Last Tuesday I started a blog entry about what I hoped to get out of this blog, a topic which spilt into introspective ramblings about my sense of identity. I got all excited about the ideas and ended up with the mess that often results from such indulgent philosophical thoughts. I put the piece aside, vowing that I'd return to it, to hack at the carcass, and salvage whatever possible worthwhile ideas it might contain. A great thing about this blog space is the opportunities to bounce ideas off fellow bloggers. In a previous posting I preached about the feasibility of evolution and the relationship between God and science, intruding on a posting on Cass & Ben's blog. I note that during this week both Meg and Cass have posted on the topic of self identity, and thus it is not without some sense of cosmic synchronicity that I am, yet again, inspired to follow their lead. And thus the gutting of my previous blog monster begins (before I do, a disclaimer: I do really try to be sound in my arguments, but these are just rambles, and I don't really know all that much about this stuff, so be warned, in an overly long parenthetical explanation):
There is nothing more important to me than the friends that have contributed to my life, even those that I've encountered for but a day. The impressions they have left on my psyche, and, I hope, the impressions I've left on their's are what defines me. I am continuously astounded by descriptive power of the symbol/concepts of evolution and the yin/yang of Taoism. The yin/yang is a constant reminder to me that wonderful things in life are balanced by not so wonderful things. In my case the weight of importance that I put on others is counterbalanced by a crippling self-analytical streak. In my understanding of Taoism, which is likely to be flawed, an important principle is the concept of wu wei, i.e. nonaction, or rather, just going with the flow. I feel that my analytical steak is part of my Tao, i.e., my way, and thus it is not worth resisting, even though it leads me, I believe naturally, to inquire about my Tao, which would be very non-Tao. This idea gives me some satisfaction in its nonsensicalness. It defies explanation, which fits nicely with the opening line of the Dao De Jing: "The way which can be uttered, is not the eternal Way." Will continue to muse on the idea though:
My academic investigations into the mysteries of life, coupled with a tendency to reclusion, make me cynical. That's what this blog is supposed to be about - I'm dying to reach out and express myself. I hope others will be inspired, as I am, by this new media, to express themselves thus, so that this virtual representation of our social network may be drawn tight through inter-linking. Just like the individual neurons sending electrical impulses in our brains make up the amazing thing that is our mind, I'd like to be able to stand back and marvel at our emergent identity from the expressions of all these people. In this light my self identity, choices and love (things which are the subject of ardent deconstruction in my studies) doesn't bear critical analysis, and remain, as they should, truly magical.
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4 comments:
Dude, I would not ever really have described you as a cynic. You see too much good in things.
Have you read much on cognitive theory? It's interesting the way it juxtaposes the old "death of the author" argument. I can't decide which I agree with more. Both theories make infinite good sense.
Well, I tend to get cynical when I'm doing too much observing and not enough interacting. I won't go into it but to say that: just as I believe you can find, in any person, a treasure trove of positive things, you can also find a veritable sty of negative attributes. You've just got to forgive these things, although it's hard to forgive them in yourself when the analytical spotlight is turned inward.
As to your comments on cognitive theory and "death of the author" I've been doing my head in thinking of a response that I can articulate in a blog comment. I haven't strictly speaking studied postmodernism (I'm not sure what you mean by cognitive theory), but after a couple of beers its easy to pull some opinion out of your arse (postmodernism is like that, like how everybody's an expert on football come grand final day). The "death of the author" puts me in mind of the death of God as an explanation for the world, life and morality, i.e. existentialism. I wonder, is this the original driving force behind these ideas?
Reading with cognitive theory is the practice of "embodying" the author. Where the death of the author exerts the power of the the reader, cognitive theory asserts the contemporary presence of the author as writer. As a historian, reading with cognitive theory makes infinite good, though problematic, sense to me.
Although I also ascribe to the notion the of the reader as a vessel through which a text lives, I don't think we can forget the author's place as progenitor.
Perhaps you would like to read this chapter from Mary Crane's book on cognitive theory, "Shakespear's Brain": http://www.pupress.princeton.edu/chapters/s6992.html
Occasionally, whilst procrastinating I realise that the digression I'm taking is far more arduous than the work I was avoiding. This stuff on cognitive theory is hardly light reading, Cass! I suppose this is some karmic payback for my overly heavy blog entries... I presume that this was the topic of your honours thesis - thus the eloquence with which you write on the topic. Anyway, sorry, I'm far too lazy to finish reading that chapter. Perhaps this conversation could be best served over a cup of coffee (or, more likely, many cups of coffee, and some heavy liquor), where you can fill in the gaps in my understanding.
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