ASSURING

THE

TRAGIC

CONSTANT






A Creative Commentary


By


David A. Archer
02/15/1968









10/03/2006

        I make the realization recently, that there are actually those within society seeming to think that all of human progress through the centuries was for nothing more than to maintain the tragic constant.

       That is, in all of the incredible advance and comforts we as a species have developed, in some areas within it all there are those that see those limitations imposed as per providing said comforts as nothing more than a means through which to insure the tragic leanings of existence.

       A person can’t really blame them, though.  It is easy to see where many could get the idea that such is the only intended result of any sort of social advance and consistency through the history of human existence.

       For some reason, people always seem within the tendency toward the “worst” in extremes through their considerations of a given example or situation.

      Maybe it is as result of some built in tendency toward obsessions?

       What ever it is exactly is really of little matter in regard to how it is most commonly maintained and manifested within society.

       Consider it… when a person is fraught with the anxieties of any sort of potential… for some reason it is always within said consideration that the most horrific possible result is just on the horizon.  Many even do this in some effort to thwart said results through some mystical influence of and from the same mentality that tells children they are “not it” when they manage to call out the simple phrase denoting such claims.

       In this very mentality, it is entirely un-acceptable to even briefly consider the best possible result.  Any such consideration is definitely a sign that such positive results will never transpire.    Within that then is the dysfunction in dynamic of flogging ones self so to speak, to insure that the worst will not happen.

       Essentially suffering through it… if not more anguish than something such as the “worst possible outcome” could produce, time and again so as to avoid having to experience it… in any miniscule percentage chance that said worst thing would happen.

       Most times then forgetting almost entirely about the initial desired result within the preoccupation of having successfully thwarted the most extreme and remote possible result in the tragic sense.

        In that then, it is perhaps seen as a victory whether or not the desired result transpires as consequence.

        Insurance of some sort I suppose, for those that are not of the disposition to adequately deal with even the possibility of rejection on any level.

        They “win” for not having attained the desired goal through knowing that it was their own actions which thwarted the most tragic of imaginable possible results.

        This I suppose, pertains to every instant in conceivable existence.

        How horrific would it be if such obsessive tendencies ever really became the apex of focal points within the development and progress of society?

        What would come of society as everyone involved sat reassured through their efforts in “thwarting,” while the actual- and far too risky tasks- of active maintenance within society went un-tended?  More so, left to the superior results of obsessive compulsive dissention in the effort to insure the tragic constant?  This all while some secret want of said tragedy built and swelled, so as to reassure those putting forward such effort, of their eminent importance.

      We would be knee deep in bad renditions of Shakespeare endings and droves of people standing around being correct and saying “I told you so!”

       How strange it is to think that society has developed at all within the apparent want and need toward such extremes of tragedy.

       So much effort in building and providing areas of considerable safety for the purpose of a better degree of living, only to find a large portion of it populated with the want and desire for focus on tragic extremes.

       Is it then possible that this could point to an inherent flaw within the human creature itself?  Something that none of the brilliance of centuries could have foreseen in laying such plans and producing such grand ideas?

       Could they ever have imagined that the diligence of applied human cognate existence would result only in insuring the need to assure a tragic constant?

      Maybe it isn’t even a conscious effort in that larger sense?  Perhaps it is, as I have stated, a result of over achieved safety and comfort?

      Maybe it is some schism as result of the over applied limitations to our existence, which have rendered said comforts in such an extreme measure as to have tainted the flow in the ability to utilize and enjoy those lofty achievements?

       Maybe it is just the Boogey man?

       The Boogey man tired of being kept in the closet and under the bed.  Being tired of the limited and confined area of disrupting matching pairs of socks?  Insisting within those magnificent advances in society, that he… the “boogey man”…. be allotted his share of said comforts beyond the closet and missing sock mystery?

       And then again, maybe it is just the extended effects of over saturation in the areas of human designed and produced factors such as frequency and chemical ingestion?  The unseen and uncared about effects resulting from comparably grotesque mutations in social movement and physical reality yet unrealized?

       But, I think the better bet…. At least the notion that is more likely to be admitted and seriously addressed in our modern day given the existing corporate structures and said influences…

          …is that it is the Boogey man, after all.