the timboucher experience

Somebody left a nice little comment on my latest Ken Wilber post. I had written something which included: “The answers are like flowers. They come and go, and you can even put them in a vase and enjoy them inside your house for a few days. But they eventually wither.” And then I went into a thing about plastic flowers.

And the person left a comment saying that Hegel says much the same thing in his Phenomenology of the Spirit:

“The bud disapears as the blossom bursts forth, and one could say that the former is refuted by the latter. In the same way, the fruit declares the blossom to be a false existence of the plant. These forms do not only differ, they also displace each other because they are incompatible. Their fluid nature, however, makes them, at the same time, elements of an organic unity in which they not only do not conlict, but in which one is as necessary as the other; and it is only this equal necessity that constitutes the life of the whole.”

Thanks for the tip, Jonathan!

• The Baltimore Floral Machine
• BIG Elk - “Breathing Room” [Lyrics]
• The Hundred Flowers Campaign
• Madeleine L’Engle on Facts & Truth
• The Phaleonopsis Orchid