prelude 3

Defenceless i spose. I try n imagine each thing.. to re-enliven history, culture, for myself. By looking at it from obtuse angles.
The real approach to culture is to discover each thing as it is, to comprehend it on its own terms...
There is something in Burke after all; the theory that each generation has added something, tolerated something, and so that which remains even in terms of prevalent culture, low and high, is something generally accepted and tolerated. Otherwise people would not tolerate it, not slavery or our society as it is. Therefore the masses must accept it. Only expressed in general quiet misery and desperation, of the ordinary type.
Over the centuries a kind of consensus has been built up, of language of culture even of morals. And in the final analysis even the worst injustices and cruelties are merely human products, like everything is a human product, even political and economic systems. In a world of human products and of consensus, i, a human, ought to feel comfortable, but in fact i feel dreadfully uncomfortable. I am bored and disgusted by culture and be received wisdom, hence my attempts to enliven it by approaching it from unusual angles. Misguided, maybe, but really only a way to amuse myself. What i worry about is that thus i am deceiving myself, not acting in accord with my whole, true nature, which is the only conclusion i've been able to reach in terms of conduct. Accords with "democracy", everything the result of a consensus. What they used to call "functionalism". But if consistently followed will not lead one to conservatism. Because consensus is inclusive of change.