Permanence and Evanescence

Continuing yesterday's train of thought....

a hiker rounds the top of a hill and sees below him a vista, the one he had made the hike for, one of those that inspired the creation of the word "sublime."

If he says anything it is a verbal exhale, something like "ahhhhh," because words fail.

He is having a good moment and, assuming he gets home without mishaps, without running afoul of a mountain lion or such, he will call this a good day on the strength of that moment.

Of course the moment doesn't last. It is, as we've been saying, evanescent. Its significance as an intrinsic moral good owes something to that evanescence. Soon, practical concerns bound up with that safe trip home we've just postulated will take over and the sublimity will fade.

It is worth our while observing the intermixture of permanence with evanescence here. The hill itself is enduring -- it was there before our hiker approached it. It was there before there was a social convention known as "hiking." Perhaps it was there before there were humans and societies to adopt conventions. The fleeting experience owes something to a recognition of such facts and possibilities.

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