[Note - thank you, Jane, for your condolences in the comment section. I agree that my mother was one of the kindest of women, but then again, I am slightly biased.]
We leave behind the interesting world of UFO paranoia (or is it?) for another theological heavy- Ilia Delio's "The Unbearable Wholeness of Being." The title is a take-off of the oft-quoted and probably seldom read "The Unbearable Lightness of Being" by Milan Kundera, a modern existentialist who hit the publisher's jack pot in the 1990's. By chance - I am not one to read the current novels, although I would if I knew what was what - I have read Kundera, and it is no mistake that Delio borrows the title from him. Kundera represents the absolute angst of a humanity without center and purpose. In her first chapters, Delio tells us how this frame of mind happened. We will learn in future chapters what we must do and are doing to find a new center of sorts, but for now we are left with the evolution of Western consciousness, which is no small thing.
It is a breathtaking romp. We have the "Ptolemaic" view of the geocentric world, with sun, planets and heaven circling above and we below at God's heart of creation. We then have the discoveries of Nicholas de Cuna and Copernicus and others in the Renaissance that told us of a heliocentric solar system, where we were just another planet circling around just another star. I do recall my science teachers telling me in grammar and high school what a big deal this was, but I really didn't believe them. Now I am believing them. In a previous book, we found that this idea of an infinite universe where there was no earthly center helped to get Father Bruno burned at the stake in 1600. Yes, it was a big idea, and according to Delio it changed everything. As the Earth was no longer the objective center, the apple of God's eye, so reason had to become the center of a subjective universe. In this, Church authority waned, and finally, the very notion of God became archaic, a product of individual thought and illusion. Only the hard-core measurable world counted for reality. And thus we come to where many of us are now: a secure world of reason without a reason to live.
But a formidable idea has already occurred that should, once again, change everything - The Theory of Relativity. In this, matter and time are not hard-wired, but relative to each other through gravity. That I cannot define it more perfectly shows that this still is an idea that has not truly permeated the general social psyche. And it gets more complex - with relative time and space, we come upon the notion that all is relational, with the observer being the final link in the chain of reality. What we think effects what we get. With this comes the non-local or "spooky" problem - that particles or anything that once interacted (ever!) effect each other "beyond the light cone," or at near instantaneous rates that exceed the speed of light. Impossible, impossible, but such ideas are now, we are led to believe anyway, no more preposterous to those of us, like myself, whose rational is still in the Newtonian world, than the heliocentric universe was to minds of the medieval ages.
And in the center of it all is the most revolutionary idea of all, one that has come to pervade everything: the idea of evolution.
I will leave that until later when the book discusses it more fully. For now, it is best to focus on something we cannot believe even if we say we do - that our reality is built on primary concepts, not a "real" reality. This is made evident both through such history as revealed in Delio's book, as well as in ethnographies of often radically different cultures. But do you believe it, really? I don't, even though I am logically convinced it is true.
This became apparent after watching another of the Hobbit movies this weekend. While this movie is pure fantasy to most of us, reports from as late as the 19th century in Europe - and in 20th century Ireland - tell us that many of the country people still believed in elves and witches and goblins and so on. And they did not only believe - they saw and often times their lives were changed. Such was often the case in other ethnographies - for instance, the Aztecs had the "myth" of Quetzalcoatl, the spirit god who would come as a white man on wings from the east and hearken a different era. Indeed, "white" men with wings (sails) did come from the east and did change everything. While this myth had the Spaniard wrong, it did describe the event in Aztec terms correctly. There are other world views that did and did not coincide with our own on contact, but the evidence is there: that reality is strongly determined by our abstract notions of it.
So much so that we have to wonder if we can ever arrive at reality at all, for aren't even the notions in quantum physics and evolution only contemporary attempts to discover reality? And isn't that Kundera's point - that we are beyond the notion of ever discovering reality, so much so that we can never have a center again?
Still, there are hints of greater truths in ethnographic coincidences like the Aztec prophesy. But which are truly true? Where on this sliding scale of partial truths and historical aberrations is our center?
I think we will find that this is evolution's key intellectual role: that with it, we can find a center amidst constant change. It is just the reality basis we need for a fast-moving world, and we might say that it is not necessary for this centering concept to ultimately be the only correct one; rather, it is important in that it is something, a center, that we can rally around to find our own meaning. What we have learned through history and ethnography is that most realities are at least tangential to a greater reality - that they speak of some truth even though the kernel of it is still misunderstood. Thus we can and will and must find this new piece of turf, for one must have some footage to make any progress. After all, to have nothing to stand on is to fall into the black terror of Kundera's brave post-modern world. FK
We leave behind the interesting world of UFO paranoia (or is it?) for another theological heavy- Ilia Delio's "The Unbearable Wholeness of Being." The title is a take-off of the oft-quoted and probably seldom read "The Unbearable Lightness of Being" by Milan Kundera, a modern existentialist who hit the publisher's jack pot in the 1990's. By chance - I am not one to read the current novels, although I would if I knew what was what - I have read Kundera, and it is no mistake that Delio borrows the title from him. Kundera represents the absolute angst of a humanity without center and purpose. In her first chapters, Delio tells us how this frame of mind happened. We will learn in future chapters what we must do and are doing to find a new center of sorts, but for now we are left with the evolution of Western consciousness, which is no small thing.
It is a breathtaking romp. We have the "Ptolemaic" view of the geocentric world, with sun, planets and heaven circling above and we below at God's heart of creation. We then have the discoveries of Nicholas de Cuna and Copernicus and others in the Renaissance that told us of a heliocentric solar system, where we were just another planet circling around just another star. I do recall my science teachers telling me in grammar and high school what a big deal this was, but I really didn't believe them. Now I am believing them. In a previous book, we found that this idea of an infinite universe where there was no earthly center helped to get Father Bruno burned at the stake in 1600. Yes, it was a big idea, and according to Delio it changed everything. As the Earth was no longer the objective center, the apple of God's eye, so reason had to become the center of a subjective universe. In this, Church authority waned, and finally, the very notion of God became archaic, a product of individual thought and illusion. Only the hard-core measurable world counted for reality. And thus we come to where many of us are now: a secure world of reason without a reason to live.
But a formidable idea has already occurred that should, once again, change everything - The Theory of Relativity. In this, matter and time are not hard-wired, but relative to each other through gravity. That I cannot define it more perfectly shows that this still is an idea that has not truly permeated the general social psyche. And it gets more complex - with relative time and space, we come upon the notion that all is relational, with the observer being the final link in the chain of reality. What we think effects what we get. With this comes the non-local or "spooky" problem - that particles or anything that once interacted (ever!) effect each other "beyond the light cone," or at near instantaneous rates that exceed the speed of light. Impossible, impossible, but such ideas are now, we are led to believe anyway, no more preposterous to those of us, like myself, whose rational is still in the Newtonian world, than the heliocentric universe was to minds of the medieval ages.
And in the center of it all is the most revolutionary idea of all, one that has come to pervade everything: the idea of evolution.
I will leave that until later when the book discusses it more fully. For now, it is best to focus on something we cannot believe even if we say we do - that our reality is built on primary concepts, not a "real" reality. This is made evident both through such history as revealed in Delio's book, as well as in ethnographies of often radically different cultures. But do you believe it, really? I don't, even though I am logically convinced it is true.
This became apparent after watching another of the Hobbit movies this weekend. While this movie is pure fantasy to most of us, reports from as late as the 19th century in Europe - and in 20th century Ireland - tell us that many of the country people still believed in elves and witches and goblins and so on. And they did not only believe - they saw and often times their lives were changed. Such was often the case in other ethnographies - for instance, the Aztecs had the "myth" of Quetzalcoatl, the spirit god who would come as a white man on wings from the east and hearken a different era. Indeed, "white" men with wings (sails) did come from the east and did change everything. While this myth had the Spaniard wrong, it did describe the event in Aztec terms correctly. There are other world views that did and did not coincide with our own on contact, but the evidence is there: that reality is strongly determined by our abstract notions of it.
So much so that we have to wonder if we can ever arrive at reality at all, for aren't even the notions in quantum physics and evolution only contemporary attempts to discover reality? And isn't that Kundera's point - that we are beyond the notion of ever discovering reality, so much so that we can never have a center again?
Still, there are hints of greater truths in ethnographic coincidences like the Aztec prophesy. But which are truly true? Where on this sliding scale of partial truths and historical aberrations is our center?
I think we will find that this is evolution's key intellectual role: that with it, we can find a center amidst constant change. It is just the reality basis we need for a fast-moving world, and we might say that it is not necessary for this centering concept to ultimately be the only correct one; rather, it is important in that it is something, a center, that we can rally around to find our own meaning. What we have learned through history and ethnography is that most realities are at least tangential to a greater reality - that they speak of some truth even though the kernel of it is still misunderstood. Thus we can and will and must find this new piece of turf, for one must have some footage to make any progress. After all, to have nothing to stand on is to fall into the black terror of Kundera's brave post-modern world. FK
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