Human Facts

Our search for the human takes us too far, too “deep,” we seek it in the clouds or the mysteries, whereas it is waiting for us, besieging us on all sides. We will not find it in myths-although human facts carry with them a long and magnificent procession of legends, tales and songs, poems and dances. All we need to do is simply open our eyes, to leave the dark world of metaphysics behind and the false depths of the 'inner life' behind, and we will discover the immense human wealth that the humblest facts of everyday life contain. “The familiar is not necessarily the known,” said Hegel. Let us go farther and say that it is in the most familiar things that the unknown---not the mysterious---is at its richets, and this rich content of life is still beyond our empty, darkling consciousness, inhabited as it is by imposters and gorged with the forms of Pure Reason, and myths and their illusory poetry.
Henri Lefebvre. Critique of Everyday Life (1947, tr. 1991)