As in the case of living beings generally, slack chooses the path of least resistance. Akin to life, for slack the idea that this is choice is misnomer – it is of its nature, emergent, and not a conscious reasoned decision. Perhaps “develops towards” is a better term.
Slack, like life, seeks nooks and crannies where it will be nourished and can thrive. Where it can, in a sense, “eek out” a living from the earth. Unlike other visions of existence, which emphasize struggle and strife, slack sees life as innately nurturing. Life isn’t competitive, “red in tooth and claw,” but rather unconsciously symbiotic. Holistic, interrelated, dynamically linked. Slack understands it is futile (and fanatical) to push so rigorously towards goals. What is a goal but a strange obsession, a preoccupation of the mind? Are goals, blind objectives, even healthy?
Slack seeks a knowledge and acceptance of life (and living things) that is fundamentally harmonious, not competitive and antagonistic. Antagonism leads to war, and war is the fundamental antithesis of slack.
Like Heraclitus, slack shares a vision of life that is both dynamic and non-committal. “Everything flows”. In fact, existence is flow…
March 31, 2011 at 9:15 pm |
“As in the case of living beings generally, slack chooses the path of least resistance.”
My question is: how can this be when straight out of the gate, birth, for a living being, is not “the path of least resistance”? A quick check of the female anatomy might make this illuminating; although romanticized, birth is a violent and aggressive process of struggle for women and newborns. And how does a seed not struggle through soil to reach the sun? And even then survival is not a guarantee. Life is a force of motion of change: whether lifting a spoon to eat your cereal or lying on the grass under a tree, and as with any force there is, more often than not, resistance and as with any resistance it can, at times make an individual thrive, or in the case of my first example, be born.
April 1, 2011 at 12:50 pm |
Sorouja: Your rhetoric is, quite literally, weighed down by the force of gravity. A seed’s struggle through the soil, as a sprout, to reach the sun is the path of least resistance, inching around rocks or harder bits of dirt.
One only need sit by the ocean for a few moments (slack recommends an eternity) to realize this phenomenon — life clinging to any spot that is somehow sheltered from the crashing waves, literally sprouting out of any available nooks or crannies.
Your sense of resistance is very much a question of scale — for us, gravity is the deal breaker. But there are other forces of greater relevance to the microcosm and macrocosm…
April 1, 2011 at 8:46 pm |
Life is a way of saying f*** gravity.
April 2, 2011 at 6:38 am |
Exactly. Although the phenomena of matter having an inherent tendency to agglomerate is also an essential condition of life…
April 3, 2011 at 4:18 pm |
Beautifully written. So true.
April 5, 2011 at 7:58 am |
Having been through the birth process I would say that becoming slack about the struggle is a good way to get through it, not fighting against the pain or the contractions, not medicating them, but relaxing into them, riding them, finding that one can actually live there for a while, stretched on that rack, and that afterwards, (in my case at least) one never felt a more transcendent sense of release or a more comforting sense of sloth and slackness and exhaustion. I use the term Resignation to life’s challenges and assaults – they can’t be avoided, but they can be enjoyed and they do create beauty. When accepted, the assault can become a form of nourishment. Sounds crazy doesn’t it?
April 5, 2011 at 1:23 pm |
@amarilla: Could this be loosely paraphrased as “embrace the suck”? :) But, seriously, thanks for this response. Doesn’t sound crazy at all…From my current point of view, it seems like sound advice.
April 17, 2011 at 8:02 pm |
N.B: I recently found a video that ideally captures elements of what I am trying to say in the above.
May 5, 2011 at 6:57 pm |
Sounds much like Taoism to me.
May 5, 2011 at 8:22 pm |
@SE: Definitely a major dose of “the Way” in all these aimless ramblings about slack…