I think that with litanies you’re supposed to pay attention to the spirit rather than the letter.
And good litanies manage to unite spirit, letter and aesthetics into an elegant whole.
Even at the level of ‘spirit’, “seek to be disillusioned” doesn’t feel right to me. It misses the point. “Learn to love” actually conveyed a fundamentally better message.
I completely disagree. “Seek to be disillusioned” seems like exactly the message I would want to convey, like “actively try to remove all your misconceptions” but shorter. “Learn to love being disillusioned” seems a bit weaker.
That’s fine, just so long as it is not presented as “a useful tool for rationalists, much like the Litanies of Tarski and Gendlin”. There’s just an element of ironic arationality to it that would make excessive repetition here cringe-worthy.
And good litanies manage to unite spirit, letter and aesthetics into an elegant whole.
Even at the level of ‘spirit’, “seek to be disillusioned” doesn’t feel right to me. It misses the point. “Learn to love” actually conveyed a fundamentally better message.
I completely disagree. “Seek to be disillusioned” seems like exactly the message I would want to convey, like “actively try to remove all your misconceptions” but shorter. “Learn to love being disillusioned” seems a bit weaker.
That’s fine, just so long as it is not presented as “a useful tool for rationalists, much like the Litanies of Tarski and Gendlin”. There’s just an element of ironic arationality to it that would make excessive repetition here cringe-worthy.