Cartography of the Mind (Part 13 of 17)

The following are excerpts of an illuminated book sent from Liza to the group. As usual, we publish typed excerpts of these along with the original photo. The best way is to read the text, of course, is to to experience it in its illuminated form.

Semi-organized notes:

Increasingly more difficult (impractical?) to do things manually (by hand)

• production
• writing
• growing our own food
• analogue film
• listening through the entirety of a vinyl album without skipping tracks

Why?

1. Time! = Money $ = Money, then Life = Work

Our time is seemingly no longer ours. ⟶ Devices meant to simplify our lives through time-saving measures are proving to suck this very time from our lives. T____ or F ____

Even when we're not working, we feel like we're working ⟶ 

1. In the process of work under capitalism, man = estranged from his own creative powers
2. The objects of his own work = alien beings, rule over him, and become powers independent of the producer

How do we slow ourselves down as the tempo of our lives speed up?

By creating sacred spaces for ourselves.

"Finding a sanctuary, a place apart from time, is not so different from finding a faith." - Pico Iyer

Marx's Gattungswesen ⟶ species-essence ⟶ history of mankind = increasing development of man = increasing alienation ⟶ finds roots in Old Testament concept of idolatry ⟶ idols = the things we make and bow down to ⟶ threatens to substitute itself for the living experience

Alienation ⟶ man's relinquishment of God within himself

⟶ "existentialist philosophy = an over 100 year old movement of rebellion against the dehumanization of man in industrial society" - Paul Tillich

Proust ⟶ Art makes us aware of "the possibility of raising [ourselves] to a poetical understanding, rich in delights, of manifold forms which [we] had not hitherto isolated from the total spectacle of reality."