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Carrion Luggage  Native to the Americas, the turkey vulture (Cathartes aura) travels widely in search of sustenance. While usually foraging alone, it relies on other individuals of its species for companionship and mutual protection. Sometimes misunderstood, sometimes feared, sometimes shunned, it nevertheless performs an important role in the ecosystem. This scavenger bird is a marvel of efficiency. Rather than expend energy flapping its wings, it instead locates uplifting columns of air, and spirals within them in order to glide to greater heights. This behavior has been mistaken for opportunism, interpreted as if it is circling doomed terrestrial animals destined to be its next meal. In truth, the vulture takes advantage of these thermals to gain the altitude needed glide longer distances, flying not out of necessity, but for the joy of it. It also avoids the exertion necessary to capture live prey, preferring instead to feast upon that which is already dead. In this behavior, it resembles many humans. It is not what most of us would consider to be a pretty bird. While its habits are often off-putting, or even disgusting, to members of more fastidious species, the turkey vulture helps to keep the environment from being clogged with detritus. Hence its Latin binomial, which translates to English as "golden purifier." I rarely know where the winds will take me next, or what I might find there. The journey is the destination. |
Huh, and here I thought Sam Vega was Vincent Vega's  brother. From Big Think: Saṃvega: The urgent realization that you need a more meaningful life If you feel like you’re missing out on something bigger, you might be feeling saṃvega. Well, at least it's not an idiotic English portmanteau, like maybe, I don't know, "fearpression;" or another catchy acronym like FOMO. It is a feeling most of us will have experienced at some point, but we might not have called it by that name. So, what does saṃvega mean? The article has already answered this in the summary points at the top, but I'll indulge. Saṃvega is hard to define but it pops up again and again in philosophical literature. It might be called angst, absurdity, ennui, dissatisfaction, alienation, or existential dread. So, there are at least six synonymous words or phrases already in English. Got it. Saṃvega is that sense of unease that comes on when you think everything is pointless. Huh. I don't feel unease when I think everything is pointless. No, it's one of the few realizations that actually makes me smile. It's like... "Nothing matters. What a relief! Now I don't have to worry so much or create drama for other people!" Saṃvega is when you sense that there’s something more to the Universe you’re not quite tapping into — as if you’re dancing around some deeper and more meaningful truth that’s always just out of reach. My beer is usually just within reach. Have you ever worked incredibly hard for a long time toward a goal only to find out that, once you’ve accomplished it, things feel a bit flat? That is saṃvega. Okay, now, that, I can relate to. But it doesn't seem nearly the same thing as angst, absurdity, etc. It is there when Karl Marx talks about the alienation of workers from their work. Oh, so it's about how labor is entitled to what it produces? It is in Friedrich Nietzsche’s angry tirade against the social and moral norms of our time. Our time isn't Nietzsche's time. In Tolstoy’s The Death of Ivan Ilyich, the titular character exemplifies saṃvega. Huh, and here I thought he was just being Russian. Like Ivan, saṃvega is a disease with a great many remedies. These solutions or cures for saṃvega are known as pasada. Broadly, these pasadas fall into four categories: And I won't reiterate the categories in detail here. To summarize: religion, existentialism, absurdity, and nihilism. Well, for me, religion is right out; it just makes shit up and offers false hope. Existentialism, as the article points out, encourages us to find our own meaning internally, which, okay, fine, whatever works. Nihilism is... well, let's just say it's a trap. Absurdity, though? Leaving aside for a moment that up there, they just said that absurdity was a synonym for samvega, at least with absurdity we get to have a laugh every once in a while, and that's something I absolutely believe in. But hey, that's me. I know everyone's different, which is one reason we keep going around and around about "meaning" and "purpose:" everyone has a different point of view on the subject. Once I realized that we're all just making this shit up as we go along, I learned to relax and enjoy it. |
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