Beyond the Limits of Reason: razor

From Michael Michalko's book "Creative Thinkering":

"The key to creatively generating associations and connections between dissimilar subjects is called conceptual blending. This is a creative-thinking process that involves blending two or more concepts in the same mental space to form new ideas...Creativity in all domains, including science, technology, medicine, the arts, and everyday living, emerges from the basic mental operation of conceptually blending dissimilar subjects. When analyzed, creative ideas are always new combinations of old ideas. A poet does not generally make up new words but instead puts together old words in a new way."

In the words of the Polish philosopher Leszek Kolakowski [1927-2009], Metaphysical Horror, 2001:

"The human need for religion cannot be excommunicated from culture by rationalist incantation. Human beings do not live by reason alone. Life is more complex than rationalism allows. Reason has its limits and can never displace the deeper level of engagement with reality that is the essence of religious belief and practice. The rationalist lives in an impoverished, restricted world, defined by what reason alone can prove. Yet beyond those restrictions lies a whole new vibrant world awaiting discovery and disclosure. It does not defy or contradict reason; it simply lies beyond its scope."

Excerpt Two: The Dissipated Roderick Usher

"...Its proprietor, Roderick Usher, had been one of my boon companions in boyhood; but many years had elapsed since our last meeting...I gazed upon him with a feeling half of pity, half of awe. Surely, man had never before so terribly altered, in so brief a period, as had Roderick Usher! It was with difficulty that I could bring myself to admit the identity of the wan being before me with the companion of my early boyhood. Yet the character of his face had been at all times remarkable. A cadaverousness of complexion; an eye large, liquid, and luminous beyond comparison; lips somewhat thin and very pallid, but of a surpassingly beautiful curve...The now gasthly pallor the skin, and the now miraculous luster of the eye, above all things startled and even awed me..."

Excerpt Three: The Spirit of the House

"I learned, moreover, at intervals, and through broken and equivocal hints, another singular feature of his mental condition. He was enchained by certain superstitious impressions in regard to the dwelling which he tenanted, and whence, for many years, he had never ventured forth...an influence which some peculiarities in the mere form and substance of his family mansion, had, by dint of long sufferance, he said, obtained over his spirit- an effect which the physique of the gray walls and turrets, and of the dim tarn into which they all looked down, had, at length, brought about the morale of his existence..."

Excerpt Four: The Lady Madeline

"He admitted, however...that much of the peculiar gloom which thus afflicted him could be traced to a more natural and far more palpable origin-to the severe and long-continued illness-indeed to the evidently approaching dissolution-of a tenderly beloved sister, his sole companion for long years, his last and only relative on earth...While he spoke, the lady Madeline (for so was she called) passed slowly through a remote portion of the apartment, and, without having noticed my presence, disappeared...Hitherto she had steadily borne up against the pressure of her malady, and had not betaken herself finally to bed; but on the closing in of the evening of my arrival at the house, she succumbed...to the prostrating power of the destroyer; and I learned that the glimpse I had obtained of her person would thus probably be the last I should obtain-that the lady, at least while living, would be seen by me no more."

Excerpt Five: He Became That Which He Read

"Our books-the books which, for years, had formed no small portion of the mental existence of the invalid-were, as might be supposed, in strict keeping with this character of phantasm...His chief delight, however, was found in the perusal of an exceedingly rare and curious book in quarto Gothic-the manual of a forgotten church- the "Vigiliae Mortuorum secundum Chorum Ecclesiae Maguntinae"...I could not help thinking of the wild ritual of this work, and of its probable influence upon the hypochondriac..."

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In the words of the Polish philosopher Leszek Kolakowski [1927-2009], Metaphysical Horror, 2001:

The Usher Experiment

Image One: The House of Usher

Excerpt One: The House of Usher

The Dissipated Roderick Usher

Excerpt Two: The Dissipated Roderick Usher

The Spirit of the House

Excerpt Three: The Spirit of the House

The Lady Madeline

Excerpt Four: The Lady Madeline

He Became That Which He Read

Excerpt Five: He Became That Which He Read

The Librarian

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All images copyright Michael Doubrava, 2009.