Placement
The concept of "choice" persists through every waking moment. Within culture the act of choice redounds: it enriches our wettest paintings and enrages our thirstiest wars. The objective of Placement is the recognition of these pragmatics from a cultural, aesthetic and temporal dialogue. This discourse is not specifically in pursuit of the act, location, or persona but an appreciation of those decisions and intentions set in time: a "metaphysics of choice."
These observations offer an appeal against the deluge of sound bites and marketing feedback that are disguised as cultural anthropology. We concede and embrace that this is a quickly changing world with vast complexities, but it's imperative that the foundations that brought us here are considered in order to appreciate change as growth. Virtuous and Just ideals appear alien and antiquated in the cultural landscape. Here, we mean to challenge that assumption as lazy sophistry, illuminated neither by morality nor explication.
The examined life is the one worth living, as judiciously expressed by OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES JR., an extrordinary Supreme Court Justice:
"Until lately the best thing that I was able to
think of in favor of civilization, apart from
blind acceptance of the order of the universe,
was that it made possible the artist, the poet,
the philosopher, and the man of science. But I
think that is not the greatest thing. Now I
believe that the greatest thing is a matter that
comes directly home to us all. When it is
said that we are too much occupied with the means
of living to live, I answer that the chief worth
of civilization is just that it makes the means
of living more complex; that it calls for great
and combined intellectual efforts, instead of
simple, uncoordinated ones, in order that the
crowd may be fed and clothed and housed and moved
from place to place. Because more complex and
intense intellectual efforts mean a fuller and
richer life. They mean more life. Life is an
end in itself, and the only question as to
whether it is worth living is whether you have
enough of it.
"I will add but a word. We are all very near
despair. The sheathing that floats us over its
waves is compounded of hope, faith in the
unexplainable worth and sure issue of effort,
And the deep, sub-conscious content which comes
from the exercise of our powers."
...
At the age of 92, Holmes was found reading a copy of Plato's Republic. When asked why? He responded indignantly that he wanted to expand his mind.
Life expands with choice. The act of choice is placement.
Thank you for your patience with us. And I most earnestly thank the contributors here that freely give of their time, their wit and their friendship.
Very sincerely,
E. Tage Larsen
Editor in Chief