Our Excruciating Modernity

Preface

"Just as a well-filled day brings blessed sleep, so a well-employed life brings a blessed death"

- Leonardo da Vinci

The well-employed life described by da Vinci is what I am striving towards. The well-employed life is dense, dense not with the collection of shallow pleasures that should, by now, be known to be transient and intellectually insipid, but with projects, qualified as enterprises, found to be rewarding to the mind, and, above all, to the soul. What you are presently reading is merely one of my enterprises, my contribution, the abrupt yet all too stimulating ambition whose coming into existence can be attributed to four elements. The first is my search for psychological and spiritual stimulation which I have come to fnd in Art, which under a certain form, is what this text is. The second is my desire to eliminate the stagnation of life I have sporadically experienced and come to despise after discovering that it turns life dry and monochrome, and leads Man into passive inexistence, in an instant. The third is my desire to ignite reflection in all those who might come across this text. Whether the reflection is pragmatic, organised or touches upon even the most preposterous and inconsequential aspects of society is negligible as any reflection, particularly when directed towards the Self, is better than none. The fourth is my seek for exchange, may it involve ideas, concepts or opinions, so long as it is constructive and hopefully stems from the thoughts I have poured into this project. Ultimately, Man is self-determining, and this essay seeks to show him that he can decide what his existence is, will be and should be.

Regardless of my intentions, I do not wish to appear as a prophet, for my voice is but one voice, my experience a mere drop in the sea, my knowledge no greater than an atom, and my ideas a subjective confession. [1]