| Chapter 1: | The Orbit of the Eye |
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Chapter One
The Orbit of the Eye
All our heart’s courage is the echoing response to the first call of Being which gathers our thinking into the play of the world.
—Martin Heidegger, The Thinker as Poet1
The crowd increases and we are alone. Days overflow with words and images, and we are empty. Human genius, a proper object for pride and admiration, presents devices one after another which bring us words and pictures through means ever faster, clearer, and more constantly available. They who sell these things promise us what we surely seek: connection, meaning, distraction, and joy. Some of these we receive. One never need be “out of touch” (if one has money) or suffer, in the remotest desert, from lack of “entertainment.”
Why, then, in such a world, are the eyes of passersby so dull or cast down? Why does the world seem broken? Why does my neighbor cry at night? (I can hear her through the walls).