Sunday, October 29, 2006

Why we are this way

OK, so my generation is postmodern I guess. It is really Modern M.O. to label things, classifying them and saying what they mean. Seems impossible to really believe in any sort of all-encompassing abstract truth statment. After all, I could meet people with ten different belief systems, in ten different environments during one weekend excursion. Trying to fit them all under one umbrella would be both insulting and exhausting.

So is it even possible to compose a story, a linear abstraction, using the material of one's life? I am thinking no. Well, at best it would be my own little part in an absurd play. I'm wondering if the way out of this maze is to believe in a spirituality encompassing all occurrences in life, and teaching ways of moving individually within massive, bloated systems of discourse. You can't control the discourse by saying what is best because there is no best. In fact, even "better" is getting murky. You'd really have to spend your whole life within a discourse to intelligently suggest an actual change for the better. "Convincing" people is really a modern phenomenon. Doing with positive intention, and causing others to do alongside yourself, is the more effective path to change. Not that change really needs us...

3 comments:

Ryan Hofer said...

I'm glad you wrote this post.

Seems a story has a beginning, middle, and end, so I think it can be described as linear. Maybe this is the point: linear stories are not adequate. I think they become something other than a story when we de-linearize them. The statement becomes more of a piece of the mosaic, requiring relationship to everything around it. There's no real point to make; everything is important and nothing is important. Then I guess we just do our thing, thereby influencing people naturally, but we don't try to influence them or convince them.

I like the idea of subjectivity meaning the knowledge is subject to a personal mind, but I'm not jiving with a dilemma so much...there's no dilemma unless the overmind is going to punish you if you don't get it right. I mean, why isn't dilemmafying just as valid finding the subject? There's still a standard there, and again the test comes down to happiness. We still claim that human beings will be happier if they are closer to finding the subject of truth. Now I believe this is true, but since God is infinite, aren't we each just as close to him as the person next to us?

Rigamonti said...

Holy cow, that was a difficult thread to read...

Is there an underlying theme/intention for a life that cannot be explained or understood on merely a sensory level?

You mentioned that spirituality is a possible answer that we attempt to apply in order to give an overall meaning to our lives… an explanation of our lack of “wholeness.”

Now, I can’t claim wisdom enough to state universals, so I’ll get your reaction to the idea above before I assume to much.

Ryan Hofer said...

Often spirituality becomes a seeking after a wholeness, and I think this can become ugly real fast when things don't line up for us.

Though we never get there, we can still get better. Improvement is the fuel of life; our lives never stop moving because the universe never stops moving.