Boyer, A handbook of disappointed fate

the stu­pid logic of din­ner

We were not inno­cent. Our edu­ca­tion was autho­red by our senses. Our lamb­ness was writ­ten into our bodies with the vio­lence of the world as it is, yet our inter­est in unders­tan­ding the lamb’s edu­ca­tion, in the lamb’s way of kno­wing, began to take the form of the bird of prey’s pur­suit. We were at once for­med by grudge and nar­ro­wed by desire. In eve­ry­thing we wan­ted, all we acqui­red, and in how we could not want, how we could acquire nothing, we were simul­ta­neous­ly lamb and bird of prey.

Our mixed nature was not inno­cent. No mat­ter how much pre­da­tor-like acqui­si­tion of the predator’s way lear­ning acts upon a lamb-inter­ior, a lamb still appears to all who see it like a lamb. The lamb might be a dou­bly conscious lamb, but the bird of prey’s stu­pid logic of din­ner remains, for the time being, the logic of the world.