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What if the ‘beauty of the rose’ were not ‘balanced by the thorn’? Didn’t Darwinian nature create the thorn (prickle) in the role of Praetorian Guard, to (nobly!!) protect the vulnerable bloom? So borrowing your metaphor, Jeremy: with the bloom and thorn as presumed counterpoints, what if there were no ‘on the other hand’? Where all questions, without exception, had just one answer, without exception. And in every instance an obvious answer, to boot. Life would be monochromatic, monophonic, monorhythmic — in short, monotonous. Worse, no dichotomy of ideas in mining for truth: No ‘either-or’, no ‘neither-nor’, no ‘if this, then that’, no ‘but what if’. No point-counterpoint to contemplate; no countervailing offset to ideas of greater or equal or lesser force. That is, no ‘what ifs.’ All of this about ‘what ifs?’ and ‘on the other hand’ — placed in the imagery, again, of the poem’s opening metaphor — why not, then, welcome the ‘beauty of the [noble] thorn’?
Well, yes, it seems that our lives have lost an intangible grandeur. Everything has been reduced. Not that we would want to go back to the past, but I doubt that anyone would want to go back to the present.
4 comments:
What if the ‘beauty of the rose’ were not ‘balanced by the thorn’? Didn’t Darwinian nature create the thorn (prickle) in the role of Praetorian Guard, to (nobly!!) protect the vulnerable bloom? So borrowing your metaphor, Jeremy: with the bloom and thorn as presumed counterpoints, what if there were no ‘on the other hand’? Where all questions, without exception, had just one answer, without exception. And in every instance an obvious answer, to boot. Life would be monochromatic, monophonic, monorhythmic — in short, monotonous. Worse, no dichotomy of ideas in mining for truth: No ‘either-or’, no ‘neither-nor’, no ‘if this, then that’, no ‘but what if’. No point-counterpoint to contemplate; no countervailing offset to ideas of greater or equal or lesser force. That is, no ‘what ifs.’ All of this about ‘what ifs?’ and ‘on the other hand’ — placed in the imagery, again, of the poem’s opening metaphor — why not, then, welcome the ‘beauty of the [noble] thorn’?
I think life is made of contrasts...
"Am I trapped or am I free?"
Sounds like existentialism, to me!
Well, yes, it seems that our lives have lost an intangible grandeur. Everything has been reduced. Not that we would want to go back to the past, but I doubt that anyone would want to go back to the present.
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