Sunday, August 21, 2011

Cost, Risk, Image

"Do a dangerous thing and you're in danger. That's how it works." (Kate Greenstreet)

I've been thinking some more about this.

The meaning of work (value) is undermined by a lack of care; the meaning of play (danger) is undermined by a lack of daring. Our taste for danger (our daring) is being replaced with an awareness of risk; our taste for value (our caring) is being replaced with an awareness of cost. We're hooked into this cost-risk matrix. We are conscious only of prices and threats. That's the particular nature of our madness.

We are losing our minds. More precisely, we are being unimaginative. Our consciousness of costs and risks is dulling the image. The image forms where we dare to care, care to dare. We must let our caring overrule our awareness of costs. And we must let our daring overrule our awareness of risk.

This is nothing other than maintaining our courage, and remaining curious. We must not reduce our worldview to cost accounting. We must not reduce our historical consciousness to being an actuary of risk.

We must let the image form.

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