[incomplete]
λέγει αὐτῷ ὁ Πιλᾶτος - τί ἐστιν ἀλήθεια;
Pilate said to him, "What is truth?"
My mother used to read faerie tales to me before I fell asleep. They had rich illustrations, that gave my young eyes something to look at as she read. I know now looking back at the books they were very short, but as a child they seemed like epic sagas. The cast always consisted of some trope: prince saves princess, children verse beast, or one cunning and talking animal outwits another. They didn't always end happily, and even the happy endings were marred by the circumstances by which happiness was found.
Likewise, my father used to tell my brother and I ghost stories. These almost always took place in the same world with one central character, Old Joe. I got to see Old Joe in a variety of circumstances, got to see him inhabit many stories, many versions of the same story, and learned much about the world of St. Joe, both historical and non-historical.
Although I enjoyed stories I drew a hard line somewhere as to how they effected me. In school I studied objective things through objective methods. But now I see the error.
Behind every human action is a story. Our calculations, research, papers, etc. all must answer the question, "Why are we doing this?" And the best answer the 20th and 21st c. had was "to better humanity" or "for progress."
What is better?
"Better is when you do things more efficiently."
"Better means its greater than anything else."
What is humanity?
"Humanity is a group of beasts pretending to have meaning."
"Humanity is beautiful phenomenon."
What is progress?
"It is the future."
"It is a chicken in every pot and a car in every garage."
You see - for every thing we do, we give purpose, reason, a goal. And as objective as some of our sciences, i.e. physics, can be, one must be honest with themselves when they lay down at night. Most of us don't know the 'why.' Our brains might like studying such things, but we also like many other things. We might be good at some things, but we're good at other things as well. You have to buy into your own reason or someone else's reason, as to why we act at all. And these reasons have a context, for no ideas come out of a vacuum. This context is the story.
So it occurs to me, we're all just telling stories. For example...
The American Dream. Ah, back then a person could travel to the US and make something of himself. Family values were alive, churches were full, and everyone had a piece of the pie. Why can't we get back to that?
Conservative politicians love to use this story.
The American Ghetto. Married couple with eight kids, all of which work fourteen hour shifts in factories, and are on the brink of starvation. Ethnic ghettos and ethnic churches keep Americans separated. The old stock are weary and afraid of the new stock taking over, and the new stock are struggling to survive.
Liberal politicians love this story.
Through humanity's collective knowledge we will build a new world, one with medicines to cure every ailment, farming technology to put food into every belly - we will live longer and stronger. Through the power of mathematics and sciences we will conquer this world and have the knowledge we desire.
Mid 1800's to early 1900's story & Our Story today.
Physics has produced the atom bomb and Biology has made the gases. Or, it is more proper to say, Man has used physics and biology. Fathers will never come home to their wives and children. Countries are firebombed, laden with shrapnel, traps, collapsed economies, and corpses are all we have to show for it. Man is nothing more than a cunning beast, and all that nonsense about progress was bullshit. You can't change human nature.
Post WWI-WWII story.
It's interesting how stories circle back. Americans today have no collective memory of WWI or WWII. Those veterans are dying, and our own generation believes you write your own story.
I was raised in a suburbia. Here the common story told to my peers is education is the key to happiness. Move along the educated tiers until you get the job you desire. You have no limits. Your parents did better than their parents and you were expected to do better than your parents. Only recently we're discovering this is not the fate of our generation. The economy has collapsed on this tale. It is a dying story. There is no progressive march to more wealth and economic happiness. We will not, on the average, do better than our parents.
λέγει αὐτῷ ὁ Πιλᾶτος - τί ἐστιν ἀλήθεια;
All collective, subconscious reactions to the 20th c. wars and "intolerance" Americans perceive worldwide. Americans react to it without knowing their parents shaped their thinking, and their grandparents shaped their parents thinking. We live in a market place of ideas where we all purchase the same good and pretend it's unique to us. We do it with our clothes, our cars, and yes, even our thoughts. We are products of our environment like it or not, but to a much greater degree than I think people are willing to admit.
We have a language which is a product of our stories. Who should I vote for? In answering that what sort of language do you use?
Rights? Social? Freedom? Tolerance? Individual? Progress?
This presumes you answered my question. Some might not, instead they might put a question in my mouth and answer who I should not vote for. What sort of language then?
Intolerant? Misogynist? Racist? Anti-Christ? Extreme?
What makes us speak like this? Some of this language is old, some of it is new. But our thoughts on how things should operate politically is guided by the thoughts of those before us. Some of this is a product of the Enlightenment Era, the American Deists who didn't want to pay their taxes. Others are a product of the Civil Rights Era and years of struggle after. Some words come from the political pundits we've been watching since TV's populated every home.
But it's more than ideas and language. We clearly understand these are socially constructed. People formulate new ideas based off old ones by communicating with one another. But deeper still is the idea's context. This is the "older."
For instance:
If you cherish freedom and rights chances are there is a romantic story of the Forefathers who fought for equality and against tyranny. "Equality, Rights, and Freedom" have a backstory that gave them value in the mind. The idea depends on the story. On the flip side one might freedom has to do with helping everyone. So a story is told of brave pioneers who take their families to the New World to find their own little piece of happiness; enduring the wilderness and making something of themselves.
Despite basic historical education, this story still subsists in most of our minds. We seem to forget the lust of gold and the enslavement and murdering of the people who owned this land. Yes, even murder by the brave pioneer with wife and kids took a crack shot at the "savage red." So two stories exist in our minds, yet we often do not reconcile them. We'll cite history facts all day but still talk longingly for "the good ole days."
You are written into a story, you don't make one up.
There's so many stories I could turn this post into a novella. But the point is that we choose what story we want to be a part of. But some never see our ideas have a story context. What sort of myth, narrative, "historical" tale are we buying into? Even history itself is constructed bottom up, from data to theory, from people's journals, bits of broken pottery, etc. We reconstruct the past, it's not given to us. And we reconstruct it from people living in a time with ideas in a context that we read through our own context. It's a lens through a lens through a lens through...ad infinitum. This does not mean our understanding is true or false, merely that many things are at work.
Not all stories are bad. Not all make sense either. And some make better sense of the world than others still.
In my own context I live in a historical community. It has been around for some 2,000 years. I speak of course of the Church. And it is built upon a context of the Israelite community. There have been many ideas, languages, experiences, and understandings thrown into the pot. And in every generation someone brings something from outside which is subsumed into what we are. But even then we have people unaware of their own stories.
The Bible was inspired both in word and concept directly from God. I imagine either an angel whispering in someone's ear or God talking down while the great Saint Stenographer writes down as he is told. Yet this is a new idea, and it has a context, namely America, early 20th c., and it's name is fundamentalism. A response to the perceived danger of new historical data. A story made in direct contrast to the senses. This comes with an epistemology of what we know, how we know, namely something like "science is bullshit we know with the heart," and so many other absurdities. It has a limited view and can only explain the world by bracketing off much of what we learn and observe through our God-given bodies. Everything becomes literal, every sentence becomes normative, Scripture becomes a mutant.
But there are some tales told in the Church that start in the beginning and proceed throughout history. They might not explain all but they explain more. They make more sense of life than the tale that must look at the world and call it all a lie.
Thus so many questions begin to pile up, "What story have you been written into? How does it give your ideas context? And especially in this season, can it explain life, death, and why people act at all? And can it explain why we ask such questions? Or in asking questions does the tale pretend to be outside itself looking in? Or do we pretend we're so unique as to ignore common ideas, language, likes, dislikes, and so on?"
And when we tell tales they have some purpose. If we narrate our own lives, which I always recommend highly, do we tell it chronologically? Does this give a realistic understanding of your own life story? Sometimes chronology makes the purpose of telling the tale completely impossible to fulfill. If I want to understand someone I ask for their life story. We understand who we are by some periods of process, some of stillness, and some major life changing moments. So when the question is asked, what moments or seasons flash in the mind? This is where the story should begin, for the purpose is for me to understand you, not to receive the story as it was being made, ie chronologically. Sometimes you start in the conflict and move around it.
So when someone says, "Let's go to the Bible for it has all the answers," I have to laugh. For one, it is a story not a code of law. Two, there's a reason you want to start there and that's because you have been written into a story that includes the Bible. Three, the story which includes the Bible, Christianity, gives shape and meaning to the Bible, not vice versa. People wrote the texts and people worshipped God and people told stories before anyone wrote the stuff down. Four, this communal context, Christianity, has existed for some 2,000 years. A lot has happened in that time. And with a lot of change comes a lot of reworking, renarrating, and new understanding.
What voice has been whispering in your ear?
λέγει αὐτῷ ὁ Πιλᾶτος - τί ἐστιν ἀλήθεια;
Pilate said to him, "What is truth?"
My mother used to read faerie tales to me before I fell asleep. They had rich illustrations, that gave my young eyes something to look at as she read. I know now looking back at the books they were very short, but as a child they seemed like epic sagas. The cast always consisted of some trope: prince saves princess, children verse beast, or one cunning and talking animal outwits another. They didn't always end happily, and even the happy endings were marred by the circumstances by which happiness was found.
Likewise, my father used to tell my brother and I ghost stories. These almost always took place in the same world with one central character, Old Joe. I got to see Old Joe in a variety of circumstances, got to see him inhabit many stories, many versions of the same story, and learned much about the world of St. Joe, both historical and non-historical.
Although I enjoyed stories I drew a hard line somewhere as to how they effected me. In school I studied objective things through objective methods. But now I see the error.
Behind every human action is a story. Our calculations, research, papers, etc. all must answer the question, "Why are we doing this?" And the best answer the 20th and 21st c. had was "to better humanity" or "for progress."
What is better?
"Better is when you do things more efficiently."
"Better means its greater than anything else."
What is humanity?
"Humanity is a group of beasts pretending to have meaning."
"Humanity is beautiful phenomenon."
What is progress?
"It is the future."
"It is a chicken in every pot and a car in every garage."
You see - for every thing we do, we give purpose, reason, a goal. And as objective as some of our sciences, i.e. physics, can be, one must be honest with themselves when they lay down at night. Most of us don't know the 'why.' Our brains might like studying such things, but we also like many other things. We might be good at some things, but we're good at other things as well. You have to buy into your own reason or someone else's reason, as to why we act at all. And these reasons have a context, for no ideas come out of a vacuum. This context is the story.
So it occurs to me, we're all just telling stories. For example...
The American Dream. Ah, back then a person could travel to the US and make something of himself. Family values were alive, churches were full, and everyone had a piece of the pie. Why can't we get back to that?
Conservative politicians love to use this story.
The American Ghetto. Married couple with eight kids, all of which work fourteen hour shifts in factories, and are on the brink of starvation. Ethnic ghettos and ethnic churches keep Americans separated. The old stock are weary and afraid of the new stock taking over, and the new stock are struggling to survive.
Liberal politicians love this story.
Through humanity's collective knowledge we will build a new world, one with medicines to cure every ailment, farming technology to put food into every belly - we will live longer and stronger. Through the power of mathematics and sciences we will conquer this world and have the knowledge we desire.
Mid 1800's to early 1900's story & Our Story today.
Physics has produced the atom bomb and Biology has made the gases. Or, it is more proper to say, Man has used physics and biology. Fathers will never come home to their wives and children. Countries are firebombed, laden with shrapnel, traps, collapsed economies, and corpses are all we have to show for it. Man is nothing more than a cunning beast, and all that nonsense about progress was bullshit. You can't change human nature.
Post WWI-WWII story.
It's interesting how stories circle back. Americans today have no collective memory of WWI or WWII. Those veterans are dying, and our own generation believes you write your own story.
I was raised in a suburbia. Here the common story told to my peers is education is the key to happiness. Move along the educated tiers until you get the job you desire. You have no limits. Your parents did better than their parents and you were expected to do better than your parents. Only recently we're discovering this is not the fate of our generation. The economy has collapsed on this tale. It is a dying story. There is no progressive march to more wealth and economic happiness. We will not, on the average, do better than our parents.
λέγει αὐτῷ ὁ Πιλᾶτος - τί ἐστιν ἀλήθεια;
All collective, subconscious reactions to the 20th c. wars and "intolerance" Americans perceive worldwide. Americans react to it without knowing their parents shaped their thinking, and their grandparents shaped their parents thinking. We live in a market place of ideas where we all purchase the same good and pretend it's unique to us. We do it with our clothes, our cars, and yes, even our thoughts. We are products of our environment like it or not, but to a much greater degree than I think people are willing to admit.
We have a language which is a product of our stories. Who should I vote for? In answering that what sort of language do you use?
Rights? Social? Freedom? Tolerance? Individual? Progress?
This presumes you answered my question. Some might not, instead they might put a question in my mouth and answer who I should not vote for. What sort of language then?
Intolerant? Misogynist? Racist? Anti-Christ? Extreme?
What makes us speak like this? Some of this language is old, some of it is new. But our thoughts on how things should operate politically is guided by the thoughts of those before us. Some of this is a product of the Enlightenment Era, the American Deists who didn't want to pay their taxes. Others are a product of the Civil Rights Era and years of struggle after. Some words come from the political pundits we've been watching since TV's populated every home.
But it's more than ideas and language. We clearly understand these are socially constructed. People formulate new ideas based off old ones by communicating with one another. But deeper still is the idea's context. This is the "older."
For instance:
If you cherish freedom and rights chances are there is a romantic story of the Forefathers who fought for equality and against tyranny. "Equality, Rights, and Freedom" have a backstory that gave them value in the mind. The idea depends on the story. On the flip side one might freedom has to do with helping everyone. So a story is told of brave pioneers who take their families to the New World to find their own little piece of happiness; enduring the wilderness and making something of themselves.
Despite basic historical education, this story still subsists in most of our minds. We seem to forget the lust of gold and the enslavement and murdering of the people who owned this land. Yes, even murder by the brave pioneer with wife and kids took a crack shot at the "savage red." So two stories exist in our minds, yet we often do not reconcile them. We'll cite history facts all day but still talk longingly for "the good ole days."
You are written into a story, you don't make one up.
There's so many stories I could turn this post into a novella. But the point is that we choose what story we want to be a part of. But some never see our ideas have a story context. What sort of myth, narrative, "historical" tale are we buying into? Even history itself is constructed bottom up, from data to theory, from people's journals, bits of broken pottery, etc. We reconstruct the past, it's not given to us. And we reconstruct it from people living in a time with ideas in a context that we read through our own context. It's a lens through a lens through a lens through...ad infinitum. This does not mean our understanding is true or false, merely that many things are at work.
Not all stories are bad. Not all make sense either. And some make better sense of the world than others still.
In my own context I live in a historical community. It has been around for some 2,000 years. I speak of course of the Church. And it is built upon a context of the Israelite community. There have been many ideas, languages, experiences, and understandings thrown into the pot. And in every generation someone brings something from outside which is subsumed into what we are. But even then we have people unaware of their own stories.
The Bible was inspired both in word and concept directly from God. I imagine either an angel whispering in someone's ear or God talking down while the great Saint Stenographer writes down as he is told. Yet this is a new idea, and it has a context, namely America, early 20th c., and it's name is fundamentalism. A response to the perceived danger of new historical data. A story made in direct contrast to the senses. This comes with an epistemology of what we know, how we know, namely something like "science is bullshit we know with the heart," and so many other absurdities. It has a limited view and can only explain the world by bracketing off much of what we learn and observe through our God-given bodies. Everything becomes literal, every sentence becomes normative, Scripture becomes a mutant.
But there are some tales told in the Church that start in the beginning and proceed throughout history. They might not explain all but they explain more. They make more sense of life than the tale that must look at the world and call it all a lie.
Thus so many questions begin to pile up, "What story have you been written into? How does it give your ideas context? And especially in this season, can it explain life, death, and why people act at all? And can it explain why we ask such questions? Or in asking questions does the tale pretend to be outside itself looking in? Or do we pretend we're so unique as to ignore common ideas, language, likes, dislikes, and so on?"
And when we tell tales they have some purpose. If we narrate our own lives, which I always recommend highly, do we tell it chronologically? Does this give a realistic understanding of your own life story? Sometimes chronology makes the purpose of telling the tale completely impossible to fulfill. If I want to understand someone I ask for their life story. We understand who we are by some periods of process, some of stillness, and some major life changing moments. So when the question is asked, what moments or seasons flash in the mind? This is where the story should begin, for the purpose is for me to understand you, not to receive the story as it was being made, ie chronologically. Sometimes you start in the conflict and move around it.
So when someone says, "Let's go to the Bible for it has all the answers," I have to laugh. For one, it is a story not a code of law. Two, there's a reason you want to start there and that's because you have been written into a story that includes the Bible. Three, the story which includes the Bible, Christianity, gives shape and meaning to the Bible, not vice versa. People wrote the texts and people worshipped God and people told stories before anyone wrote the stuff down. Four, this communal context, Christianity, has existed for some 2,000 years. A lot has happened in that time. And with a lot of change comes a lot of reworking, renarrating, and new understanding.
What voice has been whispering in your ear?
