experientia ex clades

[patriotvoice]

I originally wrote this (today) with specific reference to my former lover, now my friend. It has general meaning, so I thought I would share.



experientia ex clades

Injury offers experience, and through experience we are able to rise above our savage instincts. As a consequence, knowledge of our failures allows us to progress individually and to contribute to the collective advancement of our species.

Santayana writes "when experience is not retained ... infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it," and indeed we are doomed infinite times over to the same injurious fate without a measure of retention.

But only the foolish suffer ignominiously. We are, in the majority, liquid compositions: brine cushioning bone and blood caressing flesh. We may mold our minds to learn from the suffering so that its ramifications do not become routine.

But led by fools, we become like fools.

Have we not learned from all the blood spilt, all the hearts broken, and all the suffering endured? Have we not discovered that a life of sanguine delight is perpetually turbulent? Do we not see that cycles are but tethers, shackles forged from the strongest alloys?

Salvation always lay within, and by ourselves enslaved we may also be freed. The same machines that work us may be made to work for us, but only if we so desire to profit from our injuries.

Carpe indolentia.