Monday, April 16, 2012
Learning From Lutherans
Learning from Lutherans
Some of my best FB friends are
Lutherans. I’ve learned that
beer is important in Lutheran
Theology—as is “theology”:
doctrine and dogma.
Dogma, I explained to a student
a
the other day, is a good thing,
doxos- doxologic: right thinking.
Dogmatic: that’s something
else.
We considered how-it- is a closed
mind is essential for free thinking:
an anchor, filing system,
organization.
An otherwise open mind blows
in the wind like grocery
bags in a breeze
Unhinged.
I myself have a closed mind. It’s
beyond me. I serve it often
unwillingly. Evangelical
despite my self. Good
News going on and
on regardless.
A good life in real-time isn’t as
important as salvation, which
is crucial the crux of the matter.
(Eternal Life —try and represent
eternity in temporal terms &
images. I dare you. Long
long long long long long…
Not easy, is it? )
CRITICAL THINKING
WE (us educated folks, the elite,
passed 12 th grade and higher
degreed) think that if we nail you
for inconsistency and contradiction,
boy holler have we got you now. If
you mess up your facts, split an infinity,
miss spell, blush and stammer and
shift your feet: HA! We win.
HA!
I hate you all I tell my class dismissing
them and they laugh and laugh. No, I’m
not kidding. Who you gonna trust: me or
them that say they love you? Would buy
a car from a used car salesman who says
I’ma rip-you-off best I can or from one
who says it’s my service project to put you
and the little lady in just the right sedan for
your ways and means.
Alchemy
EGO big as a barn! I accuse.
“yes, but mine’s crucified!”
Crucifixion hurts. No surprise.
No one in his right mind chooses
it as remedial. Salutary. It’s the
suffering-it that counts: what it’s
good for. Ouch, o shit, & damnit.
Not the pain for crying out loud.
The standing-it.
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Doxa in Greek: common belief, a basic understanding, general knowledge.
ReplyDeleteParadoxa in Greek: when you’ve reached an impasse from pushing doxa. Paradoxes, necessarily drawn from doxa, help circle individuals around to a new kind of understanding. Might be another doxic representation, but doesn’t mean that Zeno was trying to make fools of us all. Socrates neither. Progress in the backspace.
Note the prefix of para-doxa. Along side. Near. Beyond.
There has to be some of the problems of doxa present, some preconceptions and general understanding glossing over the fine print, just follow the herd and get moving dammit to ever GET MOVING DAMMIT and uncover the paradoxa beyond doxa.
Doxa provides necessary preconceptions, necessary familiarity and common knowledge: something to stand on so you’re not a grocery bag caught in a windstorm. But reaching paradoxa means you’ve uncovered the inconsistencies in your general knowledge and brute understanding to get at the heart of what’s uncomfortable and where--something, anything--must be misrepresentative in order for Zeno’s arrow to never reach a wall when I see it stuck there to the hilt...
We would be, as Socrates calls it in the Phaedo, made “soul-blinded” if we looked upon Beauty Itself or Justice Itself or Truth Itself. Moving from doxa to paradoxa is a kind of second sailing; paradox is the second-best to Truth, and Truth... might be impossible.
Philosophy is deathless and death-bound; doxa and dogma always gets shot along the wayside, has to, but after and during that state of paradoxa new doxas and dogmas are ready to fill their place.
Just don’t be a misologist like Meno. Wisdom over victory: what selfless few choose that absurdity?
MAY
And para noia: thinking outside the box with all the reaper cushions that come with it. Zeno demonstrates the incommensurate relationship between conceptual and physical reality. Half and half and half and half: an infinite regress toward progress--If I think about it. Otherwise: just kick the stone. Paradiseo: surrounding wall of clay. I agree with everything you say. As usual: you improve my terms. Gracias. (The practice of dialectic depends on keeping the opposition in play--no win / lose on either side: going for the wisdom over victory. Or call it meta-victory then.
ReplyDeleteQuestion reaper cushions: just reaper cushions for sounding like repercussions or is it related to Flann O'Brien?
Delete"I refute him so!" Johnson to Berkeley breaking his foot on a rock, as if to say, "Look I can kick the rock, [and as an aside to Zeno: "my foot contacts! There is definite progress in this regress!"] and [back to Berkeley] more over this physical thing is not just a conceptual thing!" But I want to say there's SOMETHING in the external world that causes sensation within (not being capable of experiencing something that is not perceived by sense isn't the same thing as things necessarily not existing w/o mind)vand Locke's bit on primary qualities vs secondary qualities doesn't account for why color might be secondary where extension is primary, so how can we call things as possessing either... How do you get sensible qualities without a mind that puts them in those categories, anyway?
Doxa, paradoxa... I think it's a good way of ensuring no losers or winners, that sort of rolling. Like, reading Berkeley shouldn't make one disregard Locke; thank him for the dogma, something Berkeley could grab onto, and be done with it. No name-calling there unless its all in good fun.
-MAY
Not familiar with Flann. Pun. I also can't think of how we might get sensible qualities without a mind that categorizes. Do you know Gregory Bateson? (Steps to an Ecology of mind? Mind and Nature: a Necessary Unity? Angels Fear: Toward an Epistemology of the Sacred?) Makes me feel smart as hell reading him over and over even if I'm sure I do severe injustice. Doxa on the one hand; paradoxa on the other. And why can't they Just Get Along? That's the dialectical play. Or joke.
ReplyDelete