You'll Just Forget Again
Sep. 27th, 2004 06:59 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jakebe
I think a lingering sense of unease from Saturday carried over and came to a head last night, because I just felt worse and worse trying to write something. After a while I got distracted with more pedestrian pursuits, I guess, and since that didn't turn out too well I thought it might be best for everyone involved if I just went to bed. Had a rather interesting dream, though I'm not sure if the *subject* of the dream would be flattered or worried I was stalking him if I told him about it. I'll just not name names. :)
Basically, I was in this place that was full of people who were steadily and irrevocably growing. They were all furs, of course, and couldn't really help their situation. They were all in various shades of distress and undress; some of them were bumping the ceiling, while others were 'just' rattling floorboards. The *leader* of this impromptu 'revolution' was an old wolf who never officially took up the role; he was just one of those old wise men who everyone looked to for answers. Anyway, he couldn't fit indoors without lying down, pretty much, and it looked like he had fashioned a pipe out of a log or something (and here I probably have given the game away). I talked to him for a little bit but can't remember what he said, and then I woke up.
People are usually all like, "Wolves wolved OMG yum yum." And most of the time I'm all like, "I don't get it." But two wolves in particular are all like, "What, did you not get the memo son? Here." And now I'm all like. "OH!" And they're like, "Yeah." The moral of this story: Wolves are hot. Who knew?
My life lately has been marked by a particular rut of not-trying, and I could sit here and talk about it endlessly the way I used to, or I could actually do something about it. I'm choosing the latter, because I'd rather not subject my friends to my constantly shifting mental process. I don't know if this is a problem or not, but I've taken against developing a specific paradigm or world-view beyond Zen. The rest is pretty much whim. Raven pops up much of the time but beyond that anything goes. You want to believe that God can be found in beta carotine? Hey, if it helps, go for it! I abhor the idea of telling someone else they're wrong, or at the very least misguided, or wasting their time; there's more than enough people going around telling other people how they should live their lives. My voice is just not going to be used for that.
That makes me rather reluctant to view someone else's ideas critically, which *is* a character flaw. When you get right down to it, logic is all right as a tool but people hold it up to be this be-all and end-all of any debate where it isn't really. Just because something is illogical doesn't mean it's not true. But *that's* a statement that derides all those 'logicians'. It's drawing a line in the sand that I'm going to have to defend. And in the end I just can't be fucked with all that. Believe what you want.
Permissiveness and apathy are often two sides of the same coin.
Edit: All right, so upon reflection it occured to me that I probably shouldn't be attacking the idea of logic, which is actually pretty sound and only makes me look like an ignorant palooka (and I'll admit freely to probably *being* one). The problem I'm describing has nothing to do with the standard of logic, but rather our implementation and understanding of it. There are many things in the world that can't be readily explained by logic, if explained at all, and I would daresay that our more esoteric emotional states often prompt us to do things that fly in the face of logic just because it 'feels right'. For example, we can't logically prove that the Universe didn't just pop into existence five minutes ago exactly as it is, with all of our usual methods of measuring time intact. This is because the things we use to rely on the knowledge of time's passing (memory and the testimony of other people) isn't infallible; there's no way we can prove the veracity of each without relying on the other. Still, we believe the Universe is longer than five minutes old because it just 'feels right'.
Philosophy has come up with a few choice rules to allow for intuition in the face of logic, but still, from its foundation there has to be room for doubt. Maybe our understanding of the way things are isn't reflective of reality at *all*, and maybe despite the enormous variety of paradigms and world-views present on the face of Earth today and throughout the pages of history, no one has come even close to pegging the nature of reality.
This is one of the biggest reasons I don't like telling someone "You're wrong." What gives me the right to, when there's a good chance I'm as far off the mark as he is? In Tom Harner's "The Way of the Shaman," the author proposes that a good shaman will never discount the reality of another individual; often, when an initiate comes back from 'non-ordinary reality' and describes his experience, the shaman will often say something to the effect of 'just so,' even if the insight gained by the initiate doesn't quite check with what the shaman's learned. In the end, who can prove that all of the shamanic visions that have been received aren't simply the results of people fucking up their brains to the point it starts twitching out? I mean, most ecstatic/mystical/shamanic journeys involve drugs or breaking down the body's will to the point of near-exhaustion. Who's to say that shamanic visions are real but near-death experiences aren't? You simply don't *know*. Some things are more likely than other things, granted, but...there's never an absolute certainty.
What chaps me about a lot of people's belief systems is there's no room for doubt. A lot of people never stop to think that they might be wrong. Debate only worsens this tendency; people become so entrenched in their positions that they never stop to think, or to see their opponent's side of the issue.
No where is this more prevalent than in politics today. What the fuck is wrong with people? The villainization of either party is one of the most sickening, destructive things in America today; it encourages people to think of their neighbors as uncompassionate monsters, idiots or bigots just because they have a bumper sticker supporting the other guy. John Kerry is not a shifty flip-flopper, and his followers aren't stupid rabid whiners; George Bush isn't an idiotic, callous asshole, and his followers aren't brainwashed zombies. Despite all evidence to the contrary, this isn't true for *everyone* who sports a Bush-Cheney/Kerry-Edwards sticker, and it certainly isn't true for the candidates. Knock it off.
While I am passionately anti-Bush, and I really honestly worry about what another four years under him would do to this country and the rest of the world, I'm not going to flame down other people who think Bush is a great, principled man. He has a reason for his policies, and his supporters have a reason for believing in them. Just because we might disagree doesn't mean that we both don't want what's best for the country. Neither Republicans or Democrats are un-American; we just have vastly different visions of where this nation should go.
It's far too easy, in debating, to forget that underneath the differences in opinions there's often the same desire. We all want 'truth'. We all want what's best for us. And we're all largely blind to most of the complexity in the world we live in.
I mean, we can't even figure out how old the Universe *really* is (though we can make fairly educated guesses based on all available data)...how can we trust ourselves to pick the better man to lead the country?
That's what I'm really saying, I guess.
Basically, I was in this place that was full of people who were steadily and irrevocably growing. They were all furs, of course, and couldn't really help their situation. They were all in various shades of distress and undress; some of them were bumping the ceiling, while others were 'just' rattling floorboards. The *leader* of this impromptu 'revolution' was an old wolf who never officially took up the role; he was just one of those old wise men who everyone looked to for answers. Anyway, he couldn't fit indoors without lying down, pretty much, and it looked like he had fashioned a pipe out of a log or something (and here I probably have given the game away). I talked to him for a little bit but can't remember what he said, and then I woke up.
People are usually all like, "Wolves wolved OMG yum yum." And most of the time I'm all like, "I don't get it." But two wolves in particular are all like, "What, did you not get the memo son? Here." And now I'm all like. "OH!" And they're like, "Yeah." The moral of this story: Wolves are hot. Who knew?
My life lately has been marked by a particular rut of not-trying, and I could sit here and talk about it endlessly the way I used to, or I could actually do something about it. I'm choosing the latter, because I'd rather not subject my friends to my constantly shifting mental process. I don't know if this is a problem or not, but I've taken against developing a specific paradigm or world-view beyond Zen. The rest is pretty much whim. Raven pops up much of the time but beyond that anything goes. You want to believe that God can be found in beta carotine? Hey, if it helps, go for it! I abhor the idea of telling someone else they're wrong, or at the very least misguided, or wasting their time; there's more than enough people going around telling other people how they should live their lives. My voice is just not going to be used for that.
That makes me rather reluctant to view someone else's ideas critically, which *is* a character flaw. When you get right down to it, logic is all right as a tool but people hold it up to be this be-all and end-all of any debate where it isn't really. Just because something is illogical doesn't mean it's not true. But *that's* a statement that derides all those 'logicians'. It's drawing a line in the sand that I'm going to have to defend. And in the end I just can't be fucked with all that. Believe what you want.
Permissiveness and apathy are often two sides of the same coin.
Edit: All right, so upon reflection it occured to me that I probably shouldn't be attacking the idea of logic, which is actually pretty sound and only makes me look like an ignorant palooka (and I'll admit freely to probably *being* one). The problem I'm describing has nothing to do with the standard of logic, but rather our implementation and understanding of it. There are many things in the world that can't be readily explained by logic, if explained at all, and I would daresay that our more esoteric emotional states often prompt us to do things that fly in the face of logic just because it 'feels right'. For example, we can't logically prove that the Universe didn't just pop into existence five minutes ago exactly as it is, with all of our usual methods of measuring time intact. This is because the things we use to rely on the knowledge of time's passing (memory and the testimony of other people) isn't infallible; there's no way we can prove the veracity of each without relying on the other. Still, we believe the Universe is longer than five minutes old because it just 'feels right'.
Philosophy has come up with a few choice rules to allow for intuition in the face of logic, but still, from its foundation there has to be room for doubt. Maybe our understanding of the way things are isn't reflective of reality at *all*, and maybe despite the enormous variety of paradigms and world-views present on the face of Earth today and throughout the pages of history, no one has come even close to pegging the nature of reality.
This is one of the biggest reasons I don't like telling someone "You're wrong." What gives me the right to, when there's a good chance I'm as far off the mark as he is? In Tom Harner's "The Way of the Shaman," the author proposes that a good shaman will never discount the reality of another individual; often, when an initiate comes back from 'non-ordinary reality' and describes his experience, the shaman will often say something to the effect of 'just so,' even if the insight gained by the initiate doesn't quite check with what the shaman's learned. In the end, who can prove that all of the shamanic visions that have been received aren't simply the results of people fucking up their brains to the point it starts twitching out? I mean, most ecstatic/mystical/shamanic journeys involve drugs or breaking down the body's will to the point of near-exhaustion. Who's to say that shamanic visions are real but near-death experiences aren't? You simply don't *know*. Some things are more likely than other things, granted, but...there's never an absolute certainty.
What chaps me about a lot of people's belief systems is there's no room for doubt. A lot of people never stop to think that they might be wrong. Debate only worsens this tendency; people become so entrenched in their positions that they never stop to think, or to see their opponent's side of the issue.
No where is this more prevalent than in politics today. What the fuck is wrong with people? The villainization of either party is one of the most sickening, destructive things in America today; it encourages people to think of their neighbors as uncompassionate monsters, idiots or bigots just because they have a bumper sticker supporting the other guy. John Kerry is not a shifty flip-flopper, and his followers aren't stupid rabid whiners; George Bush isn't an idiotic, callous asshole, and his followers aren't brainwashed zombies. Despite all evidence to the contrary, this isn't true for *everyone* who sports a Bush-Cheney/Kerry-Edwards sticker, and it certainly isn't true for the candidates. Knock it off.
While I am passionately anti-Bush, and I really honestly worry about what another four years under him would do to this country and the rest of the world, I'm not going to flame down other people who think Bush is a great, principled man. He has a reason for his policies, and his supporters have a reason for believing in them. Just because we might disagree doesn't mean that we both don't want what's best for the country. Neither Republicans or Democrats are un-American; we just have vastly different visions of where this nation should go.
It's far too easy, in debating, to forget that underneath the differences in opinions there's often the same desire. We all want 'truth'. We all want what's best for us. And we're all largely blind to most of the complexity in the world we live in.
I mean, we can't even figure out how old the Universe *really* is (though we can make fairly educated guesses based on all available data)...how can we trust ourselves to pick the better man to lead the country?
That's what I'm really saying, I guess.
