Nick Routledge@nick_routledge
Reply to @DewberryFan

@FMoore67 @cognazor What a refreshingly 'gripless' response, Frank. It seems to me your radical openness in itself already attests to an ontological posture recognizing your being as not self-originating but a contingency of possibility. Illich: "Let us learn always to receive further surprises."

Another quality of the flesh is that it holds and names the possibility of surprise. Illich all his life said that he hoped for surprises. Already, in his first book, he writes, “Our hope of salvation lies in our being surprised by the Other. Let us learn always to receive further surprises. I decided long ago to hope for surprises until the final act of my life—that is to say, in death itself.” This might at first seem like nothing more than inspirational boilerplate—of course, we all love surprises—but not if one seriously asks, what are the conditions under which surprise occurs? The first and most obvious one is that we cannot be surprised by what we expect. Expectation, however, virtually defines modern existence, and all existence to the extent that people at all times have navigated according to what experience has taught us to expect. Expectation shapes our perceptual habits. Surprise is possible only when expectation loosens its grip.
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Another quality of the flesh is that it holds and names the possibility of surprise. Illich all his life said that he hoped for surprises. Already, in his first book, he writes, “Our hope of salvation lies in our being surprised by the Other. Let us learn always to receive further surprises. I decided long ago to hope for surprises until the final act of my life—that is to say, in death itself.” This might at first seem like nothing more than inspirational boilerplate—of course, we all love surprises—but not if one seriously asks, what are the conditions under which surprise occurs? The first and most obvious one is that we cannot be surprised by what we expect. Expectation, however, virtually defines modern existence, and all existence to the extent that people at all times have navigated according to what experience has taught us to expect. Expectation shapes our perceptual habits. Surprise is possible only when expectation loosens its grip.