Friday, January 02, 2009

Existentialism: A Bonus Question

Why did you break your chains and leave the cave?

2 comments:

harrogate said...

Harrogate is not entirely sure that he HAS broken the chains or left the cave. The S&M quality of both is appealing, after all.

But he will say this. For all its substantial drawbacks, IF you embrace it in the right way, the academic life invites you to think about, and rethink about, things, from a broad variety of viewpoints. And so this pursuit of the PhD has been liberating for Harrogate, in some ways.

The Roof Almighty said...

I offer one of my favorite quotes as an answer:

"You were already in a prison. You've been in a prison all your life.[...] Happiness is the most insidious prison of all. Your lover lived in the penitentiary that we are all born into and was forced to rake the dregs of that world for his living. He knew affection and tenderness but only briefly. Eventually, one of the other inmates stabbed him with a cutlass and he drowned upon his own blood. Is that it, Evey? Is that the happiness worth more than freedom? It's not an uncommon story, Evey, many convicts meet with miserable ends: your mother, your father, your lover. One by one. Taken out behind the chemical sheds...and shot. All convicts, hunched and deformed by the smallness of their cells, the weight sof their chains, the unfairness of their sentences. I didn't put you in prison, Every. I just showed you the bars."

Quothe <|:}-