Friday, May 17, 2024
4:10 a.m. All right, my friends. Do you want to follow up on things begun but not yet ended, or do you have something else in mind? Yesterday’s certainly was great, and unexpected.
Remember, overall we are intending to summarize the salient points and the unmade connections from material given you over 25 years. So massive a task needn’t fit into a strictly logical progression. But we could and probably should clean up as we go along. Perhaps we should talk about how life is, and is not, creating something permanent.
In the interval since you first posed that, I guess an idea has coalesced while I have been thinking about other things. We aren’t able to create anything permanent until we do – and then we are something other than we were while creating it, so you could say it either way. We did or we didn’t, depending on how you define “we” before and after.
As you have been known to say, “That isn’t clear.” But it will serve to start us off.
We trust that we have established that the creation cannot be in any way physical. Even in 3D terms, you are not constructing something that thieves could break in and steal, or rust or other physical process attack. Since 3D itself is mind-stuff, how could anything real be created of something only somewhat real?
Nor could it be particular to any individual. How could it be, when individuality itself is a form of horseback tentative definition, not really accurate?
And, could it be confined to what you see as one species – humanity? The concept of humanity as separate from the rest of nature is another merely approximate definition. You realize by now that part of your mental being consists of plants, clouds, minerals, animals: Where is the boundary line, the frontier, between “human” and “other”?
So then, where is a line that can be drawn? Could it be drawn by time-slices? The Age of Exploration, etc.? There is more to this than first appears, though it cannot be divided any better than can individuals or species.
Still, I’m getting a vague sense of it. We are different in different eras. Our ideas, our ways of experiencing the world, our possibilities, are different.
Yes, and this is what we’re moving toward describing. Just as “Thoughts are things,” so a world-view is a thing.
Ah! And just as an individual life may be seen as creating a flower by what it shapes itself to be (and is shaped), so with civilizations!
Yes, and all the niches between individuals and civilizations.
My, my! I can feel the idea beginning to flower within me, speaking of flowers.
Well, Mr. Amateur Historian, spell it out a little. It will grow as you express it.
Well, take Toynbee. He spent a good deal of time looking at history as the record of different civilizations and how they competed, coexisted, overlapped, succeeded each other, were influenced by each other consciously and unconsciously. He wasn’t concerned with wars and commerce, but with the situations leading to and following wars and commerce. That is, he developed a sort of biography of a given civilization and then it became a chronicle and analysis of the interaction between and among them. He developed a set of laws of interaction that are much more sophisticated than the popular idea of his work allows for.
In light of what you’re saying, I’m seeing this a little differently. Each of those civilizations could be looked at as an individual gathering. Within that gathering are all the ways that civilization could be seen: its moods, you might say.
Provide a few examples, to make it clearer, the distinction you are seeing.
Let’s stick to the West, then. One subdivision is America. I guess bullet points are our best bet here: It’s a good deal of information.
- The Spanish Empire throughout South and Central America.
- The Incas and Aztecs and others that preceded it.
- The nation-states that succeeded it.
- In all periods, the subdivisions that coexisted: castes, classes, religions, linguistic communities, traditions, etc.
- Over time, the gradual transformation of all of these, whether smooth or violent, consistent or erratic, as “the times” changed around them and other influences had their effect. (Foreign intervention by example or invention or conquest, say.)
In any given time, any given place, you could define a group that is smaller than a civilization but larger than an individual family. And you could multiply these subdivisions, or could make larger and larger groupings, depending upon which way you go.
Yes. And you see, this cannot be nailed down by logic nor by careful analysis nor by extensive documentation, because there are no fixed and permanent boundaries. The boundaries are in the eye of the beholder, and in the imagination of the perceiver of relationships. Nonetheless, these are all flowers.
And you could continue to subdivide by less tangible lines of inquiry. People’s attitudes toward plants, toward various animals, toward nature in general. These are very important distinctions, invisible until searched for.
Some people love cats, and some hate them, and some are indifferent to them.
And you could discern similar fault-lines anywhere you cared to look; exactly. Well, every such division marks a grouping, and every such grouping is a flower.
And, as you say, we could discern such fault-lines in any direction we looked.
Yes, but at the moment the emphasis is not upon the observer but upon the fact itself. You live within a certain way of experiencing the world. You contribute to it, as well, by your choices visible and invisible, tangible and – mostly – intangible.
If we choose to see things one way, we are voting for a change? Ed Carter thought our voting would determine what happened to our civilization. I don’t mean voting in voting-booths, of course.
You might try looking at it this way. Given that all possibilities always exist, your choices vote on which reality you wish to be in.
But that has problems.
Of course it does. No model can escape the limitations of its argument. Change context and you change the facts to be contended with. But it is nonetheless a productive way to see it. Feel your way into it, don’t try to logic it. You choose which reality you wish to inhabit.
Now, choosing isn’t the same as wishing. If you are in the East in the 1840s and you want to go to Oregon, or California, you don’t get there by saying, “Wouldn’t it be nice? I’m going to get there by intending that I’m there.” If you want to go to the Pacific, you have to take steps. On the one hand, every action begins with a decision or an implied intent; on the other hand, that intent is just turning the tiller or turning the steering-wheel. It doesn’t get you there by itself. Sustained intent is essential, but it is not sufficient.
And the same goes for civilizations and sub-civilizations and cultures and communities, all up and down the scale.
Indeed it does. A place to pause. Satisfied we aren’t lost yet?
I’m smiling. Maybe you got lucky. Our thanks as always.