Following the public discourse online these days amounts to consumption of sensationalized soundbites that are anything but enlightening. I find it upsetting focusing, as the various media does, on the extremes whether it be weather, politics or divisive personalities.
The negative vibes have caused me to reduce my nightly news viewing to three days a week, still painful but I guess necessary in order to maintain a sense of current events even as they ominously portend a world on the brink of collapse.
Just thinking about it exacerbates my exasperation. I guess I should be thankful my world is still a place I can vent.
I’m anticipating, as summer approaches, extended social encounters I will likely find uncomfortable. The realization that my visitors live their lives within realities different than mine, that the narratives they spin are often contradictory to my own makes for a certain tension, always present and energy sapping.
The rule to avoid talk of religion and politics is always warranted but even with that, philosophical conflicts are bound to occur. In other years I have relied on a bit of chemical numbing to see me through but I’m aware now, as my functioning slows, my ability to quickly retort wains, I must take care, to stay articulate so as not to produce even greater discomfort.
But, as you might have guessed, these visitors are family and the value of maintaining an open communication with them may be the most important thing I ever do.
In 16th Century Europe, Luther’s Reformation provided a popular alternative for a population aggrieved by the excessive taxation imposed by the Roman church. The schism produced opposing factions that felt the need to impose doctrinal absolutes on their respective believers in order to reinforce professed Christian legitimacy. Heretics were found, declared and burned and in France the protestant Huguenots were slaughtered by ruling Catholics.
In response to the unchristian-like actions the French philosopher Michel de Montaigne offered some enlightening insights. He suggested if one took any one of his firmly held beliefs and then took time to consider the opposite view openly and thoroughly, he might very well change his opinion.
Unfortunately, his skepticism of rigid dogmatic belief did little to defer the unsettled populations, who ignored reason and continued to each passionately pursue their preferred narratives. Some things never change.
I’ve been reading that, while the reformation of the Christian Church in 16th century Europe, the establishment of Protestantism in reaction to a corrupt Catholic Church, would, on the face of it, appear to be a time of enlightened reform, quite the opposite was true.
Luther’s translation of the Bible into German made it available to a laity that was then able to form churches based on their understanding of Biblical truth, which tended to vary, sometimes considerably, from one congregation to the next. This precipitated accusations of heresy and totalitarian mindsets closed to sectarian differences, leading to an intolerance greater even than that of the Catholic hierarchy.
These issues were all pretty important back then, people believing, as they did, that Hell was in store for most of the population.
I’ve been reading about the influence Plato and Aristotle had on the medieval Christian church. The thoughts of these two Greek philosophers were responsible for doctrinal controversy within the church hierarchy.
Plato, whose concept of ‘Ideal Forms’, on which the flawed material world was derivative provided some in the early church insight to see Plato as foretelling the existence of the Christian God, a God beyond rational understanding, a God unknowable before the Christ, to be accepted and revered through faithful observance. Thomas Aquinas, empiricist, thoughtful inquirer, found Aristotle’s sensate investigations proof of an ordered, natural world made that way by an omnipotent God. The contradictory thinking produced on the one hand the necessity of ‘blind faith’, the faithful encouraged to accept the mystery that is God, and, on the other an enquiring laity whose faith and rational understanding was based on knowledge.
The philosophical controversy still exists to this day but at the time paled in comparison to the power struggles and corruption within the medieval church.
I’ve been reading about the intellectual world in Western Europe as it existed in the early centuries of the second millennium.
With the fall of Roman Civilization 600 years earlier, scholarship had declined, knowledge of the past had been reduced to monastic reproductions of Latin texts providing the church the opportunity to re-imagine the historical narrative to its own advantage, limiting it to a closed Christian perspective and its reliance on the ‘Word of God’ to explain the complexities of the natural world.
This constrictive culture led the few scholars of the time, whose concern for self-preservation amid accusations of heresy, to temper any announcements of research findings setting back intellectual development for centuries.
The eventual breaking free of such a restrictive situation can only be attributed to the indomitable human spirit, even though it did take a long time.
I’ve been reading about Robert Irwin the mid-20th century Abstract Expressionist painter who pushed the boundaries of what a painting could be. After struggling for years to solve the figure/ground problem (the ‘problem’ being how to make a painting of substance that contained no object or background) his concerns turned to the problem of eliminating the restrictions of the format, the limiting edges of the canvas.
Using reflected, carefully placed lighting and a small translucent disc he was able to extend a shadowy image upon the vertical wall surface. Viewers appreciating, I guess, the time and energy spent by an artist of recognized commitment and needing to put language to what they were seeing addressed the ‘beauty’ of this new work much to the consternation of the artist who had no thought whatsoever of aesthetics in what he was producing.
Maybe applying language to visual art should be tempered. Investigations such as Irwin’s should elicit unspoken personal response rather than public comment.
I’ve been reading that the political situation in America before the revolution was pretty chaotic. Over the previous 200 years (before the revolution) the population of indigenous people native to the eastern parts of the continent had grown knowledgeable of the immigrant culture, acquired the English language and European bargaining savvy. By consolidating various tribal groups in the common interest of securing their indigenous lands Native Americans fought back against the new settlers.
At the same time the various colonies established by the immigrant Europeans had disparate economic concerns, had trouble in presenting any sort of united front in opposition to the taxes and restrictions imposed by the imperialist English. The colonists’ ire manifested itself in attacks against their British overlords, destroying property and generally raising havoc.
The British found the slave trade quite lucrative, kidnapping thousands of native Africans from off their tribal lands to work southern plantations and to sell for household slaves. In some parts of the American south, the black population came to nearly equaling the white colonists in numbers. Enslaved Africans, like their native American counterparts readily adapted to the white culture and although suffering devastating reprisals rose in opposition to their enslavement adding further instability to colonial life.
At the same time wealthy colonists sought to acquire lands for themselves west of the Appalachian Mountains, a land-grab that pitted the colonists against the King’s Royal ownership of all American lands and further upsetting the indigenous population who knew for certain who’s land it was.
I guess we all know who the winners and losers were in these early power struggles. 250 years later, with guilty consciences, talking reparations for injustices perpetrated, we’ve hopefully come to realize the actions of the new immigrants of the time were less then purely heroic.
I’ve become aware, lately, that my verbal offerings, comments and responses, while visiting with others in small gatherings of family and friends, elicit responses I had no intention of eliciting; it appears that what I say is often interpreted in vastly different ways than intended. And this, even though I’m careful these days to withhold or at least moderate strong personal opinions.
When I was younger, I held small regard for countering someone’s opinion, relished, in fact, the opposition. But I don’t feel that way anymore. I hold back these days. But now It would appear that sometimes concessions are expected, admission of guilt, a desire for me to reveal my inadequacies, personal weaknesses: concessions I’m not willing to give. The whole idea of such a scenario I find extremely winceable, beyond my capacity to the point of exasperation.
If one is to maintain a sense of pride in achievement, a sense of worth, restraint must be exercised, emotions withheld; an acceptance of the potential volatility of personal relationships, a willingness to let go. It all becomes exitential in the end, I guess.
I guess no one really understands who or what we are. Researchers continue to find new infinitesimal entities, described as particles and/or waves that are the sub-atomic components of our material makeup. Well, ‘find’ is maybe the wrong word since these entities can’t be seen but only sensed by their movements. These entities existing within the primary forces of nature, electro-magnetism, weak/strong forces and gravity are the elusive quarks, bosons and leptons that complicate physical understanding. Physicists continue to seek mathematical structures that explain how everything fits together, to find a ‘grand unification theory’ but as new entities of enigmatic forms and behaviors are found the developing picture blurs.
Some prescient thinkers of the past warned of the travails of seeking a final answer, notably the philosopher E. Kant, in the 18th century no less, warned of pursuing that which is not adapted to our powers of cognition.
It would appear there are things we just can’t know.
deideismusings 