The Most Fundamental Meaning to
Daedalus + Icarus
is this:
He was willing to Sacrifice his son (i.e. The Future), in order to become FREE.
There is an art to flying, or rather a knack.
The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss. ... Clearly, it is this second part, the missing, that presents the difficulties.
" Darth Vader is The Ultimate Father - that is why He is MORE Powerful than Luke. "
- George Lucas
Luke Skywalker has no son - he sacrificed his birthright to Fatherhood in exchange for True Wisdom.
"What is it that You Think You Know
That I Know-Not..?"
Email to the Universe
"Dreams of flying appeared in the collective unconscious before the reality of flight existed in technology, and I suspect that
if we understood our dreams better we would use our technology more wisely . . .
I suggest that we contemplate what our children look at every Saturday morning on TV.
One of the most popular jokes in animated cartoons shows the protagonist walking off a cliff,
without noticing what he has done.
Sublimely ignorant, he continues to walk - on air - until he notices that he has been doing the "impossible," and then he falls . . .
Daedalus who, imprisoned in a labyrinth (conventional "reality"), invented wings and flew away, over the heads of his persecutors; and Icarus, the of Daedalus, who flew too close to the Sun Absolute and fell back to Earth.
HE PUSHED HIS LUCK
&
TEMPTED THE FATES
Like Porky Pig walking off a cliff, Icarus' fall contains a symbolism many have encountered in their own dreams . . .
Daedalus means "artist" in Greek . . .
Daedalus, inventor of wings that took him from Earth to Outer Space -
Why does he represent Art, instead of Science? . . .
Daedalus, inventor of wings that took him from Earth to Outer Space -
Why does he represent Art, instead of Science? . . .
The genius of an artist, Aristotle says, lies in his texne, the root from which we get our word "technology"; but texne basically means skill or craft, or the ability to
make things that never existed before.
Negative entropy,
i.e., information . . .
GRACE
FOOLISH OPTIMISM
The Muse-ician and The Architect,
The Poet and The Physicist --
all inventors of new realities
-- all such Creators may be best considered late evolutionary developments of the type that first appears as
The Shaman.
Please remember that shamans in most cultures are known as
"They Who Walk in The Sky,"
just like our current shaman-hero,
Luke Skywalker
Han Solo (for example) isn't ANY of those things -
He's a Pirate King :
a Plunderer.
Leia is The Hearth.
But I can't believe She was so foolish to think that She could send Her Son away, and for any good to come of it....
Yes I Can, though.
Yes I Can, though.
The ironies of Swift and Aristophanes, and the myths of the fall of Icarus and Donald Duck, indicate that
The Collective Unconscious contains a force opposed to our Dreams of Flight.
This appears inevitable . . .
But what if we begin to regrow healthy organs of Poetic Imagination and flight?
What if we
"put on wings and arouse the coiled splendor within,"
as Liber Al urges? . . .
Joyce did not name his emblematic Artist merely
Daedalus, but Stephen Daedalus
-- after St. Stephen the Protomartyr,
who reported a Vision and was stoned to death for it . . .
Those of us who have no avocation for martyrdom must learn, when we realize how much neophobia remains built into the contraptions of "society" and "the State," the art of surviving in spite of them.
In a word, we must
"get wise"
in both the Socratic meaning of the phrase and in the most hardboiled street meaning.
Neophobia functions as an Evolutionary Driver,
forcing The Neophiliac to get very smart very fast."
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy states: "There
is an art to flying, or rather a knack. The knack lies in learning how
to throw yourself at the ground and miss. ... Clearly, it is this second
part, the missing, that presents the difficulties."
You must learn how to throw yourself at the ground and miss. Pick a nice day and try it. The first part is easy. All it requires is the ability to throw yourself forward with all your weight and the willingness not to mind that it's going to hurt. That is, it's going to hurt if you fail to miss the ground. If you are really trying properly, the likelyhood is that you will fail to miss the ground fairly hard.
Clearly, it is the second part, the missing, which presents the difficulties.
One problem is that you have to miss the ground accidentally. It's no good deliberately intending to miss the ground because you won't. You have to have your attention suddenly distracted by something else then you're halfway there, so that you are no longer thinking about falling, or about the ground, or about how much it's going to hurt if you fail to miss it.
It is notoriously difficult to prise your attention away from these three things during the split second you have at your disposal. Hence most people's failure, and their eventual disillusionment with this exhilarating and spectacular sport.
If, however, you are lucky enough to have your attention momentarily distracted at the crucial moment by, say, a gorgeous pair of legs (tentacles, pseudopodia, according to phyllum and/or personal inclination), or a bomb going off in your vicinity, or by suddenly spotting an extremely rare species of beetle crawling along a nearby twig, then in your astonishment you will miss the ground completely and remain bobbing just a few inches above the ground in what might seem to be a slightly foolish manner.
This is the moment for superb and delicate concentration.
Bob and float. Float and bob.
Ignore all considerations of your own weight and simply let yourself waft higher.
Do not listen to what anybody says to you at this point because they are unlikely to say anything helpful.
They are most likely to say something along the lines of "Good God, man, you can't possibly be flying!" It is vitally important not to believe them or they will suddenly be right.
Waft higher and higher. Try a few swoops, gentle ones at first, then drift above the treetops, breathing regularly.
DO NOT WAVE AT ANYBODY.
Landing
With more experience, you will learn how to land properly, which is something you will almost certainly screw up, and screw up badly, on your first attempt.
Flight School
There are private flying clubs you can join which help you with the all important moment of distraction. They hire people with surprising bodies or opinions to leap out from behind bushes and exhibit and/or explain them at the critical moments. Few genuine hitchhikers will be able to afford to join these clubs, but some may be able to get temporary employment at them.
