No Logo

When you find the place where you are, practice occurs.  Dogen

In terms of logos, Nike is probably 'it'. In terms of slogans, Nike is probably 'it' too. There are few logos and slogans that go so well together. The simplicity of it is deceptive to the point of being almost evil.

But there is another logo(s) out there (and in there), one that is not so much deceptively simple as it is simply deceptive. It doesn't have a logo or even a slogan, but if it did, it would probably be even simpler than the goddess of Victory's. Furthermore, there would be no imperative, no exclamation mark. It is 'simply deceptive' in its brazen openness that you have probably already missed it in the seven times thus far that I have mentioned it.

Instead of according ourselves to the busy-ness of the modern topsy-turvy world in the form of 'Just do it', this logo (perhaps we could even stretch to logos, as 'In the beginning there was the Word') would allow us to simply exist and revel in the light of our suchness in the form (and equally, formlessness) of 'just is'.

'The most profound statement that can be made about something is the statement that 'it is'', writes the Irish poet-philosopher John O Donohue in Divine Beauty. 'The word is is the most magical word. It is a short, inconsequential little word and does not even sound special. Yet the word is is the greatest hymn to the 'thereness' of things.

'Most of us move now in such a thicket of excess that we can no longer make out the real contour of things. Where there is entanglement, there is no perspective or clarity to make out the true identity of anything.

Heidegger, fifty years ago, often lamented that the most thought-provoking thing of our times was that we were not thinking. Like our living, our 'thinking' (and I use the word cautiously) has largely been super-imposed upon us. we operate, mostly, upon super-imposed templates and sub-routines giving us the illusion of individuality but really making us into a living oxymoron, that is 'organic automata'. I can't help laughing when scientists bring up the idea of artificial intelligence and the question of consciousness in robots. 'Do you think robots are capable of consciousness?' they ask each other gravely.  'Look around you', I want to yell. 'Look in the mirror; of course, they're capable of consciousness!'

Heidegger, in his wonderful little book Discourse on Thinking encourages us to persist in 'courageous thinking', a 'thinking' that is by its very nature 'a violent rupture of established categories' (Deleuze) and a persistent confrontation with existing dogma.

The 'courage to be' however as Paul Tillich reminds us is no easy feat. It requires a great faith in one's self, in one's deeper self that is buried beneath all that illusion and busy-ness. 'Courage is the affirmation of one's essential nature,' Tillich writes in Courage to Be, 'but it is an affirmation which has in itself the character of 'in spite of'. It includes... sacrifice of elements which also belong to one's being but which, if not sacrificed, would prevent us from reaching our actual fulfillment. This sacrifice may include pleasure, happiness, even one's own existence... [I]n the act of courage the most essential part of our being prevails... It is the beauty and goodness of courage that the good and the beautiful are actualized in it.'

The state of busying about (and the according auctioning off of the most essential part of our being) is a sure-fire way to avoid confronting the good and the beautiful. To be sure, our language confuses us at every turn, and joins in on the illusory process. 'Good', 'true', and 'beautiful' are amongst the most abused of words. 'Love', 'God', 'is', too. If perhaps we had a century long moratorium on these words perhaps the space that it would engender would allow us to return to them with some deeper reality of feeling for their essences.

The excessive use of the word 'is' is what caused Robert Anton to shout:

'Is, is, is — the idiocy of the word haunts me'.

Nevertheless, if we can transcend the often contranymic nature of language and get beyond meaning itself, cut down on our busying about, and learn to still the self and simply learn to be, at its most essential level, we might learn to see things as they really 'is'.