A little food for thought

Because I'm in a philosophical mood.

Elfayed: ..."I am an optimist", we say. Or "I am unlucky." Or perhaps "I am an American," "I am a Jew," "I am a homosexual," "I am a heterosexual." We call the following the White Flame meditation.

There. Can anyone tell me exactly what this object is?

Roger: It's a chair.

Elfayed: Is that all? Does that describe the entirety of this object?

Roger: It's an object with four legs and a thing to hold up your ass so you don't have to sit down in the dirt like the rest of us dickheads.

Elfayed: Yes, a partial description. But if you were an antiques dealer you could also describe this object's worth -- somewhere in the region of a quarter of a million dollars. If you were a specialist, you could describe the intricacies of the craftmanship in detailed jargon.

Six: If you were Van Gogh, you might attempt to describe its soul.

(Elfayed smashes the chair with a sledgehammer)

Six: But where in all this description is the essential chair? Have we yet even come close to a full description of it? Did we mention that several hundred years ago, it wasn't a chair but a tree? Where is it now? Here? Or in memory.

Elfayed: We cannot even fully describe a chair and yet we say "I am." "I am..."

Understand. There is no "I am."

Try to describe all that you are.

Simultaneously discern the logical flaw in what I've just said.

NOW!

Feel the White Flame.

(from Grant Morrison's INVISIBLES)