Suicide is sport and spectacle.

Augustine reports of the martyrs: “when the worship of idols was still practiced, they used to come in huge crowds to very well-attended pagan ceremonies, not with the intention of smashing the idols, but of being killed by the worshippers.”

He continues: “They flung themselves on passers-by who were armed, hoping to be slaughtered, and threatening horribly to attack them if they themselves didn’t die at their hands. Sometimes they even used force to compel judges who were passing through to have them put to death by the executioner, or at least officially flogged.”

He concludes: ““Now, however, they are playing a daily game of killing themselves from steep precipices, or in water or flames.”

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Augustine, Letter 185.

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So where is the sound?, some may demand. You talk of a key note. I hear nothing.

The sound is the note that merely reverberates within. The ancients calls this state of resonance equipollence (isostheneia) as giving equal weight to fundamental opposition where the full weight reverberates back upon the weigher. The muse Calliope made it sing-song-y. Yes and No, No and Yes, produces the harmonic dissonance of the dangerous maybe, does it not?

Recall that the asking of the fundamental question of Being by way of bracketing also essentially answered Yes to whatever Being truly is whatever that may turn out to be. How undangerously circular is that?

What then is the sound of the dangerous maybe reverberating? It is the sound of dissonance as harmony as the perfect freedom of either which way and the openness that either will do. The ancients call this sound one of tranquility (ataraxia) within and withal dissonance as the basic question of being and not being. Who can reside within and withal this dissonance as tranquility as the dangerous maybe in a single sense? Neither fear nor trembling. Simply danger bringing calm. Quietude is the key note that you cannot hear because you are not attuned. For that you must be at home in the dangerous maybe. All you hear is your stomach rumbling.