Some aphorisms
Let me be brief.
Aphorisms require authors.
Anonymity makes aphorisms into proverbs.
Authorship provides unstable authority.
Anonymity provides durable authority.
Synonymity debases the aphoristic coinage.
Synonymity is the cornerstone of copia.
New aphorisms rely on copia.
Great poetry is a superabundance of meaning expressed as laconically as possible.
The aphorism is a poetic form.
Aphorisms don’t have to be true.
Aphorisms have to be able to appear true.
To appear true is to appear to have one immutable meaning.
Poetry-seeing eyes look for plural meaning.
Aphorism-seeing eyes look for one meaning.
Since Nietzsche, an aphorism has to announce itself as such.
Since Wilde, aphorisms struggle to be funny.
Since Wallace Stevens, aphorisms are likely to appear in dialogic sequence.
The aphorism is a form.
Form is freeing.
Total freedom is bridling.
Perfect freedom is not total freedom.
Perfect freedom is contrary to conditions of slavery, not to physical constraint.
Enslavement is subjection to the will of another human.
Perfect freedom resides in the mind.
Mental freedom is made lucid by physical constraint.
Deprivation illuminates benefit elsewhere.
It is virtuous to exercise freedom of the mind.
Virtuosity is virtuous.
Incertitude is not immoral.
Action based on incertitude is likely to be immoral.
Action based on incertitude leads to self-enslavement.
To self-enslave is to flee responsibility.
Dante’s Vestibule of Hell is the home of the self-enslaved.
Hell is self-enslavement.
It is easy to believe in a Hell of volition.
The concept of a Hell of volition is a theodicy.
Theodicy is shot with desperation.
Theodicy must yield to mystery.
Mystery fills in the gaps.
Accepting mystery inheres in sanity.
Insanity is wonder without expression.
Sane expression requires form.
Sanity benefits from momentary insanity.
Order benefits from momentary chaos.
Great art catalyses wonder with form.
Information influx kills wonder.
Late modernity is a state of information influx.
Revolution kills.
The information revolution kills wonder.
Late modernity kills great art.
Great art is not dead, but it is dying.
In the internet age, aphorisms hold no salience.
These are not aphorisms because I am not an Author.