#CONTRADICTION

[odinsblog]

[nando161mando]

[philosophybits]

The contradictions the mind comes up against — these are the only realities: they are the criterion of the real. There is no contradiction in what is imaginary. Contradiction is the test of necessity.

Simone Weil, Gravity and Grace

[nobeerreviews]

When I first met you, I felt a kind of contradiction in you. You're seeking something, but at the same time, you are running away for all you're worth.

-- Haruki Murakami

(Paris)

[thirdity]

I cannot countenance the traditional belief that postulates a natural dichotomy between the objectivity of the scientist and the subjectivity of the writer, as if the former were endowed with a 'freedom' and the latter with a 'vocation' equally suitable for spiriting away or sublimating the actual limitations of their situation. What I claim is to live to the full contradiction of my time, which may well make sarcasm the condition of truth.

Roland Barthes, Mythologies

[diana-andraste]

Exquisite Corpse series, Jake and Dinos Chapman, 2000

‘The painter is condemned to please. By no means can he make a painting an object of aversion. The purpose of a scarecrow is to frighten birds, to keep them away from the field where it stands, but even the most terrifying painting is there to attract visitors.’

(Georges Bataille, “The Cruel Practice of Art”)

We can’t help but admire at the same time as being revolted by this series. ftp

[momentsbeforemass]

Contradiction

(for someone who didn’t realize that was a vocation)

Should I get married? Or should I become a priest, or a friar, or a nun?

The Church’s answer is “Yes. If that’s what God is calling you to.” Today’s Gospel is the reason for that answer.

Looking in from the outside, a lot of people see this as a contradiction at the heart of the Church.

   You’re for marriage and families?

Yes, the Church answers.

   But you’re for consecrated lives of holiness that forgo marriage?

Actually, they’re all lives of holiness. And yes.

   That makes no sense. Aren’t those mutually exclusive?

No, they’re both positive goods. And both mutually supportive.

In its healthy, holy form, the vocation to marriage supports the priesthood and the religious life. Likewise, a healthy, holy vocation to religious life or holy orders supports marriage. How?

At their best, they are both practical schools of a living Faith. Both of them show us power of love in action, one that can only be had at the price of commitment. The only way any that any vocation can be healthy, can be holy.

Because of this, they lead us to, and support us in, deeper relationships with other people. When they are grounded in a deeper relationship with God.

Sometimes that grounding is not obvious looking in from the outside. Because some of the greatest vocations you will ever meet are seemingly built on the smallest things.

Smallest things done as if they were the greatest things.

This is the secret to a healthy, holy vocation. Including the vocation to the single life.

In the words of Brother Lawrence, “We ought not to be weary of doing little things for the love of God, who regards not the greatness of the work, but the love with which it is performed.”

Today’s Readings

[derangedrhythms]

I have an innate passion for contradiction—my whole life has been nothing but a series of melancholy and vain contradictions of heart or reason.

Mikhail Lermontov, from ‘A Hero of Our Time’, tr. J. H. Wisdom & Marr Murray

[birdydreamer]

It's hilarious. Men want us so badly for our bodies, yet hate us so much for our minds.

- Iron Widow, Xiran Jay Zhao

[i-am-trans-gwender]

Trans girl part of me: Having body hair gives me so much gender dysphoria. I can't wait to get electrolysis.

Furry part of me: I WANT TO BE COMPLETELY COVERED IN FUR! I WANT TO BE CUDDLY AND SOFT!

[hurtmemoreplease]

I always feel like there's a wall between me and other people - theoretically, sure, I understand people. I have rules, habits, journals and notes and guidelines about what 'people' want and think and how that shapes my own behavior. But put me face to face with someone and I am incapable of understanding them as a person. I don't know what you, the person who purports to be my friend, wants from me. I don't know what I can ask from you, or when you're lying, or how much I mean to you or not.

And honestly, a lot of what I know about 'people' is projecting. I know I like to talk about myself, so I try to let people talk about themselves to me. I know I want praise, validation, recognition, so I make a note that 'people' like these things. But when its about myself, well... I don't like myself. So I don't assume that anyone else would, you know? And so my framework for understanding how people interact with me is fucked, colored by the assumption that everyone feels about me the same way I feel about myself.

It just kind of... it sucks. It sucks living in a world where you can't understand anyone, where you're trying to figure out what they're not saying. I need to pay attention to their tone, to their actions, to what they say and the way their body moves but I can never tell with any kind of certainty how much of what they communicate is a lie.

[kamala-laxman]

The world is full of contradictions; hence your search for harmony and peace. These you cannot find in the world, for the world is the child of chaos. To find order you must search within.” —Nisargadatta Maharaj

[rosedhall]

Warm up scribbles

[philosophybits]

Since nature and man contradict each other so often and so sharply, philosophy perhaps can't avoid doing the same.

Friedrich Schlegel, Athenaeum Fragments

[thirdity]

To challenge and to cope with this paradoxical state of things, we need a paradoxical way of thinking; since the world drifts into delirium, we must adopt a delirious point of view. We must no longer assume any principle of truth, of causality, or any discursive norm. Instead, we must grant both the poetic singularity of events and the radical uncertainty of events. It is not easy. We usually think that holding to the protocols of experimentation and verification is the most difficult thing. But in fact the most difficult thing is to renounce the truth and the possibility of verification, to remain as long as possible on the enigmatic, ambivalent, and reversible side of thought.

Jean Baudrillard, The Vital Illusion

[videogamepolls]

Requested by @sheepaleepz