Pleasure and the polarities of humanity.

I'm firmly convinced that the premise of a healthy thinking resides in the recognition that the societal and the individual are the two polarities of humanity. They are interdependent. They need each other. But at the same time their interactions are fraught with conflict and that conflict acts in a similar fashion as the collisions between the polarities of electricity. The result is a burst of energy that powers the movement forward of their constitutive unity. That means that change in human affairs is powered by the collisions between the societal and the individual.

Both the societal and the individual have their inner necessities to satisfy and it is in the nature of life to trick through pleasure all that is necessary for life to thrive into acting to satisfy the inner necessities of those polarities:

- the pleasure procured by food in the mouth guarantees the individual will survive and thrive

- the pleasure procured by sex guarantees that the species will survive and thrive

- the pleasure procured by beauty to the mind guarantees that the individuals will unconsciously internalise the meaning expressed in what is beautiful and thus secure the necessary societal cohesion for societies to survive and reproduce.

From this I conclude:

1. that pleasure is the functional motivator that ensures the reproduction of all the entities necessary to the survival of the principle of life.

2. that the collisions between polarities is what is powering the development, or the push forward, of all the entities necessary to the survival of the principle of life.

The meaning behind this sketch I just shared with you allows to grasp the nature of the principle of life and its emergence and development. For sure the real story is a little more complex than the sketch. But the substance is there nevertheless accessible for meditation.

The meaning consciously generated by my thinking about "what reality is all about" unconsciously gives direction to my visual rendering in painting. For me in this age of imbalance characterised by extreme individualism, poor collages of past and old ideas and utter confusion about what comes our way, painting is an unconscious process of working myself out of chaos in the hope of finding islands of order and harmony that hopefully shed light on our present and the shaping of our future.