work_id,theme,provenance,created_at,text,reviewed_on,id,comments,metaphor,dictionary,updated_at,context
8357,"",Reading,2022-06-02 19:45:25 UTC,"(a) A malfunction, a disorder of the senses and the brain which has become conscious and more or less normal (especially among intellectuals). The physiological functions of the ‘modern’ man’s nervous and cerebral systems seem to have fallen victim to an excessively demanding regime, to a kind of hypertension and exhaustion. He has not yet ‘adapted’ to the conditions of his life, to the speed of its sequences and rhythms, to the (momentarily) excessive abstraction of the frequently erroneous concepts he has so recently acquired. His nerves and senses have not yet been adequately trained by the urban and technical life he leads. Modern concepts are like a kind of electrical supercharge to his brain (a natural consequence of the extreme complexity of these concepts and of the situations in which we struggle), and, to pursue the metaphor, his nerves and senses are frequently short-circuited. And so the ‘modern’ intellectual, an extreme example and a complete product of this situation, is no longer able to abstract the concept or idea which is both within things and different from them, and to per“ceive it as on another stage or level of consciousness. In his perception the abstraction and the thing are mixed together, merged, the concept is like the thing’s double – distinct, ideal, ‘mysterious’. Furthermore, it is a second-rate abstraction, not a way of knowing, a rational element, but a ‘signifying’ of things, a symbol, a second thing, a façade. The elements of consciousness, its ‘functions’ or its ‘stages’, are at once separated and reunited in a false, confused unity in which their relations, their order and their hierarchy are lost. (pp. 294-5)",,25309,Marked as metaphor,"""Modern concepts are like a kind of electrical supercharge to his brain (a natural consequence of the extreme complexity of these concepts and of the situations in which we struggle), and, to pursue the metaphor, his nerves and senses are frequently short-circuited""","",2022-06-02 19:45:25 UTC,""
8357,"",Reading,2022-06-03 16:49:08 UTC,"Turned back upon himself, secure within some imaginary inner fortress, he is the plaything of every hallucination, every spontaneous or deliberate ideological illusion. The 'thinker', self-taught or not, concocts his own little personal philosophy; the 'non-thinker' interprets what he reads in books (or preferably in newspapers) as best he can; and then one day individualism begins to collapse (and not as a result of a crisis of ideas or 'world views', but because of a material crisis, both economic and political), and these erstwhile individualists rush headlong to form a crowd, a horde, urged on by the most insane, most loathsome, most ferocious 'ideas', leaving the last vestige of human reason behind, caught up in a collective mental fever: and we have Fascism, the Fascist 'masses' and Fascist 'organization'.",,25310,"","""Turned back upon himself, secure within some imaginary inner fortress, he is the plaything of every hallucination, every spontaneous or deliberate ideological illusion.""","",2022-06-03 16:49:08 UTC,""
8357,"",Reading,2022-06-04 22:05:21 UTC,"And in life itself, in everyday life, ancient gestures, rituals as old as time itself, continue unchanged – except for the fact that this life has been stripped of its beauty. Only the dust of words remains, dead gestures. Because rituals and feelings, prayers and magic spells, blessings, curses, have been detached from life, they have become abstract and 'inner', to use the terminology of self-justification. Convictions have become weaker, sacrifices shallower, less intense. People cope – badly – with a smaller outlay. Pleasures have become weaker and weaker. The only thing that has not diminished is the old disquiet, that feeling of weakness, that foreboding. But what was formerly a sense of disquiet has become worry, anguish. Religion, ethics, metaphysics – these are merely the 'spiritual' and 'inner' festivals of human anguish, ways of channelling the black waters of anxiety – and towards what abyss?",,25311,"","""Religion, ethics, metaphysics – these are merely the 'spiritual' and 'inner' festivals of human anguish, ways of channelling the black waters of anxiety – and towards what abyss?""","",2022-06-04 22:05:21 UTC,""