Compare the skilled butcher, who, with no wasted movements, cuts his meat just where the joints are, and the flashy butcher, whose flourishes make for less skilful and efficient cutting but send a more impressive signal.
I agree that the flashy butcher could became engaged in his cutting and lose consciousness of the crowd and his impression on it without decreasing his signalling behaviour. If he did so, he might become more sincere, but his signalling behaviour would remain. For signaling is not a conscious addition to his art, which might strip away: skill at cutting and skill at signalling are woven confusedly together in it.
What I had in mind, though, was engagement, not in the sense of losing consciousness in this way, but in the sense of giving oneself over the activity and its rhythms—as devotion or submission. I assume that someone who gives himself over to an activity, like the skilled butcher, is to the extent that he does so going to bring his attention and action in line with the “joints” naturally present in that activity and set aside everything else as waste, including his signalling behaviour.
Perhaps “ecstasy” and “engagement” were the wrong words for this giving over. The idea, anyway, is that surrender to what is natural or given in an activity is likely to result in a state of mind that is more aware of those divisions and less engaged in signalling.
When I make love, I do not simply become too engaged to bother with conscious signalling. I am also, to the extent that I give myself over to the activity, -- to my own most animalistic urges and sensations, and to the movements of my partner, stripped of my unconscious signalling behaviour and enfolded or remade by the activity itself. In some measure, I step out of that behaviour and into the activity.
Compare the skilled butcher, who, with no wasted movements, cuts his meat just where the joints are, and the flashy butcher, whose flourishes make for less skilful and efficient cutting but send a more impressive signal.
I agree that the flashy butcher could became engaged in his cutting and lose consciousness of the crowd and his impression on it without decreasing his signalling behaviour. If he did so, he might become more sincere, but his signalling behaviour would remain. For signaling is not a conscious addition to his art, which might strip away: skill at cutting and skill at signalling are woven confusedly together in it.
What I had in mind, though, was engagement, not in the sense of losing consciousness in this way, but in the sense of giving oneself over the activity and its rhythms—as devotion or submission. I assume that someone who gives himself over to an activity, like the skilled butcher, is to the extent that he does so going to bring his attention and action in line with the “joints” naturally present in that activity and set aside everything else as waste, including his signalling behaviour.
Perhaps “ecstasy” and “engagement” were the wrong words for this giving over. The idea, anyway, is that surrender to what is natural or given in an activity is likely to result in a state of mind that is more aware of those divisions and less engaged in signalling.
When I make love, I do not simply become too engaged to bother with conscious signalling. I am also, to the extent that I give myself over to the activity, -- to my own most animalistic urges and sensations, and to the movements of my partner, stripped of my unconscious signalling behaviour and enfolded or remade by the activity itself. In some measure, I step out of that behaviour and into the activity.