Survival of the Littest

No, I don't apologize for the title, first, because the subject is Light, and second, because it's a perfectly acceptable word in standard poor English: https://www.urbandictionary.copoor m/define.php?term=littest

It popped into my head upon reading the following passage about how the metaphysically lit philosopher

will not fit naively into the functioning of the workaday routine; he as well will not be "fit" for this world; he as well will look at things differently from those who primarily are dominated by the pursuit of practical purposes. 

Welcome to my world, in which every day is nonlabor day -- which is not to say that no work is required. 

Rather, Pieper devoted a whole book to that subject (Leisure), which goes to the crucial distinction between the liberal and servile arts. Around here we not only focus on the former, but are always abiding in the nonlocal source of this leisure -- which is to say, freedom, slack, and play.

Play. That triggers memories of Letter I of Meditations on the Tarot, which I will quote in brief so as to not fall into a very large rabbit hole. In fact, I'll just extract a passage from a couple thousand posts ago: 

Why is the magician the would-be spiritual knowa's archetype? Because he is the symbol of what we must become if we are to have a fruitful journey through the rest of this symbolically resonant world. We must become this magician. And what does this magician represent?

Well, among other things, he embodies the principle of Slack, in that we must leave below the field of profane time, and become attuned to a more subtle music that has its own rhythms and harmelodies. Here is how UF formulates it:

Learn at first concentration without effort; transform work into play; make every yoke that you have accepted easy and every burden that you carry light!

The first of these prescriptions has to do with what we call the principle of Higher Non-doodling, which in turn is similar to the wu wei of Taoism. 

I suppose when I first started blogging 17 years ago, it was with some sort of purpose or goal in mind. That phase must have lasted for at least a week, before it was necessary to formally surrender:

every so often attempts have been made to bridge the incompatibility between philosophy and the world of production. The results have always been the same: the destruction of philosophy... (Pieper).

And of people. Without a doubt, the most useful philosophy of all time is Marxism, since it explicitly seeks to change the world before understanding it. Although it is intellectually dead, its spirit is nevertheless very much alive among the progressive zombies of the left. You saw Brandon Thursday night. The only thing missing was the Totenkopf -- the Death's Head -- of the SS.

I want to say that philosophy renders a useless man perfectly useless, but it's not the only way to become pointless. According to Pieper, "Transcending the world of production occurs not only through philosophy" but music, poetry, and "the fine arts as such," not to mention religious practice.

Useful philosophers exist because they are counterfeits of the real thing:

The Sophist looks exactly like a philosopher. He speaks exactly like a philosopher. In fact, it could be said that he resembles a true philosopher much more than the philosopher resembles himself.

Ho! I like that one. I think I'll stop now, before this play turns into labor, but not before tossing in a few aphorisms that touch on how to make ourselves a bit more useless:

The book does not educate one who reads it to become educated.

A genuine reader is someone who reads for pleasure the books that everyone else only studies.

One does not convince by preaching but rather by explaining without really caring whether or not the listener is convinced.

I do not speak of God in order to convert anyone but because it is the only subject worth speaking of.