Vulnerability

[Bob]

David Whyte’s meditation on vulnerability

Vulnerability is not a weakness, a passing indisposition, or something we can arrange to do without, vulnerability is not a choice, vulnerability is the underlying, ever present and abiding undercurrent of our natural state. To run from vulnerability is to run from the essence of our nature, the attempt to be invulnerable is the vain attempt to become something we are not and most especially, to close off our understanding of the grief of others. More seriously, in refusing our vulnerability we refuse the help needed at every turn of our existence and immobilize the essential, tidal and conversational foundations of our identity.

To have a temporary, isolated sense of power over all events and circumstances, is a lovely illusionary privilege and perhaps the prime and most beautifully constructed conceit of being human and especially of being youthfully human, but it is a privilege that must be surrendered with that same youth, with ill health, with accident, with the loss of loved ones who do not share our untouchable powers; powers eventually and most emphatically given up, as we approach our last breath.

The only choice we have as we mature is how we inhabit our vulnerability, how we become larger and more courageous and more compassionate through our intimacy with disappearance, our choice is to inhabit vulnerability as generous citizens of loss, robustly and fully, or conversely, as misers and complainers, reluctant and fearful, always at the gates of existence, but never bravely and completely attempting to enter, never wanting to risk ourselves, never walking fully through the door.

soundcloud.com/brainpicker/davi … nerability

Why can we not embrace our vulnerability and that of others and make provisions to protect each other?

[Dan1 (Dan~)]

This goes well with an idea i had a while ago :
Power is an illusion, and humans are not powerful.
They are vulnerable, especially during their childhood.
Power is a lie and a distortion…

[Bob]

@Dan~

This goes well with an idea i had a while ago :
Power is an illusion, and humans are not powerful.
They are vulnerable, especially during their childhood.
Power is a lie and a distortion…

That’s right, it is a deception, just like a suit of armour makes people think they are invulnerable.

[Ichthus77 (Ichthus77 (formerly She™))]

“My power is perfected in weakness (vulnerability)”

is the synthesis

the everbuilt builder upbuilding

[Bob]

Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s book Antifragile is an exploration of the many ways in which by seeking to make a system less vulnerable, we succeed only in making it more so. The mistake, he suggests, is that we seek to make it ‘robust’ and thereby inflexible; this leaves it open to catastrophic collapse under certain, non-vanishingly rare, circumstances. His message is that we should rather seek to make it ‘antifragile’, which paradoxically includes allowing certain vulnerabilities that make it capable of withstanding large shocks.
McGilchrist, Iain . The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World (p. 1261). Perspectiva Press. Kindle Edition.