Commenting on a comment made by Cal Roeker yesterday, in that an explanation of perspective is "over-analysis": it IS true - that can often be the case. While in graduate school for anthropology, I was struck, and very disappointed, by nearly all the analysis offered by the profession. They drained people of what we are, making a science of us when we are anything but. Why not just take the people's word at what they understood and leave it at that? On the other hand, there really are functional reasons for certain behavior, ones that can be analysed - it is only that these explanations are not the end all and be all.
Perhaps the worst offenses were made by analyzing religion and mystical/magical beliefs. It is one thing, for instance, to inspect the history of certain ideas - for instance, the Hindus have their religion and the European Christians theirs from certain historical circumstances. This is a legitimate concern of the analysis. To put ultimate truths experienced at the deepest levels of these religions under such a microscope, however, is a gross crossing of different levels of meaning. The error is not so much in over-analyzing, but in using the wrong frame of reference for the analysis. The literate religions have endless treatises on their beliefs, but they are internal to the belief system and have to be to make sense. The All of the HIndus or Buddhists cannot, by definition, be defined by articulated logic. And yet we do so.
In the book I am currently reading, The Irreducible Mind, the authors take great pains in showing how the materialist arguments for psi and near death experiences and out of body experiences and so on simply don't work, and they do a good job. They feel it is necessary to do so to get the scientific community behind greater research into such things, as by not doing so, this community misses the boat on the true nature of human psychology, and the authors are right. However, I am both amused and annoyed when they try to explain the sense of such experiences in scientific terms. They are not trying to be reductionistic, but rather, are trying to cross the divide between those who really know of these things and those others who do not and, under the current climate of scientific thought, simply cannot. Having had some experiences in this other world, I find the explanations boring, at best. If you have experienced them, you KNOW. The rest is all words. But how, then, to convince others?
In yesterday's blog, I did not so much analyse, but put into direct words the perspective I have been trying to get across. Of course they could not be as beautiful or as meaningful as the poetry that is in the essays. In fact, I almost didn't write it, knowing how clumsy it is to try to put such things into a logical format, and how many people would find this boring. However, I felt it a good thing to do to explain for some why quotidian events in my life are matched so regularly with grandiose scenes of nature and of chasms of mystery. It was nothing more than a primmer for those who either do not get it, or for those who thought that I was being too grandiose about myself. And I, like the authors of "Irreducible" have a mission I feel deeply about - to help others, along with myself, to get beyond the weight of the dogmatism of our cultural and, perhaps to a limited degree, our genetic predispositions so that we may better see the miracle that being really is.
And yet, regardless, the mystery of the workings of life, along with the marvelous impossibility of our existence, continues in the metaphors of the literary works. At a certain point, one must leave it at that - for one cannot describe the infinite. If, as Cal believes, I went too far in plotted language, I apologize. But I remain well aware that we must step back at some point (but where is a difficult question) and let art, and then spirit, lead us to what is beyond the explanation. FK
Perhaps the worst offenses were made by analyzing religion and mystical/magical beliefs. It is one thing, for instance, to inspect the history of certain ideas - for instance, the Hindus have their religion and the European Christians theirs from certain historical circumstances. This is a legitimate concern of the analysis. To put ultimate truths experienced at the deepest levels of these religions under such a microscope, however, is a gross crossing of different levels of meaning. The error is not so much in over-analyzing, but in using the wrong frame of reference for the analysis. The literate religions have endless treatises on their beliefs, but they are internal to the belief system and have to be to make sense. The All of the HIndus or Buddhists cannot, by definition, be defined by articulated logic. And yet we do so.
In the book I am currently reading, The Irreducible Mind, the authors take great pains in showing how the materialist arguments for psi and near death experiences and out of body experiences and so on simply don't work, and they do a good job. They feel it is necessary to do so to get the scientific community behind greater research into such things, as by not doing so, this community misses the boat on the true nature of human psychology, and the authors are right. However, I am both amused and annoyed when they try to explain the sense of such experiences in scientific terms. They are not trying to be reductionistic, but rather, are trying to cross the divide between those who really know of these things and those others who do not and, under the current climate of scientific thought, simply cannot. Having had some experiences in this other world, I find the explanations boring, at best. If you have experienced them, you KNOW. The rest is all words. But how, then, to convince others?
In yesterday's blog, I did not so much analyse, but put into direct words the perspective I have been trying to get across. Of course they could not be as beautiful or as meaningful as the poetry that is in the essays. In fact, I almost didn't write it, knowing how clumsy it is to try to put such things into a logical format, and how many people would find this boring. However, I felt it a good thing to do to explain for some why quotidian events in my life are matched so regularly with grandiose scenes of nature and of chasms of mystery. It was nothing more than a primmer for those who either do not get it, or for those who thought that I was being too grandiose about myself. And I, like the authors of "Irreducible" have a mission I feel deeply about - to help others, along with myself, to get beyond the weight of the dogmatism of our cultural and, perhaps to a limited degree, our genetic predispositions so that we may better see the miracle that being really is.
And yet, regardless, the mystery of the workings of life, along with the marvelous impossibility of our existence, continues in the metaphors of the literary works. At a certain point, one must leave it at that - for one cannot describe the infinite. If, as Cal believes, I went too far in plotted language, I apologize. But I remain well aware that we must step back at some point (but where is a difficult question) and let art, and then spirit, lead us to what is beyond the explanation. FK
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