Emile Cioran:
"To think is to undermine----to undermine oneself. Action involves fewer risks, for it fills the intervals between things and oursleves, whereas reaction dangerously widens it.
“…So long as I give myself up to physical exercise, manual labor I am happy, fulfilled; once I stop, I am seized by dizziness and I can think of nothing but giving up for good.”
Now, this is not to be construed literally, of course; after all, in any given situation, precipitous action can engender enormous risks…while reflection can minimize them.
Cioran’s point revolves more around one’s alleged capacity to know [cognitively, philosophically] when one’s behavior is, in fact, Most Rational or Most Ethical. Here, respecting very big chunks of human interactions, we cannot know for certain which behavior is more or less reasonable. And the more we reflect on it the more uncertain we become. Sooner or later we have to make our leap and do this rather than that. Knowing in an essentially absurd and meaningless world [one without God and Divine Justice] any choice is interchangable with any other choice.
Thus, for example, we can introspect for days and days on whether it is moral or immoral to abort a human fetes. But we can never know for certain. Yet we must choose and so the choice is made. And this precipitates consequences and reactions to them. Usually by people, ironically, who live in an either/or world of Right and Wrong.
The world of illusions, in other words.
Randall Patrick