In the description of the origin of time from the self-alienation of eternity, also, the guiding idea is still the ancient contrast typology of the bustling inquisitiveness that forgets its own business. But here an attempt at motivation does after all show through clearly: The reposeful presence of eternity is perceived as a reservation, awakening the vaque idea of a possible greater possession, which seems graspable by the bold venture of self-appropriation (idiosis). Thus the repose of possession gave rise to motion, in which eternity 'temporalized' itself. The world arises from eternity's venturing forth into time as a result of a restless passion for the incommensurate, a passion that, as it were, produces its own objects and in its enjoyment of them goes outside itself. If this mysterious unrest in the essential self-sufficiency of the eternal is the origin of the hypostatic surplus, as which the cosmos is now conceived--and thus defined, in terms of its origin alone, as the object of an equally mysterious recollection of the truth of its origin, by which the degenerate being is awakened to itself and brought back.

Hans Blumenberg, The Legitimacy of the Modern Age

The result of these inventions is that the entire world has become communicable. The phenomenology of being is replaced by the phenomenology of communication. We see the world as visual communication suggests it to us--even if not so dramatic, not in such high contrast, not so flawless, not so colorful, and, above all, not so select. The world we perceive, both the normally perceived world and the television world, pales under the constant drive to outbid. What is more, the very aspect that had been fascinating in language now declines, namely, the possibility and necessity of distinguishing between information and utterance. Although we still see people talking on television, indeed, even viewers again play a part in the medium, be it only as ridiculous background laughter indicating that there is something to laugh about, the entire arrangement evades the controls that had been developed over thousands of years on the basis of distinguishability between utterance and information. For this reason, the yes/no coding of linguistic communication also fails. We can be positively or negatively affected by a film, we can find it good or bad, but, in the overall complex of what is perceived, the intensification is lacking that would allow a clear distinction to be drawn between acceptance and rejection. Although we know that it is communication, we do not see it. This can raise suspicions of manipulation, which cannot, however, be substantiated. We know it, we live with it. Television produces a produced form that binds all everyday means of persuasion. And the other side of the form is precisely the suspicion of manipulation.

--Niklas Luhmann, Theory of Society

Listen, there's something I must tell. I've never, never seen it so clearly. But it doesn't matter a bit if you don't understand, because each one of you is quite perfect as you are, even if you don't know it. Life is basically a gesture, but no one, no thing, is making it. There is no necessity for it to happen, and none for it to go on happening....It's a gesture of motion, of sound, of color, and just as no one is making it, it isn't happening to anyone. There is simply no problem of life; it is completely purposeless play--exuberance which is its own end....There is no reason whatever to explain it, for explanations are just another form of complexity, a new manifestation of life on top of life, of gestures gesturing. Pain and suffering are simply extreme forms of play, and there isn't anything in the whole universe to be afraid of because it doesn't happen to anyone! There isn't any substantial ego at all. The ego is a kind of flip, a knowing of knowing, a fearing of fearing. It's a curlicue, an extra jazz to experience, a sort of double-take or reverberation, a dithering of consciousness which is the same as anxiety.

Alan Watts, The Joyous Cosmology (1962)

For everything that is understood and sensed is nothing but the apparition of what is not apparent, the manifestation of the hidden, the affirmation of the negated, the comprehension of the incomprehensible...

--John Scottus Eriugena, Periphyseon