| Re: 2 parts |
Jul. 31st, 2007|05:41 pm |
> This is exactly how I know you have not visited the links. Words you use to trigger your revolt against dogmas come from some pool of second-hand slogans, not from these sources.
Actually, the level of the debate loses in quality when someone puts another person in a pre-defined box with an implicit accusation in dishonesty. Had I not known you better, I would have deemed it pointless to state that, in fact, I HAVE read Dawkins. The fact that others may share my critique of him does not alter my position or the fact that my questioning of the scientific dogma has begun years ago and is not a revolt that began with your mention of “lousy crystals and structures”.
I have read his “Selfish Gene” and an array of essays where he already claimed certainty that science should replace religion. My exposure to him occured in an American self-critical, intellectual setting and I remember he was particularly embraced by social psychologists. I found these fields too biologistic for my liking and so dismissed Dawkins together with the psychologists – as an institution, which in no way means that I do not value their insights or experience. When I appear to dismiss whole branches of science, I dismiss their authoritarian claim to “knowledge”, which is being manipulated and concocted mostly for specific aims. I do not dismiss human experience, of which art, science and religion are also a part.
I'll try to summarise my position, namely, that any institutionalised body of “knowledge” is dogmatic, because by its mere fact of institutionalisation it has been “applied”- be it art, science or religion. And for anyone who is ingrained in institutional structures, it is extremely difficult to see beyond that point of view, and hence even auto-critique tends to revolve around safe space, Noam Chomsky is one example.
However, in no way, do I reduce every aspect of human endeavour to institutionalised thought. Give me a little more credit than that.
> negative experience is also valuable, sometimes precious.
Totally. I, actually, don't even see my experience as negative. Since I have taken upon myself to attempt to decipher the human mystery I need to know what humans experience. But, how to make sense of the rampant, meaningless pain of the majority of people in this world? In my humble experience, all institutional answers seem to lie and to justify it. That's why I refuse them and question their goals and authority.
> I got desoriented when you started talking about changing landscapes.
Probably, I was driven by the selfish desire to have you near – not as an illusion or perhaps against the backdrop of illusion. Since I can't go to the Mountain, I asked the Mountain to come to me.
But, also, part of it was my emotional response to Misha's posting about the Kaput of contemporary Russian reality. So, I thought, if you would be forced to go somewhere, why not here. I don't know how much of what we live is an illusion, but fighting a “system” within the “system” and using its discourse and methods, in my experience, has proved futile. And even if it is all an illusion, it doesn't mean that parts of it are not worthy of our experience. Bien au contraire.
> sounded as if you knew perfectly well that the change
was an illusion, yet invited me to go for it because,
well, illusions are all that we're left with.
What I meant by illusion was, again in response to Misha's posting (and I agree, I shouldn't have assumed that you operated on the same definitions), that replacing the current government with a government would not affect the majority of the people. This government is a response to the Western structure of economic and political interests, so replacing it with anything else, keeps the structure in tact. Many people subscribe to abusive structures even when those structures abuse them. My point is, how to make it possible for people to be free to choose their reality or illusion without encroaching their own interests upon others and without being encroached upon? So, if I and my friends don't want the structure, how can we make sure that we won't get jailed or even worse bombed the next day we refuse it? What dimensions are we to seek? For the time, I am exploring the human sphere. |
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