820
Like SLOSS, the methodologies selected to determine the most efficacious resolution to human violence against Others have traditionally connoted and conjured
up increments of compromise; and the ethical rudiments of a baseline that can help
us fathom the notion of gradations and degree, what we know, or don’t know, and in
what stages (molts, morphs, etc.) of growth, or amplitude, relativity, and frequency,
an ecological optimum may be obtained. All ethics are condemned to choices, or
deferrals, to the rational or irrational, dominant or recessive.
94.3 Giacometti’s Unsolved Solitaires
In one gravely suggestive guise, such deliberations come to a sobering halt in the
life and times of Alberto Giacometti and his obsessions with life forms of solitude,
particularly in the period beginning in 1947, when Giacometti was in exile from the
Nazis in Switzerland and already moving toward that attenuated vision that would
see him create the set design, in 1953, for his friend Samuel Beckett’s “Waiting for
Godot”—a lone, tortured tree of raw plaster. The synthetic biology of being alone
was sculpturally writ as a looming reminder that the history, stature, and attitude of
the philosopher in each of us come down to a troubled thinker (Fig. 94.2). By necessity, our solutions must arise in intermediary steps, every day, by fronting, and
believing in that definitive bias in favor of positive change. The less the probability
of this communion of choices and consent, the more solitary we become. A species
losing moral, intelligent, sustainable points of reference among its kind, until—ultimately isolated—it has nowhere to move or turn, no companionship or even company to call upon. Giacometti’s sculptures represent that ultimate paralysis. Stultified
and frozen in time, mid-step. Such bronze is doomed to the sterility of that species,
and her individuals, who are clearly trapped. Even ticks know to stay away.
94 The Problem of Interdependency
Like SLOSS, the methodologies selected to determine the most efficacious resolution to human violence against Others have traditionally connoted and conjured
up increments of compromise; and the ethical rudiments of a baseline that can help
us fathom the notion of gradations and degree, what we know, or don’t know, and in
what stages (molts, morphs, etc.) of growth, or amplitude, relativity, and frequency,
an ecological optimum may be obtained. All ethics are condemned to choices, or
deferrals, to the rational or irrational, dominant or recessive.
94.3 Giacometti’s Unsolved Solitaires
In one gravely suggestive guise, such deliberations come to a sobering halt in the
life and times of Alberto Giacometti and his obsessions with life forms of solitude,
particularly in the period beginning in 1947, when Giacometti was in exile from the
Nazis in Switzerland and already moving toward that attenuated vision that would
see him create the set design, in 1953, for his friend Samuel Beckett’s “Waiting for
Godot”—a lone, tortured tree of raw plaster. The synthetic biology of being alone
was sculpturally writ as a looming reminder that the history, stature, and attitude of
the philosopher in each of us come down to a troubled thinker (Fig. 94.2). By necessity, our solutions must arise in intermediary steps, every day, by fronting, and
believing in that definitive bias in favor of positive change. The less the probability
of this communion of choices and consent, the more solitary we become. A species
losing moral, intelligent, sustainable points of reference among its kind, until—ultimately isolated—it has nowhere to move or turn, no companionship or even company to call upon. Giacometti’s sculptures represent that ultimate paralysis. Stultified
and frozen in time, mid-step. Such bronze is doomed to the sterility of that species,
and her individuals, who are clearly trapped. Even ticks know to stay away.
94 The Problem of Interdependency