Sutra Addiction

You might not want to admit your addiction to sutra, but that’s not unusual for an addict. You have read and heard words-to-live-by since you were born. The process of addiction has been subtle and sometimes insidious. Now you’re hooked. Almost everything you say is a version of some aphorism or is based on one. As British philosopher Francis Herbert Bradley remarked in a mixed metaphor aphorism, “The hunter for aphorisms on human nature has to fish in muddy water, and he is ever condemned to find much of his own mind.” Mixed metaphor aside, the point Bradley makes is similar to one made by Elias Canetti, author of The Human Province, “The great writers of aphorism read as if they had all known each other very well.”

Although you want to be thought of as an individual, you bear in your makeup the thoughts of a culture you can’t shake. Why? Every counterculture has also permeated your being. Rejecting is often a matter of accepting.

Is there no escape? Is there no place to go mentally or physically that doesn’t already bear the stamp of the past and pose the threat of addictive aphorisms? With 100 billion predecessor humans, you might not have much hope of truly becoming that “special one,” someone without aphorisms jumping synapses.

Maybe life isn’t about “choices” in general, but about choices for or against sutra. Certainly, conscious life has that struggle against inculcated values and life lessons.

In the meantime, as you, in Bradley’s metaphor, go hunting with a fishing hook, I wish you good luck in overcoming your sutra addiction.