As we approach the longest night of the year--as more or our life is lived amidst shadows, and out of the clear light of day--maybe it's a good time to focus on the vital, enlivening importance of what we don't know.
Western rationalism is deeply invested in Figuring It All Out. If we don't know it yet, we will in the future. And if we don't know yet, that's a problem. But onward and upward.
"I think, therefore I am," proclaimed Descartes. Who also said that since animals aren't rational, they're simply automata. So hey, treat them like objects, and raise them by the billions in hideous conditions. Rational humans are lords of creation. Clear-cut those forests so first-world consumers can wipe our asses in comfort and order merchandise online for packaged home delivery to our hearts' content.
What a sad, impoverished, dystopian universe we've projected onto the Creation that we're all a mere part of. And what a sad, constricted view of the self goes along with it.
It's the extraordinary and layed depths of our souls, which we'll never ourselves fully know at a conscious level, that impart richness to our glorious, and mortal existence. It's what's half-visible in the shadows, in moonlight, in the shifting light of fire kindled in darkness, that mirrors who we are at the only partially known core of our being. It's what's stored and only half-inventoried in the endless rooms of our memory that allows us a lifelong adventure of the inward journey.
Photos from past years of the Kensington Market Festival of Lights, Toronto
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