No more Mr Nice Stimbo?

[Angrboda]

The thoughts in my head aren't harmonizing, so all I have are scattered impressions. I'll try not to speak too much of love, in line with Wittgenstein's maxim that of which we cannot speak, thereof we must remain silent. I have no experience of love, having been celibate most of my life. However, I had a love that reminded me of yours, after which I decided that I needn't love again, because I'd already had 'it' and didn't need to return to the well. I can't put it into words, but with the hindsight of 20 years, I think my thoughts at the time were foolishness.

In some ways, this reminds me of Sartre's prototypical anti-hero, who one day seized his absolute freedom and became a badass biker, a turn 180 degrees from his prior self. If anything, it was the emptiness of such ideas which turned me from Sartre: nobody can break completely from who they are and create themselves 'ex nihilo' — no matter how hard we try, we always end up being who we are; all our paths come to resemble circles. If anything, my erratic wanderings into and out of the science of the mind confirm this. (On this I could spend an eternity, pro and con, so I'll try not to linger, other than to note that novelty and change are, to my view, minor players in our overall psychological drives.)

I'm reminded of a Star Trek Next Generation episode in which the ever lamentable lieutenant Barcley is transformed by some sort of alien signal or something, and for a time is transformed into a super genius, who interfaces directly with the ship's main computers and uses the combined resources of the ship to travel unbelievable distances through subspace, using indecipherable technology, in order to bring the crew of the Enterprise face to face with super intelligent "explorers" on the other side of the universe — explorers who infect beings with their "probe" in order to cause them to come to the explorer, rather than the explorer going to them. At the end of the episode, Barcley is returned to normal, and he and several of the crew are sitting in the lounge, and Barcley is somewhat shell shocked, and Geordi says to him something to the effect that it's as important how we respond after having touched greatness and come back as what we did in touching greatness. Like Nietzsche's abyss, perhaps it's what you do after gazing into the abyss that makes you who you are. To that I would simply suggest that you try to walk away as whole as possible, and leave as little of you with the abyss as you can.