I really like the thought you are attempting to express. And I kinda like that you had the courage to express it without having it figured out yet. That says something...
And maybe we won't ever have it figured out.
In the Hebrew story there's a wonderful phrase that pops up no later than the 2nd verse of Genesis... it's tohu wa bohu. It's a strange, somewhat enigmatic rhyming phrase connoting chaos and potential. Unfortuantley unimaginiative western Christianity took the story to mean that the divine had to step in and destroy, overpower, do away with the chaos in order to get anything done. Turns out, chaos (e.g., randomness, indeterminacy, etc) is at the heart of everything. And my take, though of course I could be wrong, is that the divine is in the middle of the chaos. So, yes, keep "messing up" the "construction of order from chaos." It's already messed up! And maybe there's something or someone in the middle of all of that.
Thanks for sharing that, sorry I'm just getting back to you this went under my radar clearly. That really interesting, it's hard to not to contrast things as humans, but I'd say that God has no contrast. I read a book on the history of the mathematics of Chaos, (it's called 'Chaos' hahaha) and it really made me recharacterize that concept to myself.
'chaos is at the heart of everything'...'maybe there's something or someone in the middle of all that'... He who is at the heart of that which is at the heart of everything.
My grandmother, a widower, lived in her home until her mid-90s. I lived nearby and helped her with many interactions with the outside world — paying bills, sending emails, negotiating with unintelligible telco support personnel or health care admin. These things bewildered and flustered her, sometimes bringing her to tears.
But there were some things she wouldn’t give up, and even though she struggled with them physically, they brought her peace and contentment. The upkeep of the flower garden, the preparation of meals and washing of dishes, the morning hobble down the garden path to the letterbox — these gave her a sense of durability and a rootedness, even as her body and mind were starting to let go.
Dang Sam, another awesome piece. That passage from Conrad was stunning, and I always feel a nagging need to write a very long paper on Frye: he was a genius. I'm also taken by James Hillman, who I was not familiar with, and like that distinction between ways of thinking.
'I think that there is something uncanny to endless rows of cubicles, to blank faces of glass towers, to the emergence of forms called ‘screens’ (so unlike it’s probable antecedent, the veil), that builds anti-worlds which resound back to our subjectivities as detachment'--Excellent writing, Sam, excellent.
I listened through your video on Daniel Fraga this afternoon so as to string that thought together, it is very much in your debt,🙏 hahaha. I appreciate your support I always feel like I’m just beating around the bush bush but one day the sporadic micro-theses will hopefully congeal.
I'm so glad you liked that video on Mr. Fraga's work! Ontological Design is certainly a text everyone should read, and Michelle and I have found it intellectually inspiring. And don't worry Sam: the bush has a way of suddenly having angels spring out of it who like to wrestle. Just keep poking, for every stir of the bush stirs more than just foliage.
Isn’t there a distinction between the true wilderness Conrad is describing and the already domesticated wilderness of your gran’s garden? Every summer I spend time some time alone in remote Swedish forests, which exhibit their own rhizomatic order, but it’s an order impenetrable and terrifying to a tame animal like myself (I’d be terrified to be stranded there alone). Much of what we consider to be ‘nature’ are landscapes very much altered and cultivated by humans for millennia. If there is an outside, I don’t think it’s as simple as ‘what’s outside the window’ but something which appears occasionally in fragments where we don’t expect it – and yes fear is how we grasp it intuitively.
Well, i think this is a problem that my writing is continually running into, and I really ought to find a much more careful language, ‘cause at the moment I’m being sloppy. I’m saying that we create ‘civilized’ boundaries against ‘nature’, because I’m struggling to find a better distinction. But I don’t think that nature and humans really are separate, even though I’m using the terms that reinforce that separation.
Still you’re bringing up a very good point, there is most certainly a big difference, but could that difference be emplaced (Congo as particular place to which particular people have a particular relationship vs. my grandmas house as such.. (she does live in the woods on the side of a swamp actually)) rather than categorical (natural vs unnatural)? ‘Cause I think I would like to stick by the idea that we are a part of nature, and that landscapes changed by us are not unnatural… One would think that the Congo would have been inhabited and used by people much much longer than my grandma’s North American garden, but most certainly inhabited very differently. And certainly i agree with you, I don’t mean to reduce this idea of outside ness to just something outside the window.it was just a thought that I had in that moment talking to her; that there is a being to trees and to bunnies which is other than ours and we sometime fear the othernesses, but not always, sometimes we feel very aligned to them.
I really like the thought you are attempting to express. And I kinda like that you had the courage to express it without having it figured out yet. That says something...
And maybe we won't ever have it figured out.
In the Hebrew story there's a wonderful phrase that pops up no later than the 2nd verse of Genesis... it's tohu wa bohu. It's a strange, somewhat enigmatic rhyming phrase connoting chaos and potential. Unfortuantley unimaginiative western Christianity took the story to mean that the divine had to step in and destroy, overpower, do away with the chaos in order to get anything done. Turns out, chaos (e.g., randomness, indeterminacy, etc) is at the heart of everything. And my take, though of course I could be wrong, is that the divine is in the middle of the chaos. So, yes, keep "messing up" the "construction of order from chaos." It's already messed up! And maybe there's something or someone in the middle of all of that.
Or, ha, maybe it's meaningless.
Thanks for sharing that, sorry I'm just getting back to you this went under my radar clearly. That really interesting, it's hard to not to contrast things as humans, but I'd say that God has no contrast. I read a book on the history of the mathematics of Chaos, (it's called 'Chaos' hahaha) and it really made me recharacterize that concept to myself.
'chaos is at the heart of everything'...'maybe there's something or someone in the middle of all that'... He who is at the heart of that which is at the heart of everything.
My grandmother, a widower, lived in her home until her mid-90s. I lived nearby and helped her with many interactions with the outside world — paying bills, sending emails, negotiating with unintelligible telco support personnel or health care admin. These things bewildered and flustered her, sometimes bringing her to tears.
But there were some things she wouldn’t give up, and even though she struggled with them physically, they brought her peace and contentment. The upkeep of the flower garden, the preparation of meals and washing of dishes, the morning hobble down the garden path to the letterbox — these gave her a sense of durability and a rootedness, even as her body and mind were starting to let go.
🙏🤍
Dang Sam, another awesome piece. That passage from Conrad was stunning, and I always feel a nagging need to write a very long paper on Frye: he was a genius. I'm also taken by James Hillman, who I was not familiar with, and like that distinction between ways of thinking.
'I think that there is something uncanny to endless rows of cubicles, to blank faces of glass towers, to the emergence of forms called ‘screens’ (so unlike it’s probable antecedent, the veil), that builds anti-worlds which resound back to our subjectivities as detachment'--Excellent writing, Sam, excellent.
I listened through your video on Daniel Fraga this afternoon so as to string that thought together, it is very much in your debt,🙏 hahaha. I appreciate your support I always feel like I’m just beating around the bush bush but one day the sporadic micro-theses will hopefully congeal.
I'm so glad you liked that video on Mr. Fraga's work! Ontological Design is certainly a text everyone should read, and Michelle and I have found it intellectually inspiring. And don't worry Sam: the bush has a way of suddenly having angels spring out of it who like to wrestle. Just keep poking, for every stir of the bush stirs more than just foliage.
Isn’t there a distinction between the true wilderness Conrad is describing and the already domesticated wilderness of your gran’s garden? Every summer I spend time some time alone in remote Swedish forests, which exhibit their own rhizomatic order, but it’s an order impenetrable and terrifying to a tame animal like myself (I’d be terrified to be stranded there alone). Much of what we consider to be ‘nature’ are landscapes very much altered and cultivated by humans for millennia. If there is an outside, I don’t think it’s as simple as ‘what’s outside the window’ but something which appears occasionally in fragments where we don’t expect it – and yes fear is how we grasp it intuitively.
Well, i think this is a problem that my writing is continually running into, and I really ought to find a much more careful language, ‘cause at the moment I’m being sloppy. I’m saying that we create ‘civilized’ boundaries against ‘nature’, because I’m struggling to find a better distinction. But I don’t think that nature and humans really are separate, even though I’m using the terms that reinforce that separation.
Still you’re bringing up a very good point, there is most certainly a big difference, but could that difference be emplaced (Congo as particular place to which particular people have a particular relationship vs. my grandmas house as such.. (she does live in the woods on the side of a swamp actually)) rather than categorical (natural vs unnatural)? ‘Cause I think I would like to stick by the idea that we are a part of nature, and that landscapes changed by us are not unnatural… One would think that the Congo would have been inhabited and used by people much much longer than my grandma’s North American garden, but most certainly inhabited very differently. And certainly i agree with you, I don’t mean to reduce this idea of outside ness to just something outside the window.it was just a thought that I had in that moment talking to her; that there is a being to trees and to bunnies which is other than ours and we sometime fear the othernesses, but not always, sometimes we feel very aligned to them.