Backbone & Brain

Sounds like an existential detective agency, Backbone & Brain, and I suppose it is, in a way. Because without them, one cannot inquire very deeply into the nature of being human, into the nature of the cosmic whole. Again and again, one comes up against obstacles: obstacles of language (where words and grammar lead us away from the truth and not towards it), obstacles of conventions (where conventional wisdom and ways of doing things go unquestioned), and obstacles of identity - of the self - (where delusions of what you are and not how you are take precedence over reality).

If there is one thing that is required of the sincere philosopher it is courage. This courage though it could equally be represented by the heart (le coeur) is symbolized here by the backbone, by the ability to stand up and speak your mind, and not kowtow to false idols. Once erect, the brain comes into its own: enquiry, questioning, imagining... applying.  

Seeing.

In Luc Besson's most recent effort, Lucy, he makes allusions to the fact that we use a pitifully small amount of our cerebral capacity. I would perhaps say that it's not really the amount we use, but how we use it, how we channel it. In other words, a hundred percent brain power could still produce an imbecile, except here we would be privy to a remarkable imbecile, who gets things remarkably wrong.

The backbone then is what stirs the brain into right action, and into right thinking. And when the time comes, equally, into non-action, and into non-thinking. In other words, the spine is not only located at the base of the brain, but it is, in fact the basis of the brain.

I guess the germ of this entry is Martin Heidegger's memorial address at the celebration of the 175th anniversary of the birth of the German composer Conradin Kreutzer (1780-1849) in Messkirch in 1955 which can be found in the great little book Discourse on Thinking. In particular, at the end of his address in which he has castigated science's arrogance, and dependence on logic and reason to light the way - calculative thinking over meditative thinking - where he states:

What great danger then might move upon us? Then there might go hand in hand with the greatest ingenuity in calculative planning, and inventing indifference toward meditative thinking, total thoughtlessness. And then? Then man would have thrown away his own special nature - that he is a meditative being. Therefore, the issue is the saving of man's essential nature. Therefore, the issue is keeping meditative thinking alive. Yet releasement towards things and openness to the mystery never happen of themselves. They do not befall us accidentally. Both flourish only through persistent and courageous thinking.

Both flourish, in other words, through the application of backbone and brain. Lose either of these (although there is an argument to say that they are inseparable) and you are no longer human in the fullest sense, but simply a spineless robot (a man) who works without thinking of the consequences of that work, and whose work is not an end in itself but always a means to something else.