Composed as a lyrical musing on Similarly …
As a pragmatic, I approach reality with this simple question: within my perceptions, what is there to be known? Instinctively, I look for patterns, for ‘the point’, for ‘take-aways’. Meanwhile, Peter urges: “Merely experience complexity; witness how it cannot be captured.” His ‘point’ is fascinating, yet for the mind who wants to know, it is indeed dizzying.
Call it ‘Modernity’ or ‘Enlightenment’, we have crossed a threshold; our ‘Fall into Knowledge’ has reached exponential growth. Knowledge is both expansive and expensive. Expansive insofar as one could not ‘wrap one’s head’ around all that can be known. Erudite monks or gentleman-inventors are no more. Nowadays, sheer quantity overwhelms us. Therefore, modern scholars reduce knowledge to traditions and disciplines, creating silos which core purpose is to prevent ‘information-overload’.
Knowledge is also expensive. Not in tuition fees; but in time and efforts, even in humility. The 21st century should ask scholars to bow their head to the ambiguity and the fundamental haphazardness of existence: especially in the social and the human sciences. Instead, the whole system of knowledge asks: where do _you_ fit in the edifice of knowledge? What are _you_ contributing to this building devoid of an architect?
There is no architect for ‘knowledge’; for life itself — the object of our quest — spreads in all directions at once, feeds back on itself, creates novel off-shoots while their precursors linger in residues. To the perceptive mind, this is either frustrating or marvellous. It certainly frustrates our desire for order, for careful analysis, for linearity. But if one succeeds in opening themselves to complexity and emergence, the whole process of ‘knowing’ is no less sublime than the natural world.
Like beauty, knowledge is hard to pin down. All answers are subject to change. What we know today may not be so tomorrow, or might have never been as ‘secure’ as we hoped. Knowledge, as the ‘abstract’ reflection of the physical world, is as real and yet as elusive as the world itself. For even a sketch, a picture — visual or textual — still explores only one aspect of the multitude, from one particular perspective. It isn’t — and arguably could never be — the whole.
I am learning to dance with this fluidity — of both world and words. I’m learning to tangent and loop back, to follow a thought through its roots and branches. But bricks and mortar — as chunks of meaning (ie. ideas) ‘embodied’ in language — are the available ’material’ … Because I use words in a text, I am expected to add those brinks to the edifice of knowledge and built a ‘comprehension’ worthy of the scarcest of our resources: time in the ‘focus beam’ of consciousness.
Like my companions, I could tell you that I am working on more texts. Like Peter’s hinted at — and Walter Ong’s Orality and Literacy explores — maybe text is not the right medium. The point of my writings is not to express something definite: a point, whatever it may be. I am trying to dance with ideas, to follow thoughts without capturing them, possibly even without giving the impressions that I’m making ‘claims to truth’ with my expression. And yet, by the sheer fact that I describe my experience (of thinking) in some form of perennial medium, I’m already blurring the line between the ‘fixed’ nature of textual expression and the ambiguous fluidity of lived experiences.
Isn’t it Nietzsche who said (ie. technically wrote) that philosophers kill ‘their darlings’ as they try to dissect them? I wrote this question purely rhetorically; for yes, he claimed that rational analysis tends to ‘suck the life out of’ ideas. And yet, scholars everywhere continue to reduce their scope; researching objects increasingly detached from the whole of life/reality/universe. What is the point there? Is it valuable to know something specific, but so disjointed and abstracted from the complex and mutable ‘whole’ that is might as well be ‘dead’, that it was actually never ‘alive’ in the studied form? Why are we committed to pinning down butterflies?
Ong’s Orality and Literacy suggests that writing — as a technology — restructures ‘how we think’, especially by encouraging a method (ie. logic) which inspires conclusions. Orality satisfies itself with mere exposition and could accommodate ambiguity. Meanwhile, writing generates a sensation a finality, which print only propagates in countless copies.
Fastforward to the 21st century. We are living in a mathematical world; one governed (or at least aided, even sustained) by algorithms. I can’t imagine the extend of the ‘cognitive revolution’ which the ubiquity of advanced math is producing in the noosphere. Our consciousness — how we think — is affected by its ‘idealistic’ environment; for we ceaselessly interact with the ideas ‘floating’ around in symbols, in speech, in memes, in ‘content’ (ie. the most bland word ever invented). The Internet — this mix of medium coming ‘in-between’ our communication — is also restructuring our cognition, our expectations, our very humanity.
We are in the midst of both cognitive revolutions. And we are thinking through their consequences while being submerged in data, in information, in knowledge (as reductive and limited as we may assess it to be). But where is the wisdom?
Here we are, an enclave of depth amidst an unevenly distributed world. In writing, I hope to convey something essential — sharing my subjectivity with yours — while trying to avoid ‘fixing’ my lived experiences into ‘meaning’ which would be partial at best, distorting at worst. I know that I will fail in describing the ‘magic’ of life — for it cannot be captured. Yet I cannot stand silently (and alone) in facing life’s beauty. In my heart, I wish we could simply ‘be’ together, so we could jointly experience — not say or see — where this new year may lead.
But what would it mean for consciousnesses to ‘be together’? Would we have to give up the individuality of our perspectives? Would we have to pretend that ambiguity is merely the result of our (very human) imperfection? Oh, how a naive wish turns into a set of impossible questions… Maybe the point of a question was never to find an answer — but instead, to create a space for interrogation, discussion, reflection…. For a dance with ideas.
PS. If you would like a soft-copy of Ong’s masterpiece, please let Peter know and we can provide.