IC

I C

What idea is imprinted upon your mind when you look at this mechanical eye? It's Steampunkyness? The beautiful marriage of flesh and machine? The gift of precision this device would endow upon your vision of the world?

We see the world in a certain way, and then along comes an idea that imposes its own stamp on things; henceforth we see the world through that idea. We vanquish our old worldview for the fresh one we have constructed. The force of this creativity is evident; the idea imprints itself upon our minds. 

Our own vision of the world is bracketed, until the identity found in an idea shines through. When that idea shines through a mind gifted with intelligence and language, an artistic rendering of resolute naturalism begins. 

It is our nature to turn toward the light, to make wishes upon nature, to become naturalists that record nature as we experience it. An idea is the vision unfolding itself for examination. 

Since we are reflective, self-conscious creatures, we respond to representations of ideas - they modify us. Some ideas are so enormous, so grippingly memorable, that subsequent ideas are changed by our prior productions. 

So pervasive are ideas, so ingrained are their thoughts upon our minds - that we cannot help but be shaped by them. We are all, to some indefinite degree, an idea's progeny. It is our fidelity to ideas that modifies our nature. 

Ideas represent others, even us as an other, so that we can become ourself. An idea takes us out of ourself, where we can express the soul of a robot; but in our own person, we wait impatiently for the prompter's cue - jumping on any idea that floats by. In seeing and expressing ideas, we feel inspired; in expressing nature without them, we see mechanically. 

This image nicely fits my theme of I C, representing nature when we're not laboring under the demands of an idea. 

Are we eager explorers of the vastness of the universe upon which we find ourselves or are we naturalists - patient and disinterested observers and recorders of ideas, thoughts, and emotions whilst we modestly share and keep track of our reflections of nature in the hope that someday putting them together will illuminate their source? 

We disappear into an idea as we experience it, as we temporarily occupy its space shape frequency location. Ideas are nature in the raw. This is why its difficult to single out continuous ideas that are representative of ourselves - those ideas are constantly evolving. 

Our thoughts lead us everywhere and nowhere. There's no authorial perspective, no skewing and prompting. We eagerly take flight upon the wings of an idea so that we may, for ourselves, interpret them according to our vision of reality. Here, we meet ideas in all their rough authenticity. 

We can sum this post up by saying that ideas are imitative and mimetic. They give us what is already there, without imposing another's vision. 

The vision is ours to make. We examine ideas with consummate ease and skill, speaking, thinking, and feeling that idea as we expose its otherness. 

The otherness of an idea is our unique representation of it. The otherness of an idea is also another's unique representation of it. Thus, the otherness of an idea is every representation of it. 

Our experiences held in that idea are mediated and filtered through the ideas that came before it: the combination of which bring the idea to life in a unique, never before experienced composition. 

In reality we are fluid of character. We expunge ourselves to new ideas all the time. While we seem to possess the capacity to fully realize the ideas we're portraying, we must portray those thoughts through another idea in order to experience our own version of it. 

The genius of our species lies in our inherent variety, the newer and newer versions of ourselves we create daily. We're not locked into one idea or another, we are able to depict our humanity with unprecedented accuracy and depth according to any given idea at any given moment. 

We search for the origin of the first thought, invented or not. We seek to define rather than reflect what is already there. We exist independently of our thoughts and ideas. 

We don't literally invent anything, we simply bring it into being. We therefore achieve a sort of realistic naturalism whereby we we achieve whatever idea upon which we aim. 

We discover that human nature as it exists is a fit subject for a philosophical, Steampunky post. We gesture toward gears and visual mimicry of XVIIth century invention. We bring into play the human vision of sight by engaging in careful investigation of the inward and outward life of a thought, articulating what previously had been at best unseen. 

We analyze, dissect, strive for complete perspicuity by exploiting the resources of dramatic form and artistically rendered theatrical presentation. We take the ideas and shape them into words inventing new ideas about ideas. We impose the existence of a new idea on the world. 

It was there anyway, 

just waiting to be discovered, clarified, and exhibited.