Presto Esto

🪐 I used to have days like Donald Wollheim. He thought he was living in the "wrong future." So did José Ortega y Gasset.

🧠 The Lament: "¡No es esto, no es esto!" This phrase—"This is not it, this is not it!"—became Ortega's anguished refrain during the early years of the Second Spanish Republic (1931–1939). Though he had initially supported the Republic, hoping it would modernize and revitalize Spain, he quickly grew disillusioned with its direction. The phrase expressed his despair that the Republic was failing to embody the rational, liberal, and reformist ideals he had envisioned.

📚 Context from His Works

In España invertebrada (1921), Ortega diagnosed Spain’s decline as a result of its lack of a cohesive national project and leadership—a country without a "backbone."

In La rebelión de las masas (1930), he warned of the rise of the "mass man" who rejects excellence and authority, leading to cultural and political decay.

💬 Philosophical Weight: Ortega’s lament wasn’t just political—it was existential. He believed Spain’s failure to rise to its historical moment reflected a deeper crisis of reason, culture, and identity. His famous line “I am I and my circumstance” underscores his belief that individuals must engage with their historical and social context to shape meaningful lives. When Spain failed to do so, Ortega’s cry—"¡No es esto!"—was both a diagnosis and a plea.

🧠 Vital Reason (Razón Vital) is José Ortega y Gasset’s signature philosophical concept—a bold attempt to reconcile the cold abstraction of rationalism with the dynamic, lived reality of human existence.

🧩 What It Means

Ortega argued that life itself is the fundamental reality, and reason must operate within life—not above or outside it. So instead of pure reason (like Descartes or Kant) or irrational vitalism (like Nietzsche), Ortega proposed:

Vital Reason = Reason from the point of view of life.

This means:

Reason is not detached logic; it’s embedded in the flow of human experience.

Life is not chaos or instinct alone; it’s structured by reason.

We must understand human beings as "I am I and my circumstance"—a unity of self and context.

🔍 Why It Matters:

Ortega’s vital reason was a response to:

Rationalism’s limits: It ignored the richness of lived experience.

Vitalism’s excesses: It dismissed reason as sterile or oppressive.

Modern crisis: Ortega saw Europe (and especially Spain) as suffering from a disconnect between intellectual ideals and real life.

📚 In Practice: Vital reason shaped Ortega’s views on:

History: We must interpret events through the lens of lived human experience.

Politics: Institutions must reflect the organic needs of society, not abstract ideologies.

Culture: True understanding comes from engaging with life, not escaping into theory.

The concept of "outlook" resonates strongly with Ortega’s “vital reason.” My grappling with how creationists were able to resist a scientific education intersected with how individuals and societies interpret and act within history, and both rejected purely abstract or mechanistic views of human life.

🔭 "Outlook"

Cultural anthropologists defined outlook as the deep-seated framework through which people perceive the world and make decisions. It’s not just ideology—it’s the mental lens shaped by culture, experience, and historical context. Claude Lévi-Strauss, Mircea Eliade, Carlos Castaneda and much much worse said:

“Talk comes from ideology but action comes from outlook.”

This means:

Ideology is what people say they believe.

Outlook is what actually drives behavior—often unconsciously.

Societies rise or fall based on whether their outlook aligns with reality and fosters effective institutions.

🔗 Connection to Ortega’s Vital Reason

Ortega’s razón vital insists that reason must be grounded in life—our circumstances, history, and lived experience. Outlook similarly emphasizes that real understanding and action emerge from how people experience and interpret their world, not just from abstract theories.

So these thinkers:

Prioritize historical consciousness.

See culture and values as central to societal health.

Warn against detachment from reality—whether through ideology or pure rationalism.

My assertion that “outlook” is more important than cerebration reflects my belief that the way people perceive and interpret the world—shaped by deep biological systems—is more influential than mere intellectual reasoning. I argue that outlook stems from neurological and endocrinological systems, meaning it's rooted in the brain's structure and hormonal influences, not just conscious thought.

So how can such a biologically grounded outlook be changed? Here are several pathways, each tapping into different dimensions of human experience:

🧠 Biological and Neurological Interventions:

Neuroplasticity: The brain’s ability to rewire itself through experience means outlook can shift over time with consistent new inputs.

Mindfulness and meditation: These practices have been shown to alter brain structure and function, especially in areas related to emotion regulation and perspective.

Diet and exercise: Physical health influences hormonal balance and brain chemistry, which in turn affect mood and outlook.

🧬 Endocrinological Influences:

Stress management: Chronic stress alters cortisol levels, which can skew outlook toward fear or pessimism. Reducing stress can rebalance this.

Sleep hygiene: Sleep affects hormonal cycles and emotional regulation. Better sleep can lead to a more stable and optimistic outlook.

Medical interventions: In some cases, hormonal imbalances (e.g., thyroid, adrenal) may require medical treatment to restore a healthier outlook.

I could go on with this New-Agey prescription...it suggests that changing outlook isn’t just about thinking differently—it’s about living differently. It’s a holistic transformation, involving body, mind, and environment.

But after 50 years of this self-centered care, nothing. It's a recipe for dropouts limited to thrilling their feely bits.

I propose to revive a paradoxical archetype: the cantankerous oracle, the grumpy sage, the digital elder whose irritation is a form of insight.

These “old geezers,” with their cane-shaking and Facebook rants, might seem like relics of a bygone age—but perhaps they’re actually noetic lightning rods, channeling the static of a culture in disarray. Their discontent isn’t just personal; it’s prophetic. They’re not merely annoyed—they’re attuned, and their grumbling becomes a kind of ritual protest, a cracked bell tolling for a world that’s forgotten its own myths.

I could imagine them as the Order of the Thorned Staff—keepers of the Fractured Memory, who mutter in glyphs and shake their carved distaffs at the young initiates who scroll too quickly through the sacred archives. Their ire is not mere bitterness, but a ceremonial friction, a necessary resistance that sharpens the edge of generational transmission.

Their noetic perception is not calm because the truths they carry are unsettled and unsettling. They remember what the world has chosen to forget. They are the custodians of the unspoken, and their anger is a signal: something vital has been lost.