End of the week: A small anecdote
Outside Gilbert Jeune in central Paris
Earlier this week I was confronted with the sort of thing one can only imagine continues to take place in Paris. An aged man, dressed in autumn colours and slightly suspicious looking approached me with the instinctive desire to talk philosophy.
Blocking the pathway, he directly asked the question, “What do you think Marx meant by the proletariat?”
Studying Marx in depth during the course of my degree, I could proudly state that the proletariat was “the class of industrial workers who lack their own means of production and hence sell their labor to live.”
The old man, whose French accent was so formal I felt I had returned to the days of Voltaire, had an unbearable desire to find out everything about my life. We went on to talk about Foucault and the critique that his views are in fact rather sadistic. Reverting back to Marx we acknowledging the fact he was – like all political thinkers – a product of his time. He therefore ignored the possibility of technological advances which have since improved the lot of the proletariat.
Ironically I was on my way to Gilbert Jeune, a well-known French bookshop, when the man approached me. I wanted to buy a book by Francois Villon. He said, why buy books when "all you’ll end up doing is thinking like everyone else."
“Go and buy the works of Heraclitus, one of the classical thinkers,” he said. “You’ll find it in paperback form on the second floor. All you need to know is inside”
It was almost like messengers from heaven had been sent to inform me of some spiritual secret. Instead I rationally choose to recognised that this is part of the everyday happenings in the French capital city. I followed the mystical trail to the second floor of Gilbert Jeune and bought the book.
The first phrase read as follows. "All things flow, everything runs, as the waters of a river, which seem to be the same but in reality are never the same, as they are in a state of continuous flow."
In other words, we only exist because we are in a continuous process of passing from one passage to another. If this passage ceases to exist, then reality is annulled.
Suddenly, I took a look at my hectic lifestyle and realize the entirety of its purpose. If I stop, I will cede to exist.
Heraclitus has a point and this little old man, whose name I never asked for, is proof that Paris is still a city of rich personalities and philosophical minds
Infognito
Screen Trek
QUOTE ME NO QUOTES!
I often am aware that we transmit thoughts to each other, whether we mean to or not!
But, maybe it was just your expression?
I'd love to see that bookshop!
cheers
fog