("the'sin' is real")
Dear Dialecticians and Colleagues
Across the Curriculum
Toward Talk of Liberal Art
(courses w/o borders series)
On the one hand:
Natasha’s untimely ski accident
Gideon Burdick’s heat loss project
Outrage re bonuses
Stephen Runholt’s work with Lakota
Obama’s appearance on Leno
March Madness
Spring Break in
etc pick your representative
specimens: seemingly varied:
diversity we celebrate and
all of it on the other hand:
“SIN”
from IE es, esse: “essence”
BEING
That’s "describe" mode, right there, aka:.
Aesthetic: “the view” BEING is what
it is, yes? Es esse, essence: aka “sin”
You got a problem with that?
NOW divide SIN (BEING, Essence)
into
“EVIL”.....................“GOOD”
nasty..........................nice
painful.......................pleasant
dark..........................light
indeterminate.........predictable
out of control...........in control
illogical.....................
etc. you can see where this
is going: value added Judge Mode:
ETHICS MORALS
Now I (myself) am still in DESCRIBE
mode here, but you can sense the tension
among culturally relative connotations
velcro-ed onto all those words—sticking
like cockle burrs under a saddle, peas
under a mattress.
(Just describing, but don’t it FEEL like
I’m judging?)
Ok: now here comes the Great Divide,
strip away that EVIL list from the GOOD
list and Original SIN (Being) has now been
divided into Good & Evil? Get it?
An old story.
We half-ass BEING (essence) and naturally
send the half we hate down to the cellar.
Bastard! Or up to the attic. Bitch!
What kind of DIALECTICAL PRACTICE
is THAT?
loveable? Hate the enemy? Evil doers?
Forget about it.
Not judging here, though it sure feels like it;
I feel it myself—in my old bones.Arthritic,
pain in the joints.
This is “school mode.”
Not your “church” and “state” modes.
Don’t want to collapse, conflate, or confuse
the 3 unknowingly, true? .
So, are you saying that all those things listed at the introduction are sinful? Heheheh? If it is, how sinful of you to say so. No, no problems; it's just funny is all. . . my understanding is that you are implying that everything is a sin. Now, is that true?
ReplyDeleteAre there no other options than the poles? Must there always exist the sinful damnation of category? While dialectic thrives on them, it's pretty that it does, is there truly no third fourth or fifth option? This practice seems to turn something 3-d into something 2-d, professor Sam.
Cannot pain be pleasant or VICE versa? Um. Why is synthesis so great? It isn't.
"sin" originally means "essence," "being" (etymologically)
ReplyDeleteSo: yes--all "being" is essentially "sin"--a redundancy.
Now: split "being" into "good" and "evil" & let "sin" stand for
"evil" and we have the popular
and common sense version of "sin"
that we hate, reject, deny, cover-up, struggle against,
condemn.
You are mixing the popular
common condemnatory notion of "sin"
with the original etymological
and descriptive sense of the
word as BEING, ESSENCE.
Consider:
The word SIN as descriptive,
meaning essence, being.
The word SIN as evaluative,
judgmental, condemnatory
meaning if not evil at least
not so good.
The distinction is between
describe mode ("aesthetics:
the view and judge mode
(ethics, morals).
Two discrete "poles" if you will.
Now you can mix the two or
figure out how they RELATE so
as to not diminish either one.
From 2 different dimensions
to a 3rd?
Best, Sam