I'm not a Husserlian phenomenologist.  I'm not even sure what a Husserlian phenomenologist is.  But fundamentally, what I take to be the great lesson, the great hope of phenomenology is the human capacity to be always astonished.  In other words, it is not up to the world to astonish us; we are not mere passive spectators waiting for this to happen.  It is up to us.  Anything and everything can astonish us, if we look at it carefully enough.  I would even dare to say this is the spiritual hope of phenomenology. 

This is no moral doctrine - it is not commanding that we "should" be astonished - or that we should pretend to be astonished, for some imagined overseer.  Nor is it saying that that which astonishes us is necessarily "good".

Anyone can walk around with an attitude that says, "I've seen it all.  I was here first.  I'm not impressed.  Nothing surprises me."  Such people may feel that they are part of an elect - the experts, the sophisticated.  In fact, the opposite is true.  They are to be pitied.  They are prisoners of categories, who can only lump the present experience in with past experiences - which are, themselves, more imagined than remembered, and often only dimly imagined.

To be astonished is to have one's preconceptions destroyed.  It is, in a sense, to be destroyed by truth.

I'm even willing, as an experiment, to use the word "astonish" here with its itinerant connotations and associations - for instance, Luke 4:32: "They were astonished at his doctrine."  "Astonish" is from the Latin extonare: literally, "to thunder out".  To be astonished, stunned, astounded, astoned is to be thunderstruck - especially, thunderstruck by authority.  Look at anything - look at this eyelash, under the microscope, and you will be astonished by the authority of the eyelash.  Every fact, every truth, every facet of reality can astonish - and there is no higher authority than reality itself.

Nietzsche: "Three metamorphoses of the spirit have I designated to you: how the spirit became a camel, the camel a lion, and the lion at last a child." To be astonished is to be rendered a child. "Verily I say unto you, unless ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven."

Art can astonish.  Punk is a way of astonishing people, of rendering them into children.  Darby Crash said, "Those who can be controlled should be controlled."  That is truly an astonishing doctrine.  I'm not sure if it's true - but the astonishing is like that: you're not sure if it's true.  The truth of the truly astonishing is bracketed.

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