Auguste Dupin once traced the course of his companion’s thoughts by a series of inductions that attached to the dumbshow of his companion’s expressions - the microworld of steps, frowns, glances, and furrows that, in the nineteenth century, was being explored with absurd confidence by German physiognomists -- until, interrupting that silent monologue, he made some magically relevant comment. The nineteenth century motif: detective as magician, consciousness as a rather easily demystified magic trick - we love it, we love it! The twentieth century, Freud’s, and even ours, with its faith in the murky business of the neural net, has only a broken faith in the coherence and topical unity of the consciousness – after all, if that unity is a fiction, what are we to say of the unity of the consciousness of the scientists themselves? But the unity is, at best, a horizon, a kind of cognitive optimism. Dupin’s observant tactic is worth applying even to oneself, occasionally. Although hark at
“I’m so bored. I hate my life.” - Britney Spears
Das Langweilige ist interessant geworden, weil das Interessante angefangen hat langweilig zu werden. – Thomas Mann
"Never for money/always for love" - The Talking Heads