youth, I recognized the purpose of the allegories that my ancestors had taught. These stories had one common theme: that life was full of sadness and tragedy, but was worth living. Great men and women were put in unfair situations, made hard choices, and performed unbelievable actions out of love. Five minutes of happiness could outweigh years of work and suffering. It was about the tenacity of heroes and hope for the future. 

What then should modern man make of these stories? I believe that to take their meanings as literal is to make a great error. Let us remove ourselves from the physical world, for it is only a shadow of the true reality: the world of ideas. History, then, is not merely physical forces acting in accordance to a natural principle. No – it is a higher concept. Man always reaches his hand to fulfill his natural place in reality. Some yearn for freedom. Justice. The fulfillment of duty. The excitement of novelty. Others desire the darker aspects of human impulse: revenge, power, and hatred. 

Yet, all this is to say one thing: that it is not so simple to put together a coherent history of mankind. One can get the physical facts correct, but the psychological ones are much harder to rationalize. And for good reason – they are the more interesting ones! 

But, as you will see, to write a history of mankind is to impose your will onto it; it is never perspective-neutral. I do not even know if my original intentions were carried through to the end. It is as if, having placed myself on that sandy shore indefinitely, the waves had covered my feet in sand, and removed them altogether with the cycling of tides, that I do not know whether I stood where I had once put myself.