tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-33121797822308806802024-02-20T09:08:41.112-06:00our human complexityLiving the Life of Being Human: Or- The Mash Up of Infinity with Finitude.Unknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger38125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3312179782230880680.post-89949519805584337852012-11-19T11:47:00.001-06:002012-11-19T11:47:48.908-06:00We're moving!<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I started this blog a few years ago as a way to start getting my thinking--which is neither theological or scientific per se, but relies on both-- into the public sphere and see if it was making any sense to others and not just myself. In that process I came across Adam Frank who was at the time writing about a better conversation to be had by people involved through religion and science; this is how I eventually got involved with 13.7 Cosmos and Culture, a blog hosted by NPR.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">The last three years have been a time of rich development for me as I focused my energies more on working with 13.7 (mostly with Stuart Kauffman) than on this blog. All the while though, the impetus for my thinking and writing through this time has been a vision of human life that's not only larger, but I is even more real than our visions currently in use- whether they originate in religion or science.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">For instance, we could ask ourselves, "is human life superfluous on this planet?" How would <i>you </i>answer? </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In pointing to my own answer, I would ask, "does the name "consumer" and our act of showing off our consuming to each other, best describe our sense of being human?" </span><span style="font-family: 'Helvetica Neue', Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">If so, I would point out that Grizzly bears and Peacocks already exist and ably fulfill those roles; so yes, human life would be considered superfluous.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But I <i>think</i> and <i>believe</i> Human life is about something else in this universe, and has the capacity for not being superfluous. And I'm going to be writing about this under a new title which not only names a blog but could very well name a bar that gives place to the ideas we'll be developing together on that blog space. Here's the link:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">http://theaweandawry.blogspot.com/</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Some of you I know offline while others of you I only know online. In either case, your conversations with me have influenced me in ways you may not know. I hope you'll check out "the awe & awry" and see if its a place for you to come and help us, as we develop a larger vision of ourselves together.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">All my best</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Mike</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Helvetica Neue, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> </span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3312179782230880680.post-26765268358047735072012-07-25T09:13:00.002-05:002012-07-25T15:19:07.747-05:00What Is Real?<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">What is real? Off the bat we'd say trees are real. What about unicorns? Also easy, of course not. Okay, let's try beauty- is beauty real? I venture that almost all of us, apart from some who've entrenched themselves in some obscure philosophical deconstruction, would say "of course!" and then point to something they consider beautiful like a matured and majestic oak. (Or if by chance a Chevy van from the seventies drove by, they might point to a scene of a unicorn air brushed into a mural along its side ...please, gag me with a spoon!) </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">But wait; this person didn't point to beauty, they pointed to a tree. It's the tree that can be touched and sniffed- not the beauty. If beauty were truly real, shouldn't we be able to</span><span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"> dissect a beautiful tree and end up with a pile of cellulose and a pile of beautiful?</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">And when I think about it, beauty exists more like the unicorn does than in the way a tree does. And if unicorns aren't real how can....</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">I don't know about you, but I've encountered beauty in ways that are so profound, it felt more real to me than I did to myself...what should I make of this experience? What have you made with your own encounter with beauty?</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Here's the thing. In our time, we've come to count as real, only the things that exist in space in the way furniture does in a living room; things that can't be "furniture" then, can't be real. In science culture, adherents to this view call them selves "materialists" so when it comes to our experience of the mind for instance, because the brain is furniture but the mind isn't, the brain is really real and the mind experience is made out to be simply illusory, and any thought other wise is met with a pat on the head for not being "in the know."</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Adam Frank, an astrophysicist and a favorite thinker of mine, notes this about the nature of the real: "reality's there; you push on it, and it pushes back."</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">In other words, you can sit on a couch, and because it pushes back you don't free fall to the floor (which too pushes back). And though comfortably reclined on your couch you could put your feet on the matching ottoman, you couldn't put them on a pile of beauty-- no matter how solidly beautiful you consider your furniture and living room to be.</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">And yet, when I encounter beauty I encounter something that can push back even though I can't encounter it like I can furniture, and even though Newton's laws about push-back can't be applied. Again; what do we make of this quandary, that something which can't exist like furniture can still be real-- even though its existence is a lot like that of a unicorn?</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">I think the answer begins with understanding this: All things that exist are real, but not all things that are real exist.</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">What do I mean. We commonly use the words 'exist' and 'real' interchangeably. But the word existence is specific about its description of reality: it's gotta stand out-- like a pile does. What makes a pile of dirt, <i>exist</i> from its surrounding dirt, is that it <i>stands out from</i> the ground. This is basic existence: something pile like.</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">In this sense of understanding, does beauty exist? No! If it did, I should be able to see a pile of it over there. Is beauty real? Yes! It has the ability to push back on us. Its push-back though, acts in ways that are entirely different from existing things like couches, or from non-existing things like unicorns.</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">So then, what if beauty was as real in this universe as any california redwood, even though redwoods exist but beauty does not? What could we make of this understanding?</span></span><br />
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And yours.<br /></p><p>What surprises me is how big the idea of <em>intellectual</em> actually is- it carries a lot more than our typical use which usually only signals tones of being erudite, elitist, or just plain stuck up—both in attitude and altitude. To be intellectual, in reality, simply means that we pretty much carry our sense of being in language. And once we are talking about language, we are implicitly talking about meaning. And communicating; so to be an intellectual organism means that the realm of our existence is language, meaning, and the expressing and receiving of meaningful information—to ourselves and each other; in contrast to fish for instance, which has as a primary realm of existence, water. Or bears, which crap in the woods because it doesn't/can't dawn on them to wonder if someone's going to talk about 'em. (If bears only knew what <em>we</em> were saying about them…would they make bathrooms?)<br /></p><p>You could say that intellectual life is a life lived in meaning. The problem with that short statement though, is that our sense of meaning isn't very intelligible. Oh- we know when we experience something as <em>meaning-full, </em>as well as when something is meaningless. In a like manner, we also know when we experience gravity, and when we don't. And I would offer that where meaning and gravity are most alike, is in the way they both exist like "fields", are irreducible to anything else, and in the way we don't understand how they come about in the first place. More, without gravity, mass makes no sense and likewise, without meaning, information makes no sense. However, where gravity and meaning differ--in terms of most consequence to us--is how our understanding of Gravity is more intelligible than our understanding of Meaning.<br /></p><p>Riddle: What has force but doesn't have mass or acceleration? Meaning.<br /></p><p>For human being at least, (I can't speak for bacteria) meaning has real causative affect; when we mean to do something is to equally say we intend to do something. Or the meaning on the look of your face may incite me to action; you show distress and I move to help out: an effect is caused without Newton's logic there to describe and predict that effect.<br /></p><p>We in our beautiful ways of science understand nature in ways we don't understand meaning. Yet without Meaning scientists can't exist, and neither can engineers. And without civil engineers, bathrooms can't exist. There's something more profound to the realm of meaning than Hallmark cards can reveal. To understand intellectual integrity, or what it is to be fully human, we have to have an intelligible sense of Meaning that has an existence in the way gravity does.<br /></p><p><br /> </p><p><br /> </p><p><br /> </p></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3312179782230880680.post-72459219911970614502010-10-28T09:57:00.002-05:002010-11-02T12:20:25.751-05:00About This Blog (under construction)<span xmlns=''><p>This blog is about experiencing ourselves as fully alive--and more importantly--fully human<br /></p><p>Toward this end, we're about developing a new context to better envision the living of our lives together; a context that doesn't rely on our contraptions, but instead, relies on the very genius which makes us human in the first place: our Mind and Heart. <br /></p><p>Contraption: "Originally a western English dialectical word, probably made from the words, contrive and trap." (Wiktionary.) <br /></p><p>Clocks rely on traps to change mechanical motion into readable time. And since Newton, we've been contriving our life together in terms of machines like clocks. Which isn't all bad, especially when it replaces a world contrived by superstition and unseen spookiness. Yet despite our success in growing beyond a spooky world, how come our time is marked by malaise, frustration, anger, fear, and "ideology-ism"? Could it be that the very source of our complaint flows from not feeling ourselves truly alive and truly human? And if this is the case, where is our source stopped? How does a life lived in contraption differ from a life lived from mind and heart?<br/><span style='font-family:Arial'><br/></span><br/><span style='font-family:Arial'><br/></span><br/><span style='font-family:Arial'><br/></span><br/><span style='font-family:Arial'>In other words, we can live our lives via contraption, but </span></p></span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3312179782230880680.post-9379089787512524612010-10-24T09:20:00.008-05:002010-10-25T12:21:49.731-05:00Considering Intellectual Integrity: A Domain as Real as Biology?<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Part two in an experimental series with PJ who writes about mind at: </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';"><a href="http://findingthelightindarktimes.blogspot.com/2010/10/honesty-and-intellectual-integrity.html">http://findingthelightindarktimes.blogspot.com/2010/10/honesty-and-intellectual-integrity.html</a></span> </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">We're not just biological, we're intellectual. In fact, I wonder if we're not more intellectual than biological. Maybe, we could say that when ever any species predominately experiences their living through intellect rather than biology, that species, potentially speaking, is human in its being.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">What is it to be human then? Is our exploration leading us to assert simply, that Human Being is the one who's connection to its environment is primarily intellectual rather than biological?</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I think I stalled in discussing Saul's ideas, because as I set out to actually write about them, I began to </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">re</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">alize just how much we lack an ability to see this intellectual domain that we are. We somehow can't yet give it the force of reality we attribute to biology- or physicality: Physics is a </span><b style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">hard</b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> science; Psychology is a </span><i style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">soft</i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> one. And, what's become so strange to me, is how we'll go all ga ga over the weirdness of quantum domains, but when it comes to the existence of an Intellectual domain, the best we muster, is to s</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">ay something like "wow"- our brains are like really cool computers...</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But intellectual life is not computing life. It's something a whole lot more- both in ability and kind isn't it?</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Another question: which is more real, Brain or Mind?</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">I was reading some Alfred North Whitehead a couple of evenings ago before going to sleep. The problem however came when I read this thought and the ensuing excitement revived me for another hour. His thought was timely and pertains to our questions. Let me show you:</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Whitehead talked about physical reality in terms of its <i>primary</i> and <i>secondary</i> attributes. So, </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> for instance, </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">take the color "teal".</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> Teal's primary existence is some kind of energy wave with a particular frequency (imagine stretching out a long cooked spaghetti noodle on a table, and with your finger make it into a series of "s" shapes from left to right; this is a model of a thing's primary existence as an energy wave). As such, there's nothing about it to suggest "greenish blue". The greenish-blue occurs as a secondary attribute. However--and this is what aroused me-- that secondary attribute doesn't exist unless there is some kind of receiver that can interpret that wave into our color teal! Objective reality, the way we typically construe it as something that exists regardless of human observation, is in reality, a bland colorless tangle of spaghetti noodle-like waves that doesn't take on color unless there's an "interpretive" interaction. (So now I'm wondering which is indeed primary in the color teal- its underlying wave? or a meaningful interaction? But that's another post.)</span><br />
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</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">"Reality as Interpretive Interaction". This is the first time that I've uttered </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">this phrase, so it's still a bit over my head- but I'm liking it; I think my new phrase points to the idea that brains do more than compute in a physical environment, which in reality, is something that exists through a process of</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><i> interpretive interaction, </i>rather than the Standard Objective Model we've been employing for the last few centuries.</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Here's an interesting twist I'll use to tie things up here: I have no idea what it's like to see the color teal from a purely biological perspective. My interaction with the environment is intellectual- not biological. This also means, that I don't know how my brain experiences the wave length of teal, but I do know how my Mind does.... I'm beginning to see why and how PJ is all ga ga about Mind. </span><br />
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</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3312179782230880680.post-37983034996635180732010-10-21T14:59:00.008-05:002010-10-21T16:10:05.223-05:00Considering Intellectual Integrity<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">My favorite part in being involved with blogging has been meeting and engaging with people whom I would never had met otherwise. In fact, the favorite part of my own blog is reading all the thought provoking things you guys write. I bring this up because with this post, I want to connect with a writer I've gotten to know from 13.7 who calls himself PJ here. PJ is degreed in aeronautical engineering, business, medicine and psychology; he cites the gravitational center in all this as Mind. It was his sense of Mind that drew me to him, and it was something he recently wrote which serves as the diving board into my thinking here.</span><br />
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</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So I'm gonna try something new and link to his essay on intellectual integrity for you to read. And then I'm gonna write through the ideas I encountered as I worked with his thinking. And if any of you get inspired to write a piece beyond commentary on your own blog, we'll link that into the pile and see where all our commenting with each other goes!</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">(Oh- and I think this discussion will get me closer to actually discussing J.R. Saul's ideas...) here's the link: </span><a href="http://findingthelightindarktimes.blogspot.com/2010/10/honesty-and-intellectual-integrity.html">http://findingthelightindarktimes.blogspot.com/2010/10/honesty-and-intellectual-integrity.html</a></div><div><br />
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</div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">When I first read PJ's piece, I read it I think with the intentions he meant. However, something else for me opened up in my encounter: I saw how this thing we call intellectual is the means, or the basis, or the environment, of our being human. I know we customarily use the word intellectual to denote something like cognitive activity in contrast to emotional activity, but in this moment, I saw the concept intellectual stand for the whole place where we encounter our ability to consider in all its forms- whether they originate from feeling or thinking. In either case, we ultimately encounter reality through our ideas, and ideas whether simple or complex, red neck or elitist, are things which formulate in something that can't be reduced to brain; In that moment I saw that domain as our intellect. </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Seeing this led me into two other thoughts. First, being intellectual is not the same as being a brainiac. I'm saying that<i> any</i> person who has the experience of conversation within themselves--whether that conversation bounces around the ideas of beer preferences, or the ideas of possible sources of gravity--such a being is an <i>intellectual</i> being.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Second, I saw new meaning when my different way of seeing<i> intellectual</i> was coupled with integrity: Biologically speaking, when our bodies encounter a challenge to their integrity, they communicate through a means we've learned to call symptoms. What if we learned to see this domain of our existence--which here I'm calling intellectual--with the same force of reality we attribute our biology? What would the symptoms look like when the integrity of our intellectual domain was challenged?</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So there's my diving board. I don't mean to make this into an argument about definitions; I'm interested in considering the real human dynamics beneath the language we use to explore them with-- which of course involves words; we're intellectual being after all. I'm just saying that I'm not necessarily married to any of them.</span><br />
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</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Some of my questions include</span><br />
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</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Can Mind or its subset(?) "intellectual domain" be considered as real as biological bodies?</span><br />
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</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">What would this look like if we did?</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">What if truth or intellectual integrity was something more than moral? what if it was something structural or ontological to the human life?</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Finally, let me add that between our two posts on Intellectual Integrity, the questions and threads might run different courses, which I think would be a great thing. The point in this is to see where the exploration leads us. I'm really excited to see where everyone's thinking goes!</span></div><div><a href="http://findingthelightindarktimes.blogspot.com/2010/10/honesty-and-intellectual-integrity.html"></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3312179782230880680.post-70614001525327370242010-09-30T10:20:00.006-05:002010-10-01T08:20:50.629-05:00...On the Other Hand, We're Co-Evolutionaries.<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I began writing this post as the one to occupy the space of my last post, but it was the last one that came out. Let's see if I can get it to come out here....</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">A concept as close to my heart as the concept of Co-creating, is the one of Co-Evolving. Let me riff a bit, and see what you think.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Our Universe, as we've gotten to know it, followed an arrow of time; as it did, it also grew in complexity. We call this Evolution. And we've come to typically think of evolution within the framework of surviving, which is to say simply, the stuff that's here today exists because its forebears survived through yesterday. (Or yester-eon....) I think a prime example of what I'm trying to describe is the Grizzly Bear: when it comes to surviving, it's a tank. Only more elegant.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Sure- when it comes to survivability we have to give a nod to bacteria, or the mushroom, (which has the honor of being the largest organism alive on our planet). But along the arrow of time life doesn't just survive, it grows more complex. So when we link complexity with survivability, we have to obviously consider the Grizzly bear don't we? I'ts an omnivore and is suited to live in all weather conditions; and when food might be scarce, as it often is in winter, it can hibernate. I'm sure you might have another favorite choice for the pinnacle of survivability, but your choice would never displace the Grizzly, only stand or swim next to it. However, you might ask, "what about human being?"</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">This is where I think things get even more interesting. As life continued its march along time, In human being, life grew even more complex than the Grizzly. </span><br />
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</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">In the framework of survival, Life reaches a pinnacle in the Grizzly. Yet Life continues further into complexity, through the evolution of human being, and seems to be accomplishing <i>something else</i> than what it accomplishes in Grizzly Bears- something else besides surviving: What is this something else?</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Co-Evolution! </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I would offer, that the species we call Human Being, is the one species who has a real say in how it evolves. So what can we say about all this?!</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Merlin Donald, a neuroscientist who cross pollinates with archeology and anthropology, points out that the biological platform which you and I live with today--specifically our brains--has been in existence for about 180,000 years. This means, that our evolution since then, hasn't stemmed from processes of an "at-large biology" alone, but from processes of what Dr.Peter Hubbard, another scientist, who in his case cross pollinates physics based, with social based sciences, would here call Mind. (And- collective Mind- which is what we also call culture.)</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">In other words, we who are human being today, didn't just evolve, <b>we co-evolved: </b>with Life and each ot</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">her. We are involved with the Universe in a joint project....</span><br />
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</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I'll end here for now with this. I say in my subtitle that I'm out to create a <i>space</i> <i>between</i> Science and Religion; a space from which we can venture further into our Human experience. What I'm getting at in this post, is that whichever side of this space you originate, <i>we are bound together by this: In human being, life leaps from inevitability to response-ability. We are, at Heart and in Reality, Co-creators and Co-evolutionaries.</i></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><b><br />
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</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3312179782230880680.post-36790057719251125552010-09-26T10:10:00.020-05:002010-09-29T08:26:07.480-05:00A Love Affair that Still has Great Affect<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">While I may be loathing in constraining my thinking within a Christianity context, I find that in a secular context, people are loathe to think of the human life as something richer than animal life. My sense is that such an attitude is hoped to engender a more humble human presence- one that doesn't imperialize every thing in its path. Of course I laud this desire for humility. Still, if we, through this means of humility, blind ourselves to authentic human life, I don't know that such humility will in the end serve us. </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />
</span> <br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">So this is what I'm wondering, "what if our problem of this imperialistic consuming, in actuality, stems from our <i>actions of compensating</i> for not <i>experiencing authentic human life</i>? And what if we don't experience authentic human life, because in reality, we have a hard time seeing it? How would we go about looking for it then?</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />
</span> <br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">One way I can think of is through the process of comparing and contrasting.</span><br />
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</span> <br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Now, I didn't grow up with church, nor did I grow up with wine. And yet, here I am: a man who has a love affair with God and wine; and my relationships to both lack their respective conventional approaches. Something I feel very fortunate for. Here, let me trace some of the history to my love affair with wine.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">When I got into wine back in the late eighties, around the age of 29, I was introduced and educated through a group in Minneapolis called the Bacchus Wine Society. Every month or so, they'd rent a hotel banquet room filled with tables set for ten, with each table bearing a big center tray of cheese and crackers, a couple of spit buckets (usually empty KFC chicken pails) and most importantly, two wine glasses per person. Well, maybe more important were the eight bottles of wine; still, the two glasses were as important here, because we would take turns serving wine to each other, two bottles at a time; it was having two glasses each, which enabled us to compare and contrast between two different wines at the same time. Do you want to know what tannins are and how they affect a wine's taste? Pour one glass with a wine that has them, and the other with a wine that doesn't. Here is where tasting speaks more than even pictures can, and just how good comparing and contrasting works.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />
</span> <br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I feel blessed for those wine tasting evenings way back then. For one reason, the seating was random. Each event I attended, I could have been sat with wine snobs- the ones who relate to wine more as status than experience, and love to wear their wine drinking like a badge. The people I was lucky enough to sit with, the ones who were real lovers, cared about the experience- for themselves as well for me. And while I learned to swirl a glass and get my nose into one as well as any snob, (I got my nose wet a couple of times while starting out) when it came to sharing our personal experience of each of the wine's unique set of elements, I was always in an environment where I felt free to use any words in my vocabulary; there was never a pressure to pull words from some proper wine lexicon.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />
</span> <br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Out of all those terrific events, there’s this one night I remember most...one that provided a particular moment of learning about wine; this moment I remember today with absolute fondness. It came about when Mary, a woman about fifteen years older, and with that much more wine experience than me, said something with this gracious gentle exuberance for all things alive, and just tossed out, "I taste eucalyptus..." So I rushed and took another taste of the same wine--it was my left side glass--and there it was! I tasted eucalyptus! It was amazing! How does something that's fruit, make eucalyptus?!</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />
</span> <br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I learned some things that evening, which I keep in my heart today. Not only did Mary teach me to look for eucalyptus, somehow--that moment of learning that eucalyptus was present--made me aware of the nature of ignorance and how we learn of it. Most notable are these thoughts:</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">-Compared to other animal species, I would cite as a salient difference this fact: we are the ones who can know of our ignorance. And it is this power that gives rise to one of our abilities which is even more powerful: <b>we can form</b> <b>questions.</b></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />
</span> <br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">-Like the man who learned to fish, I do more than look for eucalyptus, I look for other things that I may not be accustomed to look for. This insight, transcends wine and translates across the board.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">-Even though I was drinking the same wine as Mary, when I didn’t have the concept of eucalyptus apart from a cough drop, I wasn’t able to taste it in the wine. We need more than our eyes to see, we need our ideas. (Where do we ideas?)<br />
</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">-I learned something more about wine tasting, and when I did, wine’s mystery of alchemy only became more mysterious. (Btw, when something really is a Mystery, and not a puzzle, the more you know of it, the more—not less—mysterious it becomes.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />
-And finally, when you want to learn wine, comparing and contrasting between two bottles at a time proves very productive--even seductive. It’s in this spirit that I sometimes compare and contrast our human life with other kinds of animal life. I’m not out to determine and define—that is make some version of a “wine snob lexicon”—when I engage in such comparing and contrasting. Rather, I’m trying to create a means to explore our human life with the same kind of grace I experienced with people like Mary and the others, who loved wine, and relished taking turns at pouring new bottles into awaiting glasses.</span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />
Maybe, through this kind of tasting of our human life, we will begin to taste things we didn't realize were there. And as we find that there’s so much more to taste in the human life than consuming, we'll no longer feel such a dire need to acquire things the same way an addict gets locked in by his drug. </span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></span><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Maybe we'll displace our imperialistic compensating, by deeply enjoying a new love affair with our very Human-ness.</span><br />
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</span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3312179782230880680.post-54385538189039843592010-09-13T12:13:00.010-05:002010-09-23T14:13:33.774-05:00Which would God prefer, our worship or our colleague-ship<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> I loathe the idea of talking about our human experience solely within a Christian context, even though the Christ Event has been a deeply meaningful experience for me, and has significantly shaped my sense of reality. I recently responded in a comment section to a blog entitled "Experimental Theology", written by Dr. Richard Beck who is a professor of psychology. I like his work a lot, though we differ in that he mostly is referencing a Christianity framework. And I'm not.</span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br />
</span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Still, I'm interested in influencing how we think about GoD and the Christ Event. And I thought this response to David, a man who typifies well, an evangelical pov (I'm not singling him out) might give you a glimpse of some of my own theological thinking. But first a caveat:</span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br />
</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br />
</span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 18px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">I'm using God language here for the sake of communicating with brevity to an evangelical culture. I wince when I use God language. Please allow me some grace as you read my comment- whether you hale from a God culture or don't- and see the spirit or mind behind my writing.... </span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br />
</span><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="color: #333333; line-height: 115%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br />
</span></span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br />
</span><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="color: #333333; line-height: 115%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"></span></span></span></span><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="color: #333333; line-height: 115%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"></span></span></span></span><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="color: #333333; line-height: 115%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"></span></span></span></span><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="color: #333333; line-height: 115%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"></span></span></span></span><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="color: #333333; line-height: 115%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"></span></span></span></span><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="color: #333333; line-height: 115%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br />
</span></span></span></span><br />
<div><span class="apple-style-span"><span style="color: #333333; line-height: 115%;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">David, in an earlier thread, you challenged my claim that we are called to be adult colleagues with God in the making of Life together. I would like to answer your challenge here, and utilize the style of Jesus' approach to this discussion, by utilizing modern sewer systems as an underlying analogy for my point.</span></span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br />
</span><span style="color: #333333; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 115%;"><span class="apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br />
</span></span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"></span><span class="apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span style="color: #333333; line-height: 115%;"></span></span></span><span style="color: #333333; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 115%;"><span class="apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">It is argued, that when it comes to the increased longevity and health of human being in the modern era, this increase doesn't stem from modern medicine, but from modern sewer and water systems- simply because they deal with the micro organisms causing illness in the first place.....</span></span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br />
</span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span><span class="apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br />
</span></span></span></span></span></div><div><span style="color: #333333; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 115%;"><span class="apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">If this is the case, how is the making of competent sewer and water systems NOT a "Kingdom of God" activity?</span></span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br />
</span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span><span class="apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br />
</span></span></span></span></span></div><div><span style="color: #333333; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 115%;"><span class="apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Out of all the animals God creates, we of the Human species are the ones, who on the seventh day, when God rests, are invited to join Him in a picnic- as the story goes. Doesn't this sound like we are truly invited to colleague-ship? In contrast, I Love my dog and the feeling seems mutual; but I have yet to experience an adult human relationship with him. </span></span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br />
</span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span><span class="apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br />
</span></span></span></span></span></div><div><span style="color: #333333; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 115%;"><span class="apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">We like Heaven when its free and we don't have to do the work and create it. In fact, we would rather huddle in worship and pine away for life on a platter. However, I bet when God witnessed our civil engineering to make sewer systems and modern bathrooms, there was a proud tear welling in His eye.</span></span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br />
</span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span><span class="apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br />
</span></span></span></span></span></div><div><span style="color: #333333; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 115%;"><span class="apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">We think that God's essential nature is morality- not Creative Power.</span></span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br />
</span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span><span class="apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br />
</span></span></span></span></span></div><div><span style="color: #333333; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 115%;"><span class="apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">In Reality, morality is easy. Creating is where the hard work is. But we relegate creativity to an afternoon at church camp where everybody gets to make Christian lanyards. At evening services we thunder about morality. </span></span></span></span><span class="apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">The reality of morality though, is that all you have to do is paint the world in black and white and us and them. Then choose a side, puff up your chest and fight away; all the while luxuriating in the bigness of being on God's side: And explain away--that is wax theologically--</span></span></span></span><span class="apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">how every one else is the problem.</span></span></span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br />
</span><span style="color: #333333; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 115%;"><span class="apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span"></span></span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br />
</span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span><span class="apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Meanwhile, everyone else is maintaining sewer systems, and developing needed energy systems in order to create sustainable thriving for the whole planet. (You know, the thing we're given real creative responsibility for?) </span></span></span></span><span class="apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Is this the Life that Jesus went to the cross for? That we should take all the genius of God, which we get to embody, and huddle in quivering masses and await that "glorious day"?</span></span></span></span><span class="apple-converted-space"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span></span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br />
</span><span style="color: #333333; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; line-height: 115%;"><span class="apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br />
</span></span></span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"></span><span style="color: #333333; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 8pt; line-height: 115%;"><span class="apple-converted-space"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span"></span></span></span></span><span class="apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">In</span><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> the paradigm of animal sacrifice, God says in Jesus' crucifixion, "look- you guys are still afraid of me. I'll tell you what- if sacrificing your first born child is the most powerful act that you can do to make me be on your side, then I will sacrifice My first born child: no act can be more powerful than this. Let it be settled then; I AM FOR YOU.</span></span></span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br />
</span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span><span class="apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br />
</span></span></span></span></span></div><div><span style="color: #333333; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 8pt; line-height: 115%;"><span class="apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">The ONLY reason we won't see ourselves as colleagues with God, we who are called to co-create Life together, is because we would rather be afraid, and justify our fear through a theology that God yearns to eradicate in the Life of Jesus.</span></span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br />
</span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span><span class="apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br />
</span></span></span></span></span></div><div><span style="color: #333333; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 8pt; line-height: 115%;"><span class="apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">If Christianity means that I have to dumb down my Human self, dumb down the genius God creates, dumb down Jesus' belief about God, then I would rather give up my Christianity.</span></span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br />
</span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> </span></span><span class="apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br />
</span></span></span></span></span></div><div><span style="color: #333333; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 8pt; line-height: 115%;"><span class="apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">But I refuse to give up the Christ: I refuse to back away from my true Humanness, which is a call to co-create real life with our Creator.</span></span></span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: inherit;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br />
</span></span> </span></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3312179782230880680.post-29441869160770597752010-08-29T12:29:00.000-05:002010-08-29T12:29:44.649-05:00<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Well, I thought I was gonna be rolling down the tracks with my posts about John Ralston Saul's ideas, way back in May, but as you can plainly see, I didn't roll very far. I can't say that I suffered from some sort of train derailment; still my impedance certainly has something to do with the fact that train tracks have to be linear: while I'm sitting comfortably riding the rail <i>its</i> way, I'm looking out the window and gravitationally pulled into the vistas perpendicular to my inertia!</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">I haven't felt myself derailed as much as I've felt myself in a stupor. Feeling the gravitational pulls from so many vistas around me at the same time, makes it hard to lay out sentences (for me at least), which, if they're to perform their amazing feats of communication, need to be like railroad tracks. I feel like all I've been able to do for the last few months is stutter....</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Part of unwinding my big ball of stutter, entailed my looking at why I'm writing here in the first place: perhaps the only things more abounding in number than String theories, are protestant denominations and blogs! Certainly opinions. But I don't want <i>this blog </i>to be, yet another opinion depot. To me, opinion stockpiling, makes little use of blogging's potential strength: that of connecting with people and thinking, we might not otherwise connect with. For instance, some of you who have signed on as followers and friends I know in person. But some of you, I only know through this blog, or 13.7; cases in point are Peter, Stephen and Alex; I've appreciated your thoughtful writing through the commentary section.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Somehow, I want to make this blog a place where ideas can be forged and annealed; then re-smelted into other alloys and forged again. At the same time, I want this blog to be a place reminiscent of kindergarten where wonder displaces cleverness, and the only dumb questions or comments, are the ones unwritten or the ones that bully: All too often, some innocent word you write, starts an avalanche of ideas in me, which till then, were locked out of my reach.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">I have to stop right now, and help my son Ben with his house. I still have more unwinding to do when it comes to my big stutter ball, but I can't do it on my own, and I need your help. I'm so excited for our Human Life though, and I'm excited to explore it with all of you.</span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"> </span>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3312179782230880680.post-53899351191041939792010-05-12T10:32:00.005-05:002010-05-12T12:10:05.745-05:00What Constitutes an Entity? Saul I<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">I've been surprised by the difficulty I'm encountering in trying to transition to a more formal discussion of Saul's ideas, and I think I just figured out why. John Ralston Saul, to his credit, writes his book in a way that follows his own sense of things: He himself is frustrated by recipeic approaches to living, so doesn't want his ideas to be construed as just another recipe; and he succeeds. Following Saul through the forests of our Humannness is pleasurable as he lets you see things yourself, and lets you develop your own felt sense of things. But I can't reprint the book here, so I think I have to provide some "handles" to better grasp his world view. And hopefully, you'll read the book yourself, because you'll be engaged in a worthwhile dialog with him; it's that kind of book.</span></span><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">To get at a possible handle, let me ask you, "what constitutes an entity"?</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Referring back to the grizzly bear of a couple of posts back, and we ask what constitutes one, we would point primarily to biological stuff and habitat stuff. How about an entity like the United States of America, what constitutes this? Why the constitution of course. But wait- the "Constitution" is merely a document made of vellum. On this vellum however, are written a set of Ideas; so it's actually a set of ideas that constitute the USA: change the set of Ideas, and you constitute a different country- right? So now, what constitutes the entity we call Human Being? would we point to biological stuff? ideation stuff? Or is there some other stuff? Yes; yes; and yes. What I'm referring to here as the "other stuff," which we could consider as fundamentally constituting Human Being, Saul calls Qualities. And the quality we are most familiar with in our culture is Reason. In other words, we easily note that the one quality which distinguishes the human animal from all other species, is the quality of Reason. </span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">We don't usually give much thought to this distinction, that's been in place since the Enlightenment: Saul however does. Not so much on whether or not animals can think or not, but on whether or not Reason should be considered as our sole quality that constitutes Human Being. As I asked in my last post for instance, "what about Imagination?" Is Imagination merely a subset of Reason, or is Imagination another Quality that serves a constituting role as much as Reason does? Saul, in answering such a question, doesn't limit his list to two Qualities however. No- he comes up with six! six qualities that constitute our very humanness, and he lists them thusly in alphabetical order: Common Sense, Ethics (Ethicality if this were a word), Imagination, Intuition, Memory, and finally Reason.</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">If I may paraphrase him, Saul asks, what qualities constitutes the Humanness of Human Being? and answers with his list of six- which exist together equally (as opposed to existing in hierarchy) in a dynamic tension together. Reason is removed from a throne and takes its place with our other qualities which are each just as vital in constituting our Humanness. </span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">Two things He'd want you to know about his list: First, the list is not conclusive; he's not out to make another recipe, another system, another vehicle of sorts that takes us out of living and puts us into a management of forms. Secondly, he derives this particular list of Qualities from all the past attempts by thinkers who sought to consider the qualities that constitute humanness; Saul's list is a distilled representation of them. </span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">A third thing Saul would want us to know about, is his use of the word Quality. And I think this is pretty cool: While we share in things we could call characteristics, or talents, or traits, the distribution of them depend on each individual person existing in their particular time and place. Qualities on the other hand, transcend individuality, and are there to be participated in by any Human Being. We could say that characteristics play a role in constituting an Individual. It is our Qualities though that constitute our very Humanness.</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:small;">And I'll end here with another part of the question I asked earlier: What does it take for a bear to be more bear? and contrast that with the question, "What does it take for Human Being to become more Human? And of course, ask these in the context of the question, "What constitutes an entity?"</span></span></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3312179782230880680.post-16845992048732718072010-05-05T14:25:00.005-05:002010-05-10T07:45:28.418-05:00Finally, John Ralston Saul! well- at least a start...<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Living the Human life is innately elusive. For instance, we can know everything there is to know as to how everything about human being works- yet to actually live ourselves into the world requires something else than such knowledge. Knowing about consciousness and brains and the like, helps me understand more of my ability to consider, but when I face the incessant stream of fresh moments that keep marching through me,<i> it is I </i>who have to consider them- not my knowledge of my<i> I</i>. And the same goes for you. What makes this a little more elusive, is that you and I can be standing shoulder to shoulder, and the incessant stream of new moments will be experienced differently and uniquely by each of us.</span></span><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:arial;font-size:medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:arial;font-size:medium;">What I called the Incessant Stream, John <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">Ralston</span> Saul calls the Swirling Uncertainty. Both aptly name the real situation of Human life as well as the true nature of the environment in which we get to experience our powers of consideration. <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">wuhoo!(?)</span> We love considering when we get to consider the flavors of our favorite beverages and such. When we have to lean our selves into the swirling uncertainty though, we reconsider how much of a gift this considering thing is! </span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:arial;font-size:medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:arial;font-size:medium;">The swirling uncertainty is no small thing. I would point out, that at the time of Christ, the Pharisees dealt with it by reducing living to a myriad of codes to follow; for this Jesus confronted them: (notice his confrontations don't center on morality, but on something more like maturity, as the Pharisee's strategy in effect, stunted their considering muscles) . </span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:arial;font-size:medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:arial;font-size:medium;">Though he doesn't say it this explicitly, Saul in our day, looks at our Human situation and notes it as one where we have to consider our way into Swirling Uncertainty. We can try to stop the Swirling, (the Incessant Flow) or, we can develop our ability to consider. Since the Enlightenment project has had as one of its goals, the stopping of the swirling without success, maybe we should switch strategies and become more competent. Towards this, he writes his fantastic book, "On Equilibrium"; a title which will make sense in a bit. (Equilibrium here is used the way economists use it, not the way the rest of science uses it. In economics, equilibrium describes things existing in equalized dynamic movement, where as in science, equilibrium means that change has stopped. Two very different conditions, and as Saul has little respect for a lot of economist thinking, I think he's making use of this to be ironic.)</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:arial;font-size:medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Some quick biographical back ground. Saul, grew up in a Canadian military family where his dad was an officer, went to <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">McGill</span> University and then Cambridge for his PhD where he studied French History or something like that. But more, he's run a multi-national oil company, and his wife was a Governor in Canada a while ago. He looks to be in his sixties now and through his lifetime, he's had some rather interesting perches from which to do his own considering. Of course, just google John <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">Ralston</span> Saul (note, there is a John Saul who is another novelist.) If you want a more professional bio. </span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">I'll end here with one of Saul's beginning premises. Since the Enlightenment, Reason has been king. But reason is only one of our "tools" with which we can use in our considering. What about Imagination? Is this just a subset of Reason, or is Imagination something that exists with as much autonomy as Reason? Are there other "tools" as well? tools that are also autonomous but have existed under the dictatorship of Reason over the last four centuries? What could be the implications here? Saul raises some interesting ones, and we'll delve more formally into them in the next post. </span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:arial;font-size:medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:arial;font-size:medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:arial;font-size:medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:arial;font-size:medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:arial;font-size:medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:arial;font-size:medium;"><br /></span></div><div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></span><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></span></div></div></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3312179782230880680.post-72012366401293055442010-05-02T12:35:00.005-05:002010-05-02T12:49:51.660-05:00The Alchemy of Toast and Human Being<span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(51, 51, 51); line-height: 16px; font-family:arial, sans-serif;font-size:12px;"><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(51, 51, 51); line-height: 16px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Really, I am making my way into the ideas of John Ralston Saul. Toward that goal, let me ask you a question to ponder:</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(51, 51, 51); line-height: 16px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(51, 51, 51); line-height: 16px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Both bears and humans exist as selfs. (For an idea of self see Ursala Goodenough's piece, </span><a href="http://www.npr.org/blogs/13.7/2010/03/the_iself_and_our_symbolic_spe.html"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">http://www.npr.org/blogs/13.7/2010/03/the_iself_and_our_symbolic_spe.html</span></a></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">So, for a bear to be more bear, what needs to happen? Likewise, for a human to be more of a human self, what needs to happen?</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">I just posted this as a comment over at 13.7 and I think it fits our dialog here as well; I hope you like it!</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(51, 51, 51); line-height: 16px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(51, 51, 51); line-height: 16px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(51, 51, 51); line-height: 16px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /></span></span></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">The allure of toasters is the toast they make. What is the allure of toast then? After listing everybody's response we would be able to sort them into two categories: physical/thermodynamic and non-physical/meaning. In a word, I would offer that toast's complex allure, could be understood in the word "alchemy".<br /><br />To begin, the heart of the engineer behind the toaster, is wed to the heart of the bread maker; and all of us who eat toast become part of the wedding as well... such alchemy happens daily in a gazillion ways!<br /><br /></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">The question before us in our day, is "how does our shared alchemy result in something closer to gold than to lead?</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /><br />Our current answer seems to stem from an idea that if we can make the right schematic, and everyone follows it, then we'll be in "working order". If successful alchemy were a matter of Physics alone, then schematics would have worked by now. It seems that alchemy requires a catalyst, and I would argue that for the human life, that catalyst is Meaning.<br /><br />In terms of thermodynamics, work gets something done that is measurable. If a person feels a deep sense of Meaning behind there working though, something immeasurable emerges; what is that? Certainly something along the lines of alchemy, as well as something closer to gold than lead.</span></span><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" color: rgb(51, 51, 51); line-height: 16px; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br />We can weld handles to things like metal pots. But Meaning doesn't lend itself to such easy handling. It squirms away from our grasps that try to bottle it, or make it formulaic.<br /><br />Thus, in our world of Human Actuality, Technology and Meaning can interact with each other, and ultimately need each other. But neither can replace the other.<br /><br />Humanness itself is essentially an Alchemy; remove the reality of either the physical or the non-physical, and the Alchemy fails to lead. Which for the human life </span></span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">is not a fail safe, but a failure.</span></span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br /><br />So when I as a thinker, utilize "religious" insight along with "science" insight, it's because I recognize the reality that has its basis in Alchemy, rather than in technology or spirituality alone.<br /><br />Ursala, I think this is why I'm so in love with the last line of your post. How can Human Alchemy even begin without insight?</span></span></span></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3312179782230880680.post-47001455775674644422010-04-27T11:52:00.002-05:002010-04-29T10:34:43.331-05:00Considering Frameworks, Contexts, and the Naked Hokey-poky<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Please forgive my absence from my own blog here. I've been involved with a rather intense season of thinking lately. Some of my thinking has been carried out over at the 13.7 blog's commentary section. While I like that blog as a whole, I especially like the work Stuart Kauffman is doing. Perhaps the one thing I relate most to in his work, is the sense that there's </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">something more to reality than our current frameworks can give voice or vision to.</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"> He's sensing this problem of an insufficient framework, predominantly from his context of science, while I'm seeing it predominantly, from a context of religion. For reasons I'll explain later, you could enlarge our respective contexts and describe his as one of Physics, and mine as one of Meaning. In the meantime, I want to address the ideas of frameworks and contexts.</span><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So what am I meaning by frameworks- or contexts? Well, I think we've come to see that reality is not only made of parts, it's also made of wholes that parts make up. Our organs for instance, combine along with other parts to make a whole that is our body: within the context/framework of biology, the heart pumps blood, while in the context/framework of romance, the heart pumps luuuuv.... Simply put, context/frameworks are the overarching "logic" of a whole that organize the meaning of its underlying parts. For instance, seeing someone off in the distance standing and moving their body in random and distorted ways doesn't make sense to us- at least until we get closer and hear the music.... What changed in our ability to make sense of this randomly moving person? Context, right? Because you have a framework about dancing, you were able to involve music in your assessment of the situation and call it normal. (Still, your framework might not allow for our once-randomly -moving-figure-now- dancer, to be naked in public, but at least the dancing part fits:-) </span><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Our Frameworks are important because of this: As human being, we don't see with our eyes, we see with our ideas. What our bio-eyes and brain do, is process the stuff which light illuminates. What our mind's eyes and thinking does on the other hand, is make sense of what is seen by either set of eyes, and to do this, we need ideas. What you're able to see depends on the ideas by which you choose to see with, and- you don't really see something until you experience the sensation of "ah- now I see." Do you see what I'm saying? In other words, your bio-eyes pick up photons illuminating a moving thing on the horizon. <i>Your ideas</i> saw a naked person doing the hokey-poky to a song you remember from your youth when you were roller skating with your friends at the roller rink, and the d.j. got everybody to shift from their personal random boogies to a group event where each in unison dipped their body parts in and out and....</span><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">So this is what I'm trying to get at by talking about a context of Physics and one of Meaning: More than a branch of science, Physics is an over-all framework from which to approach the world; Physics at heart is looking at the world in terms of cause and effect. In this sense, even though other branches of science differ from the branch called physics in scope and content and the like, science, I would say is always looking through a primary lens of cause and effect- or Physics. As does our culture at large.</span><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Yet as I'm pointing out here, ideas are central to our seeing; a seeing that doesn't entail from light and optics, but entail from thinking within Meaning: we rely on a different illumination to move about our environments than any other species. Meaning is very different than Physics. So while Physics can make sense of animals acting in their environment, it's an insufficient framework from which to fully understand the <i>human</i> animal living in <i>world</i>. Without a sufficient framework to consider Meaning, we can't sufficiently grasp our Humanness.</span><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">And as one who comes from a context we've called religion, I would note that a lot of our religious thinking is at heart Physics based, and lacks a sophisticated vision of Meaning. </span><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Also of note is this: Stuart Kauffman and I, while not knowing one another, each have been dealing with the insufficiency of our beginning frameworks when it comes to their ability to see the reality at large; and as we worked for better solution, we both were drawn into the idea of Creativity: I love his <i>idea</i> that sees the Universe existing as Ceaseless Creativity. I would offer that the GoD Jesus points to is this Ceaseless Creativity; so we're mistaken to think as we typically do, that GoD's ultimate concern is obedience. To me, our mistaken idea is embodied in the parable of The Three Talents where the person Jesus confronts is the one who merely buries his alloted talent; while the ones who create with theirs are admired....</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">But that's a post for the future.<br /><br /></span><br /><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br /></span><br /><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></span><br /><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></span><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></span><br /><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></span></div></div></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3312179782230880680.post-35271960193880351612010-03-25T12:11:00.011-05:002010-04-05T11:29:05.056-05:00Considering Dilemma<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Are you gaining the sense of considering as something very fundamental to Human experience yet? I'm not trying to build a formal system by the word consider, still, compared to words like conscious, mind, brain and the like, conceiving our salient human feature in terms of consideration, rises above the fray of debates over issues of how can a mind effect a brain and the like. After all, any of us who have pets will testify to their consciousness and personality; and as Matt brought out in his comment from the last post, we can witness their ability to "consider" (in a way- I would say).</span></span><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';">My Golden Retriever named Sam for instance, loves these two things: meat, and having something in his mouth. (To this day, he won't drop his tennis ball on command without pained reluctance.) One day he came up to me on the deck with an old work glove in his mouth; he held it as a piece of luxury. I quickly grabbed a piece of salami and draped it over his snout (he does this amazing trick of holding, and on command he snatches the salami out of mid-air). There he was, sitting with his two loves and having to choose between them: the grimy glove in his mouth, and the salami on his snout. He froze. The only thing that did move, was his drool which streamed into a puddle before his feet. Having garnered sufficient entertainment value, I ripped the glove from his mouth. Sam instantly snatched the salami from mid air with his usual precision.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';">In terms of the conventional ways we've come to use the word consider, we would say that Sam froze in his "consideration" between two of his loves. Our conventional use of the word though, is a weather worn statue of its original stature; Sam weighed the glove and salami equally, but he couldn't truly transcend his literal being and "see from the place of the stars"- which is the experience the word Consider was originally coined to carry. I'm often impressed by the depth beneath common words when I look into their etymology....</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><br /></span></div><div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style=" ;font-family:'lucida grande';">Okay. We really don't know how it gets here, but our ability to consider I would argue, is what allows us to transcend our biological literalness. The thing is, for us to experience consideration in its fullness, we need environments that let such a muscle flex itself: <i>we need environments that can exist as uncertain</i>.</span></div><div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Think about it: to consider is to experience perhaps our core human feature; but if there were no uncertainty, how could consideration be experienced? Consideration and uncertainty, together form a system that gives rise to an environment where our very humanness is felt, and flexed, and found. And this is the rub: We love consideration as long as it doesn't get too beyond our comfortable perches, and we love uncertainty as long as we can still touch bottom: we like conversations with colleagues and the anticipation of Christmas mornings. </span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">We can't just live with colleagues though, nor can we compress a real future into a morning. No matter how hard we try.... And try. And try.</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">So if we<i> can't</i> make society homogeneous, and we <i>can't</i> shrink a future to a depth in which we need only wade, what's our next option? We have to develop the ability to understand one another with the same care we understand our selves, and we have to learn to navigate deeper waters.</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">And with this context in mind, we can get into the ideas of John Ralston Saul- ideas that let us further into our Human Complexity.</span></span></div></div></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3312179782230880680.post-70074789979801494602010-03-24T10:11:00.006-05:002010-04-05T12:19:33.691-05:00Considering Will<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">I began taking consideration seriously a few years ago while reading an article in the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">NYT</span> Magazine a few years back which informed me of the fact, that out of the twelve billion or so cells that are<i> in</i> me, only about five billion of those actually <i>are</i> me; the rest comprise other organisms coming along for the ride. That sparked my imagination.</span></span><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">I diverted my eyes from the magazine and gazed upon the nth myriad of critters who outnumbered me and I noticed something: every one of them were doing what they <i>wanted. </i><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">Hmm</span>- even bacterias are wanting what they want... and what is want? isn't wanting the same as willing? So if even bacteria have will, and then lions have will, the fact that humans have will, isn't a distinction in and of itself. In fact, while we measure will in terms of its power, is ours any more powerful than a lion's chasing down its meal?... I kept watching in my imagination the alpha lion eating his fill, while the other lions, who's standing reached further down the alphabet, were held at bay-regardless of their need. And that's when it hit me: while lions may have wills even more powerful than the human will, what they don't have, is the <i>power to</i> <i>consider</i>. What distinguishes human will from the will that even bacteria posses, is that ours is connected to our innate ability to consider. </span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">By conceiving will in terms of power, we put it on a continuum that bacteria exist on. And after human being in all its will power, annihilates itself, who will still be around? Bacteria. And they don't have the benefit of a frontal cortex.</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">By measuring human will in its ability to operate through consideration, we posit our measurement on a different continuum, one that doesn't entail from power and freedom, but one that entails from something uniquely human: the ability to <i>look beyond</i>. Human will, shouldn't be measured in terms of power, but in terms of consideration because consideration, is uniquely human. To continue measuring it- thus conceiving it- in terms of power, belies the level of order, Life itself has evolved toward. Human being is the one where Life evolves an ability for a species to <i>experience the power to consider</i>. </span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Will exercised through power is common to any living organism. Will exercised through consideration however, is uniquely human: we didn't make this reality- but we are required to live within it; whether we <i>real</i>-<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">ize</span> this power to consider, or not. We are free in our ability to consider.</span></span></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3312179782230880680.post-5374360337511746702010-03-18T10:49:00.006-05:002010-03-19T10:43:16.357-05:00Considering Power<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Out of all the concepts we might employ when pondering human <i>essence</i> in contrast to any other species, we cite concepts like consciousness, language, art, tool use and the like. For me, the concept which has become perhaps my favorite is Consideration.</span></span><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">At first glance, consideration smacks- or rather touches upon- politeness. "One is to be <i>considerate</i> in the presence of their elders" Miss Manners would implore her pupil. Its etymology however, points to a realm of power not of domestication- that of being able to look down from the vantage point of the stars: com (<i>con</i>) is the prefix that denotes with, and<i> sider</i> comes from sidus, meaning heavenly body. I think this capability to shift our perspective to the vantage point of heavenly bodies, is an ability unique to Human Being, and perhaps forms the very basis of our experience of I-self, I-Thou, and broadly put, Subject-Object. Without our innate ability to consider, we couldn't transcend our biology and its singular drive toward biological success on biological terms. A grizzly bear will remain a grizzly bear because it has no way out of its literalness. The only way out of the bonds of literalness is the power of Consideration. </span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">The poets of the Eden story described this ability to consider as being made in the image of GoD; on the seventh day of rest, only those who could <i>consider</i> were able to join GoD for a conversation, while everyone else merrily fulfilled their biological literalness (which is a different kind of satisfaction).</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> In the context of Evolution, I would put it this way: As Life pushes itself along the arrow of time, it pushes toward more complexity. And in the quest for survivability in nature, it evolves a pinnacle like the grizzly bear which is nature's version of a tank. But Nature continues its march toward complexity and reaches a different level of order that is a -whole something else- than a grizzly bear; a level of order we call Human being. What is this<i> something else</i> we embody that no other species does? I would vote that it's our ability to <b>Consider</b>. </span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">So what shall we do with such power? Argue over how the power arises in the first place, or imagine together how we can put such power to work in the making of our world together?</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Through our core ability to poise our looking from heavenly bodies, we can theorize about reality in frameworks of religion or science or any number of ways. But the funny thing about Consideration, what makes it so beguiling, is that after all the theorizing is done, and its dust has settled, we have to consider a fresh moment. All our frameworks can really do, is advise us: they can't consider in our stead. That is unless we abdicate our ability, and ride along like lemmings in a herd of ideologies. But if we surrender our identifying ability of consideration, do we also surrender our very Humanness? And what does such surrender engender?</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">It's natural to fear heights, and things don't get much higher than the heavenly bodies. What's the difference between thrilling and terrifying? I don't have a ready answer, but I do know that Consideration entails both. </span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> </span></span></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3312179782230880680.post-59970902639663179612010-03-11T13:04:00.007-06:002010-03-11T15:06:14.238-06:00In the Meantime<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">My next post here will transition from our thinking of Faith to thinking over John Ralston Saul's ideas. In the meantime, I'm presently writing something to form the basis for a movement to create a voice to contrast the Tea Party. Not on the basis of policy against policy, but on a basis of approach against approach when it comes to making our Society together. I'm calling it the Tavern Party. (America was born in Taverns- not ransacked ships).</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Clicking on my profile gets you to the actual blog site. I have the domains secured as well.</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Let me know what you think, Mike</span></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> A New Common Sense (beginning draft)</span></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><div style="text-align: left;">America, as history shows, wasn't born in a ransacked ship. America, was born in Taverns. Taverns where people from their walks of life took time to discuss with one another, the idea of giving Democracy another try. The last ones to try it on such a large scale, were the Greeks. They themselves gathered together in "Symposiums" to figure Democracy out; invent it we might say. Think of their Symposiums, as something very akin to our New England Taverns- rather than the dry academic lectures that comprise symposiums today. Maybe the only real difference came from the fact that the climate of Greece favored grapes and wine, while the climate of New England favored grain and beer. In either case, whether from the Greek Symposium, or the American Tavern, Democracy emerged when ordinary people such as you and I, gathered together in a manner that believed in the best of themselves, and of Life- and celebrated the prospect of living into the ultimate form of Society: Democracy.</div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:Georgia, serif;"><div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></span></div><div><div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'lucida grande'; ">And who wouldn't get excited at such a prospect? After all, most of human social history is the story of societies forming themselves by a hierarchy of some sort- which most likely funneled most of the flourishing to the top. The top in return, justified their privilege as due them, through some rationale involving God: before Christ it was Caesar; after Christ it was the Church. Democracy was our chance to break up the humanly sculpted irony of some people usurping God for their private gain on the backs of their neighbors.</span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Democracy (and what Christ really said about neighbors). Democracy's not bound in an ability to vote. It's bound in an ability to make together, a Society that supports diverse Human Life in ways that don't impede Life's innate push toward complexity- the complexity that Life needs in order to flourish. Societies that depend on precise or even vague homogeneity to form themselves, are not Democracies; we call them country clubs. The Tavern Party is formed today with the belief that America is about pursuing real Democracy once again, and that today, we have it backwards when we think ( like the Tea Party) that Democracy is about pursuing America. The America made larger than Democracy, is in reality, a mere ideology- a club of sorts. As for any of us longing for real Democracy know, ideologies exist in minds, and that real Democracy laughs at our puny attempts to domesticate it into some <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">homogeneous </span>geniality that can fit neatly between two ears.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Which <i>is</i> the larger, America or Democracy? When I listen to the war like rhetoric from the Radical Right I could conclude that America is. But I'm not fooled- I'm more intelligent than that; I'm more courageous too- as most of us are on both counts. All it's come to take to be an American it seems, is to do a few simple things: fix a narrow view of the world; wave a flag over it- (or at least wear one on your lapel); reduce complex ideas to taunting rhymes; stand to a side and puff up: things that we first learned to do on our childhood playgrounds, things that our parents and teachers worked so ardently to drive out of our budding characters: for the cause of growing up. Obviously, Democracy is the larger. And as such, is complex and demanding of all our intelligence- and maturity. Not just the kind of intelligence that builds expertise, but </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; ">the kind that seeks to</span> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; ">share in</span> common,<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "> the</span> sense <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; ">of complexity found in Life itself</span>; <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; ">Life's innate Complexity</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "> I would offer, serves as the basis for</span> <span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; ">our new</span></span></i><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><i> Common Sense</i></span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Basing our new Common Sense on the like of Nature's complexity takes courage though, because Courage faces the large as large; the complex as complex: anger in contrast shrinks things down to size in order to bully it; anger is too easy to come by, and sadly- is often mistaken for Courage. Ideology simplifies reality's innate complexity to bite sized pieces- and sound bites- and reduces Society to a play ground, where ideology bullies all who won't play its game of make believe. Ideology and anger are a natural boy-girl relationship; the kids on such play grounds look for the Alfalfa's and the Darla's for leadership.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></span></div></div></span></span></span></div></span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div></span></span><div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';">meant to continue</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></span></div></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3312179782230880680.post-54198316697275480602010-03-09T10:29:00.013-06:002010-03-09T15:15:14.083-06:00The Art of My Parents, Sally and Jerry.<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">At heart, I'm an Artist. My parents on the other hand, at heart- are not. Sal and Jer are conventional in a way they aspired to: a stable home life, dinner at five of a meat and potato, and a kindly relationship to their world. Today is their fifty first anniversary and I couldn't be more pleased or more proud that I get to call them Mom and Dad. Sal and Jer accomplished convention valiantly, and I along with my two brothers (twins not quite a year younger than me) and our families (six grand kids) thrive from their convention so valiantly achieved. </span></span><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">So at heart, what is an Artist? I would offer this explanation by way of my own experience and the descriptions of others who share in this experience: an Artist is one who can no longer be bound by convention. Not because convention itself is the problem- it's not; we need convention. It provides the ease required for society to form and create itself; with such ease in place, we become free to spend our energies on real tasks instead of having to also spend it on making up game rules and the like. Convention is utterly important. But it's never permanent: the Life that beckoned an earlier growth, having become satisfied, moves ahead and once again beckons us to grow again and create new convention. Artists are the ones who hear the Call before the rest of their Society; and as such they are the pioneers who willingly leave the finery of Bostons and Philadelphias- conventions so elegant- for the next frontier. And then after living in Life's next frontier, and developing a felt sense of it, Artists return to their place of conventional beginnings with maps. And hope. A hope that the maps will be both cogent and inspiring, as both are needed for people to be willing to risk the Boston they know for the one they'll have to make. To be sure, there are plenty who go by the name artist, but since all they really do is make a carnival of laughing at convention, while remaining within a convention's city limits, these people could more aptly be named jackals- not Artists. </span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Cogency and Inspiration is a serious responsibility.</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">This then is the rub: Sal and Jer gave birth to an Artist- one who's called to move past the very thing they not only aspired to- they spent their very selves in valiantly accomplishing: How do real champions of convention- at its best- understand a son, who through nobody's fault or planning, hears that beckoning call from our new frontier, and try as he might, can't ignore it?</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">The cliche' says that an artist's parents were establishment dolts who bought into capitalist dreams and strove for material riches in a way, that any one with a "right mind" (anti establishment) would rebel against such a travesty of authentic human being. But Sal and Jer didn't participate in the cliche'. They took convention seriously and embodied it in the way Life means it to be lived. They didn't give me anything to rebel against. Instead, they gave me something to aspire to; a life who's convention seeks decency in any way it can. </span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">I say this now, in honor of my parents and their anniversary because over the last few years, I have been able to again take up my Artist responsibilities of leaving the likes of Boston for our new frontier and map making, because my own two sons are happily involved with the women they will make their lives with. They are living into convention in a style that began with their grandparents; a style that I could only duplicate, a style to which Ben and Jake are now aspiring. My Dad, who began from a life of smoldering violence, joined with my Mom and created a home where I got to flourish ( in their home, anyone would); because of Sal and Jer's commitment to convention, our family history has a new trajectory that is now embodied in their grand kids. How far can such a trajectory of complete decency reach?</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Your reach, Mom and Dad, is the very basis from which I'm willing to trust Life's beckoning into its frontier and leave the finery of Boston and Philadelphia- and your Convention. Not because I find some fault in the Convention you accomplished so well, but because Life has a way of growing and then beckoning us to grow along with it. And when its time to grow, it falls to the Artists to make the Frontier and ways into it both cogent and inspiring. I hope for you to see that my work doesn't contradict you, it comes from you. </span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;">Happy Anniversary- I love you more than you could know.</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"> Mike.</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size:medium;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family:'lucida grande';"><br /></span></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3312179782230880680.post-67626378602132191022010-02-28T09:55:00.009-06:002016-07-19T09:24:37.448-05:00Incarnation, Ambiguity and Love. For Matt and Sara<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; line-height: 16px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Paradox is easy. Ambiguity takes Love.<br />
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This past week, my new family in-law suffered the loss of their new baby whom they named Evvy (E v v y): "the Cleavers", our favorite kind of family, were smashed by a loaded Semi. It wasn't sudden though, they didn't recklessly step into the street. Sara and Matt, young parents of two, learned that all the Mystery that so effortlessly forms babies, (universes really, when you compare them in every way to their own Beginning Bang) failed to form Evvy's kidneys; Potter's Disease is the clinical taxonomy: what do you call it when no clinic, no matter its might, can veer some inevitable truck?<br />
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Matt and Sara, packing so much courage into such young lives, determined with their family, that Evvy would know nothing but Love and Celebration while she experienced her brief incarnation as a daughter, sister and niece. They succeeded. I know because at her funeral, Evvy's casket was dwarfed by her presence that remains so large within her family; she's probably in more family photos than my own boys are- and they've been around for a quarter century.<br />
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Paradox is easy- consciousness: is it quantum? dualistic? determined? free? soul? material? matter? energy? epiphenomena?<br />
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What is easily lost in the convenience of paradox, is ambiguity's torture.<br />
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For us who are called into Human Being, we live daily with something that no other species encounters: Ambiguity. I would argue that it's infinitely easier to collapse an ambiguity into simple contradictions and fight over which sides are superior; the more difficult road I would continue to argue, entails holding a contradictory tension until you can find a higher unifying logic- thus transforming such tension into the pleasure that can only come from paradox: reaching a paradox is climatic. Ambiguity is something else.</span></span><br />
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Of the three, the road less traveled is Ambiguity. Losing a child can't be packed away into contradiction or a paradox: the same qualities that let Human Being into the world of Awe, let us into the world of Terror- where sometimes trucks come from nowhere, and sometimes come from a long way off: either way we hear its rumble... it's just a matter of how long we have in listening to its rumble.<br />
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Contradiction only requires cunning; paradox requires deep thoughtfulness; Ambiguity demands all that we have. That's why it takes Love to live in it: That's why- of the three roads- it's the least traveled.</span></span><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif; line-height: 16px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">Love has the muscle to rise above Ambiguity's torture. Love can't exist in a vacuum though, it needs embodiment; and more, it can't exist within a body itself, it can only exist in the spaces between Bodies: between Evvy and her Mother's breast; her Father's fierce protection; her siblings' camaraderie; beyond these closest of confines stands her Wall of Love that is founded on her Grandparents, Aunts, Uncles and Cousins. It's Love that sees us into this world, and it's Love that sees us out. It's the road between, with its constant threat of ambiguity, that often scares us off it; soon we acclimate to fear and its myriad of expressions that stem from </span><span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">desperation</span></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> instead of an inner fullness. </span></span></div>
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 16px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><br />
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<span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: #333333; font-family: "arial" , sans-serif;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 16px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">So in the end, there is in actuality, only one road. However, it's </span><i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">how</span></i><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"> we choose to walk it, that determines where the road will lead; it's destination is relative to what happens in the spaces between us. Hopefully, we can fill the spaces between us the way Sara and Matt filled the space around their daughter Evvy.<br />
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Unknownnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3312179782230880680.post-72070955221465501302010-02-26T07:54:00.003-06:002010-02-26T10:36:32.669-06:00Why I Believe in a God that Doesn't Exist<div style="text-align: justify;">Do I believe in God? Yes.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Can I define the nature of God? No.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Does God exist? No.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Do I believe in my computer? Yes.</div><div style="text-align: justify;">Does my computer exist? Yes.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">An odd group of questions wouldn't you say? As odd as this group is, working through these questions will actually help us make more sense of being human, spirituality, science and even our ideas of God. Since we've been considering the idea of faith, lets begin with my believing in the computer I'm writing this post on.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">By now it should be obvious to you that I believe in my computer. If I didn't, I wouldn't be writing on it. Now, does my belief- or faith- in my computer, have anything to do with making it real or unreal? No- right? However, because this computer is thus far credible to me, I believe in it to a level where I'm willing to type my thoughts here and send them to you for your analysis; if I didn't believe, (or have faith) in my computer, I'd have to find another computer that demonstrated enough credibility, to garner the belief necessary to write on it.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">What about my computer existing? Let me just say here that we're safe to infer the obvious. Besides, it's not late enough, and nor are we in a bar together.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">So now I hope you're wondering how I can believe in God if I at the same time assert that God does not exist! And if we were indeed at that bar together, I'd answer with the best Bill Clinton I could muster, "well, it depends on what your definition of "exist" is." Refreshing myself with a sip, I'd go on to explain that the etymology of the word exist, gets at the idea of <i>standing out from</i>. (As a side note, and by way of explaining what I mean with out going down a path that deserves a hike, just not now- you could say that a huge herd of people try out for American Idol; only those that <i>stand out</i> in specific ways will get a chance to win: <i>to stand out the most</i>. The question for later, centers on asking if this standout contestant also <i>exists</i> more than the herd from which he <i>exists</i>- or <i>stands out</i>?) </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Are you getting the picture? God does not exist because God does not stand out: any consideration of God's nature, has to begin with understanding that existence is a standing out, and as such, any "God" that stands out is not yet God, but just another existent thing. God that is any God at all, will be that <i>from which existence stands out</i>. In other words, that which God stands out from, is God. In the parlance of Christian language, any God that exists is an idol.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Oops, it looks like I just defined God. It looks that way but I don't think I did. All I pointed to was what God couldn't be- an idol. This is important to understand, because usually, when we've entered into faith through God, God becomes the ground of our world; here we're apt to take our ability to form nouns seriously: what are nouns? persons, places or things (or ideas); in other words, things that exist. And as I'm trying to show you, idols instead of God combined with certainty instead of faith, make for an explosive concoction in the making of our personal ground.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Earlier in past commentary, Stephen told of his working out the synthesizing of his Christian faith and his Science faith. We're building the ground to do that work; not only to solve dissonance, but to recognize that by doing so, we'll be closer to filling out the Human Being that is here to Exist.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Yes Virginia, there is a God who doesn't exist.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3312179782230880680.post-24978099739500076612010-02-25T09:19:00.004-06:002010-02-25T13:14:35.415-06:00Physics and SophisticationIn my profile at right, I claimed that in my thinking, my concerns are both theoretical AND practical. Perhaps it's time for some practicality and watch faith in action.<div><br /></div><div>What is more real, a gun or an idea? If a gun is so much more real, why do we often freak out when certain ideas of ours are somehow challenged- a freak out, which if you measured it by means of MRI and the like, would look exactly like one experienced, when someone points a loaded gun at you? Science, which is at heart physics, has made a comfortable <i>world</i> to live in. What I mean, is not only are we more comfortable in <i>nature</i>, in terms of houses, central heat, computers and etc., our worlds too, have become simpler as we've become accustomed to conceiving ourselves as objects in space bumping one another. Science has provided a framework in which guns and cameras are real, as well as assuring us, that the images a photographer captures on paper is not <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">someone's</span> soul...this is sophistication.</div><div><br /></div><div>Yet, the most sophisticated organism to have ever existed, lives from something we call ideas- "things" which can't be seen directly by any means we would call empirical.</div><div><br /></div><div>Physics, capital P, is a framework of understanding reality. It began with Newton and his laws of objects and motion, and the rest of science builds upon this mentality. Whether science is hard- chemistry, biology and physics (small p), or soft, psychology, sociology and economics- the mentality is built on the same logic of bodies interacting through law like motion with other bodies. This mentality easily makes sense of guns and bullets; this mentality has a difficult time making sense of ideas and meaning; this mentality is the ground of our shared world, which is our culture: which as world, doesn't exist like nature, where there, Physics can make perfect and accurate sense of things. </div><div><br /></div><div>World is not nature: Most often, when you interact with people, do you do so on a basis that is World, or on a basis that is Nature? In world, ideas can be as real as guns because we're not just bodies acted on by forces; we are also bodies who share spaces with one another who respond to <i>meaning</i>. Remember how we talked about worlds needing <i>world views</i> to take the place of "a ground to walk on"? (Which in nature comes to us ready made?) This "soil" which we all must make and then use to form each of our individual ground, is comprised of stuff that is <i>meaning-full</i> to us. In this case, what kind of "Physics" do we have to understand the reality of Meaning, that will not just let meaning feel as real as any physical object, but let meaning be just as real on its own terms, instead of only being considered as something merely decorative to the physical?</div><div><br /></div><div>I promised practical. Recount those times in your life when you've shared in the discussion of ideas. It could be a meeting at the office, on the street, in a church, at a coffee shop or a bar; maybe even at a "Tea Party." More likely than not, someone in such a meeting reacted like a stirred hornet's nest: this person just experienced a gun being pointed at him. He can no longer participate in the exploration of ideas, because the ideas from which he grounds himself are felt in jeopardy. All the fight and flight mechanisms that are there for us to employ in the face of threat are brought to bare in a conversation...where no guns are present.</div><div><br /></div><div>So what is sophistication? And what can Physics even say about it?</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3312179782230880680.post-83483827279128871182010-02-24T08:50:00.008-06:002010-02-24T14:39:24.294-06:00Innocence and ExperienceWho are you? When I ask my Golden Retriever, Sam, that question, the only answer I get from him is his typical smile and gleam that make him look like he's waking up to Christmas morning- for the eighth time today! Let's go back to you though: If you were to rewind what played out in your mind in the brief time it took you to read my account of Sam, what will you see? What ever its contents, you probably experienced something akin to a <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">bb's</span> impact of a windshield where its impact sets off a random crazing; each line <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">zig</span>-<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">zagging</span> you through holidays, pets, adjacent meanings and maybe even a new connection of insight. Unpacking your moment in this way, shows you that these moments exist like genes: unraveled, they're thousands of times bigger! Welcome to World; and like Dorothy you're not in Kansas any more.<div><br /></div><div>That is to say, you don't just exist in environment any more. Put into the poetic language of Genesis and the Garden of Eden, my dog Sam still lives in the Garden: I don't. And neither do you. Sam inhabits a place of Innocence. <span class="blsp-spelling-corrected" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">Ours</span> is the place of Experience.</div><div><br /></div><div>So what is this place that we inhabit? Why have we thought of our place as a fallen one? Why is Experience so difficult compared to Innocence? What do these questions have to do with physics, quantum or otherwise? Why does the Canada Goose, though gliding along water- moments from ice, under grey skies bombarding it with sleet, make its existence of dunking its head for green bits, make life look so easy? Why can't we, no matter how hard we try, revert to the way-of-being exemplified by a simple goose? Why can't we, now that we have World, go back to Nature?</div><div><br /></div><div>Composing thousands of years ago, before writing came into existence, the poets behind the Garden story, told of the gates which bar human kind from returning to the garden, as being guarded by God's servants with flaming swords. Re-entry, no matter how desolate we feel in our "expulsion", is for ever out of the question. In a very real way, when I pet Sam, I'm reaching through steel bars when I do so. He lives in a realm of Innocence; You and I live in the realm of Experience.</div><div><br /></div><div>We can't let words like God and Evolution detract us from the real issue at hand: we live through World and we can't go back to living through Nature; that is, we can't go back to the life of Sam or Canada Geese. Like it or not, we are stuck in Experience, and any attempt out of it by way of escaping into Innocence is for ever barred.</div><div><br /></div><div>If we are to understand what it is to ultimately be Human, we have to grasp what it is to live in Experience- through World and not Nature. You are not an object, you are a world: the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4">bb's</span> impact shows you that. This world-<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5">ness</span> of our existence is full of implications that cannot be mastered or even understood by forms of measurement- the language of science. We have to employ the methods of the Poet as well.</div><div><br /></div><div>So we haven't left our discussion of Faith; we are only bringing into the spotlight, the context of our Human Complexity to better understand how Faith fits into the life of Experience.</div><div><br /></div><div>What are your thoughts so far? </div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div> </div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3312179782230880680.post-27568551263848275682010-02-22T07:45:00.008-06:002010-02-24T08:49:21.658-06:00FaithVI: Environment and WorldSo far, I've talked about faith dramatically in terms of high wires and Niagara Falls, and mundanely in terms of driving, and executing a beer run. In each case, I'm trying to show you that faith is uniquely human and stems from the genius involved in being human; a genius not of our own making, a genius not present in the Canada goose, a genius that forms the basis of human difficulty: having to live in a realm that technically, is not environmental, and is one of our own choosing.<div><br /></div><div>For sake of discussion, I want to use word environment to designate specifically the realm in which an organism exchanges energy for the purpose of supporting its physicality. Here we can talk about organisms and ecosystems, whether they be grizzly's and Alaskan rivers, or bacteria and petri-dishes or our gut, analyzing the health of a system entails studying the interactions of bodies and environment and assessing their fitness. And because we humans share in having bodies that have to connect to environment, we our selves fall under such analysis. And under such analysis, one of the things we notice is that bodies have innate systems that orient them to the environment, one such system being sight and horizon lines.</div><div><br /></div><div>Most of the living for Human Being though, doesn't transpire through environment it transpires through <i>world</i>. World, for sake of discussion, is different than environment; at its heart, there is no physicality to it. If I give you two apples, mathematically and environmentally speaking, I gave you two objects of nutrition. From the point of view of world, only you will know what this means; maybe for you, it's not about nutrition, or the number two. Maybe for you in this moment, it's about kindness which you haven't experienced in a long while; in this case you could say that I didn't give you two apples, what I actually gave you was a glass of cold water to alleviate something parched. So what was parched? If we employed a moisture meter would we be able to measure how parched you are?</div><div><br /></div><div>Are you feeling the difference between world and environment? It's not that world and environment are separate- they're not. But just because they're not separate doesn't mean they're not different. A large part of living into our human complexity, is to understand what this difference entails for us humans.</div><div><br /></div><div>Maybe the largest difference between world and environment, is that world doesn't come with ready made orientation systems like sight and horizon lines. Yet our need for orientation in world, is needed every bit as much as it is in environment. So what is the orientation system in world, where there are no horizon lines, no established up and down and infinity in all directions?</div><div><br /></div><div>Well at the heart of it all, we need to recognize, that in place of any horizon lines providing perpendicularity, or gravity providing connection, we have world-views: a network of ideas about a reality that consists as both environment and world; a network of ideas in which we are willing to believe in, in order to orient our selves into a felt sense of place. Just because ideas lack the physicality of balls and ramps, or electrons and double slit experiments, doesn't make the idea less "tangible". <i>Only those ideas that to us feel credible</i>, can become the ideas we will come to <i>believe</i> and make into the ground of our world; such grounding can center on "brand name consuming", professional sub cultures, science sub-cultures, religious subcultures, and maybe even God (or not-God): No matter your ground- because it consists of ideas that you weave into your world-view, that you have to decide for yourself which to employ- your ground can ultimately be called your <i>Faith.</i> </div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3312179782230880680.post-55418923211356991232010-02-21T07:41:00.011-06:002010-02-22T07:30:51.736-06:00Faith V: Quest, Question, and Beer.<i>"</i>I<i> believe</i> in our innate capacity to believe; no other species seems to have this capacity." I could also write this sentence in another way to mean exactly the same thing: "I<i> have faith</i> in our innate capacity to believe; no other species seems to have this capacity." How are these two sentences synonymous? <div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>I said in the last post that the words faith and believe are inexorably linked and this is how: faith is a noun form, and believe is a verb form of the same experience. So- do you believe your trip to the store will succeed? Of course- you wouldn't even get into the car if you didn't- you're an intelligent person after all. But watch this- I can write the exact same question which will only be different in aesthetics: "Do you <i>have faith</i> that your trip to the store will succeed?" (and then go on to state my <i>belief</i> in your intelligence).... At this point, you can see that this question of my <i>belief</i>- a past predicate, my <i>believing</i>- a gerund, and my <i>faith</i>- a noun, in the intelligence of you the reader, hinges on whether the proposition of you the reader being intelligent, is a credible one or not. (Believe me, the reality that you're intelligent is credible indeed! So I have faith in you.)</div><div><br /></div><div>This inexorable link of faith and believe is seen more apparently when you begin with the original Greek words, which we translate into the modern words faith and believe: <i><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">Pistis</span></i> and <i><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">Pistewo</span>.</i> When ever you are reading through a New Testament Text, and you come across our word faith, you are reading the underlying Greek noun, <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">Pistis</span>. And when you come across our word believe, you are reading the underlying Greek verb, <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">Pistewo</span>. At the heart of this word group, is <i>living into, and I would add- living into through question.</i></div><div><br /></div><div>No other species, I believe, is forced into living by question. The Canada goose certainly lives it's life through a quest, but these are quests of biology and environment; its satisfaction depends on its body remaining warm while gliding along November ponds and blithely dunking its head for bits. (You could probably sum up the life of our goose by Thermodynamics.) </div><div><br /></div><div>To live through question is entirely different than living through quest. In fact, you could say that understanding such difference is imperative to understanding Human Being. The mundane task of driving to the store begins as a quest for something like beer, but is innately involved in question and faith. (I'm purposely talking about faith in such a mundane scale because, unless we can get a felt sense of it here at this scale, we won't be able interact with faith at ultimate scales without getting unwieldy). </div><div><br /></div><div>So looking at faith in this mundane scale of a quest for beer, what are we to consider of it?</div><div><br /></div><div>Well, faith is about living into; and because this happens through question besides biological quest, the idea of completing your beer run has to be credible to you. <i>Faith requires credibility</i>.</div><div>But, even though, completing a beer run may be sufficiently credible, until you actually get in the car and go, your faith will not be energized. <i>Faith requires coherent action</i>.</div><div><br /></div><div>A crisis of faith is a symptom and not a cause: to try to whip up more faith is to only address symptoms. The underlying cause comes from needing to live into a world by way of question and not having a credible "vehicle" in which to make that trip: A person who feels their suffering as a lack of faith, is encountering an issue of credibility. </div><div><br /></div><div>The question often posed in our context is, "whats the relationship of faith to reason?" as if they are two separate pathways, one being inferior. I hope you're beginning to see that reason is involved in faith but exists as a whole other genus or kind etc.; while you're driving the car you better be using the full faculty of reason. But it's faith that gets you into the car and onto the road with all the other cars, so you can fulfill your quest for some cold ones. </div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0