Spiderweb

The following is a response to Greg's post today. He had warned me in an IM that he was gonna tackle this and I am utterly taken by it. I even think the "context" of recovery from being shitfaced adds. My responses will be in italics.

Usually when I drink my ass off the night before, I get a bit more reflective than usual the next morning. I was shitfaced last night so by my very nature, I must ramble on.

I kinda think it is we are pretty in touch with mortality and our animal nature (creeeech!blah!).

I've been thinking alot about concepts. I like concepts. They are like Penthouses for mental masturbation. When I think, I try to think as if words did not exist. People often muttle around with words as entities in and of themselves, ignoring the layers and layers of reality beneath them and being represented by them. As if they were reading poetry for its face value; things get confusing. One starts asking himself, "What the fuck is the deal with that empty, cracked vase?" To me, every single word in this buckyball of a language is a fragment of a poem waiting to be analyzed.

I was criticizing "rationalism" earlier today, but it's guys like Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann who have demonstrated that the "reality" we so often deal with as "objective" is a "linguistic construct". Or maybe to put it more poetically (you know how I love Pascal) "All the gold in the world has no value without our consent."

Therein lies the concepts. And I was thinking the other day. Well, ya know how there is a Theory of Everything in science? Because fundamentally it makes sense that complexity is constructed upon simplicity, among other reasons. That all has to do with matter, but I was wondering how this Theory of Everything applies to concepts as well. Which isn't to say that every concept stemmed from one singular concept. That wouldn't make sense. Or maybe it does. It would essentially mean however, that everything is somehow interconnected, or most likely overlapping. Duh, right? Yet what does this do to the concepts of right or wrong? If there are so many ways to view reality.

It may have little to do with "right and wrong" but simply what IS.

Is it right or wrong for people to be relational, or are they simply so?

Being that, it is possible for something to exist in our language yet not exist in an utmost sense.

Great question. Does a pink polka-dotted elephant exist in reality? No...but the idea is there. Human beings can create whole worlds with words that do not exist and never will...I think.

And many times language will set people on the wrong path. Right and wrong are a false dichotomy. It is Dubbyah-Bush-Think. They are lumper words. Someone can be wrong, yet still maintain some rightness. But the concepts themselves nudge people to polarize their view into something tidy. Such as being entirely wrong or entirely right. But that is wrong, am I not right?

This is my favorite part of your essay. Love it.

There may be dichotomies in "Truth" also Trichotomies...also Paradox and 30 other epistemologies that are inter-related.

You are right that we are currently being "Polarized" by a black and whiteness, and for economic and political (rhetorical) purposes. But are not so limited.

I have another theory I have been working on called "Depth Pluralism". It may provide not the "Answer", but a least healthy new pathways for deeper discussion. Discussions like this one.

Which isn't to say that there is no right or wrong. Bad logic is simply wrong, even if logic has its parameters. I just think this linear train of thinking has to go.

Once again I tip my cap. Relativism is a self-made trap, but so is rigid certainty. You state it well.

A linear train is helpful in some areas, but does not match up with all the avenues we now know exist and those which have yet to be discovered.

Concepts evolve, branch off, one train of thought leads to another, which leads to another, until the two paradigms of thought are unrecognizable to each other; yet the relationship between them still exists. And everything in between them is worthwhile to explore.

Are you sure you are not 57 and a Lurker?

Fuck that is good.

Rosemary Haughton wrote about this, briefly, in a little seen book way back called "The Passionate God". It was ostensibly theology, but she was doing far more.

I'll try and dig it up and send you two some relevant quotes to riff off of. But if I remember, the gist was about how ideas and concepts bump into each other and create something utterly new.

But anyways I'm gonna go take a nap because my head is pounding and I drank too much last night. But one last thing. My friend the other day got things confused and called me a nihilist. Far from it. While nihilist say we cannot know, I say that's not the only way to know. The problem is, once we think we know, we stop looking. What ever happened to being like a child?

Good luck recovering...yikes...you are no Nihilist. You are seeking with intelligence and heart and the last line is a thing of beauty. Forget the "Fundies" ...Jesus would grin and say you got it.

I look forward to future discussions.