Anderson, ch-6-8; McDermott, ch8-10; Romano, Part 3. REPORT: Gary, Pragmatism & 12-step programs
- I jumped the gun on that question about country music (Anderson ch6) last time, so here's another shot at it: is any genre of music "wild" in a way Thoreau would recognize as preservative ("in wildness is the preservation of the world" etc.)?
- Have you had a mystical experience? Or do you, like WJ, have instead "the germ of mysticism"? (/113) If you have, presumably you cannot describe it (that's what a mystical experience is, after all--a meaningful experience you can't put into words); but can you say anything informative about it at all? Do you respect or sympathize with the experience of those who do say they've experienced something mystically significant? Are you skeptical but tolerant? Alternatively, if you've had mystical experiences, are you tolerant of those who haven't?
- What do you think of WJ's defense of experience against philosophy (120) and his statement that the goal of religion is not God but "life, more life..."? 122
- Have you or anyone you know experienced the sort of conversion (like that of AA and other 12-step programs) that brought "a changed attitude towards life"? 124
- Is your life "pervade[d] by" extraordinary experiences of immediacy that you'd describe as transcendent or mystical (but NOT supernatural), such as listening to music, engaging in an intense discussion, losing [your]self in a film or novel"? 135
- "To me faith means not worrying." Does this also apply to naturalists and humanists who do NOT possess a faith in anything supernatural? 141 **
- What do you make of WJ's 1898 "Walpurgis nacht" experience? ***
- "We as human beings have no natural place." McD 134 Is that true? Why isn't every place our natural place, if in fact we are (as discussed last time) "citizens of the cosmos"? Or do some of us suffer Unheimlichkeit, "ultimate homelessness," when we "raise a wall" meant to define the borders of home? /135
- Did "the ancients ha[ve] it right, bury the things with the person"? /137 What things do you want to spend eternity with? And does McD's discussion of "things" remind you of George Carlin's "stuff"?*
- Can you relate (so to speak) to any of McD's relational experiences (starvation, amputation, saturation, seduction, repression)? 152-56 Do you think you have a healthy relationship with relations, in your life?
- Have you fully faced and accepted your own mortality? Do you agree that we can find a middle way between "the self-deception of personal immortality" and "creative, probing, building lives..."? 164
- Do you agree with McD (and Rilke) that although we will be terminated we cannot be cancelled, and that's cause for celebration? 168
- If it's true that John Locke was a slave-trade investor, Bishop George Berkeley a slave-owner, and David Hume a "committed racist," should they be "canceled" or removed from the canon of classic and standard curricula of western philosophy? Romano 319
- Did you see Cornel West (331ff.) when he visited MTSU (in the Tennessee Room, across the hall from our classroom) last year? Do you find him provocative in a socially-constructive Socratic "gadfly" sort of way? Is his presidential candidacy philosophically motivated, do you think? Is it wise?
- Do you read The Ethicist (Kwame Anthony Appiah, 336f.) in the NYTimes Magazine? Do you think he dispenses sound advice and counsel?
- You probably weren't taught the tragic story of Hypatia and the Library at Alexandria (344f.) in school. Why not, do you think?
- Do you think Hannah Arendt's "banality of evil" (366) is relevant to events and attitudes in our time? How so?
- Any comment on any of these Arendt quotes?
- Do you think Betty Friedan and other modern-era feminists have raised the social status of women in our society? 376f.
- Should native American philosophy be treated, as Scott Pratt says, as "a fundamental source" of wisdom (448), for instance in articulating the appropriate human stance towards non-human nature?
- More coming soon...
- What else in the readings this week would you like us to discuss?
Anticipating Gary's presentation (and see: How WJ inspired the 12-step movement)...
William James, more than anyone else, was responsible for introducing the wide range of topics that now comprise the broad field of psychology. In his magnificent text, The Principles of Psychology, he explored and expanded what was then known about neuroscience, cognition, emotion, perception, and behavior and left a legacy of inquiry into the workings of human experience that still fuels this social science. This film presents some of James's most important formulations, including his discussions of habit, consciousness, will, and religious experience with current live-action illustrations. Dr. McDermott's commentary reminds viewers that James's work also prods us to lead our own individual lives with courage, openess to possibilities and awareness to what James referred to as the "fringe" of experience. This fringe includes the hunches, un-expressible feelings, and haunting memories that influence our thoughts and actions. An interview with a young recovering alcoholic and an account of James's own struggle with suicidal depression make this film an emotionally moving experience as well as an instructional one for students.
*
** "In dealing with the work of Dewey, it feels fitting to end with neither a bang nor a whimper but to round out my tale of his sensible
mysticism in sermonesque fashion. In 1879 Dewey moved from Burlington, Vermont, to teach high school for three years in the wilds of
Oil City, Pennsylvania. He later recalled to his friend Max Eastman a
transitional experience he had while there: ‘‘There was no vision,’’
Eastman reported, ‘‘not even a definable emotion—just a supremely
blissful feeling that his worries were over.’’ Dewey described a ‘‘oneness with the universe’’ and a feeling that ‘‘everything that’s here is
here, and you can just lie back on it.’’9 Consequently Dewey claimed,
‘‘I’ve never had any doubts since then, nor any beliefs. To me faith
means not worrying.’’10 It is not merely coincidental that Dewey’s
philosophical career was launched during his stay in Oil City. He
moved directly to a life of thinking—with emphasis on the gerund—
and of ongoing experiential engagement in the world through teaching, art, and politics. Indeed, his actions well meet Hocking’s criteria
for the worship of the pragmatic mystic: a mystic’s worship ‘‘takes on
the aspect of a more deliberate, intense, and thorough thinking.’’11
Dewey, the Clark Kentish figure of our didactic histories, was living
on the edge, though we may fail to see it. It is important to the pragmatic meaning of Dewey’s thought that we not forget it." 141
==
*** "...The steep descent takes an hour or two, and James arrived in the bottom of the gorge, at the rough cabin that stood there then, to find Pauline Goldmark; her brother, Charles; Waldo Adler, the son of Felix Adler, founder of the Society for Ethical Culture; and two college girls “drest in boy's breeches,” as he couldn't help writing to his wife. It had been a rough, nearly 10-mile day, beginning for James at 5 a.m.
The guide made dinner and built a cozy fire inside. But that night James tossed and turned while his other youthful cabin mates slumbered. He told his wife, Alice, in the extraordinary letter he wrote her two days later, that he arose and walked out to the brook that drains the gorge. And then something happened to him.
“The moon rose and hung above the scene, leaving a few of the larger stars visible,” he wrote, “and I entered into a state of spiritual alertness of the most vital description. The influences of Nature, the wholesomeness of the people around me, especially the good Pauline, the thought of you and the children ... the problem of the Edinburgh lectures, all fermented within me till it became a regular Walpurgis nacht.” (Walpurgisnacht is the night before May Day, when spirits walked the earth, according to Germanic lore.)
However deep and meaningful the feeling, he couldn't really explain it — as he later showed others had been unable to explain their own similar experiences. “It seemed as if all the gods of the nature-mythologies were holding an indescribable meeting in my breast with the moral gods of the inner life,” he wrote to his wife. But it was a turning point in his intellectually peripatetic life. After that night at Panther Gorge, he understood spiritual reality not as a concept, or as something privileged, but as an unexceptional property of human consciousness and a fact of life..." --continues, The Geography of Religious Experience, NYTimes 9.9.07
The guide made dinner and built a cozy fire inside. But that night James tossed and turned while his other youthful cabin mates slumbered. He told his wife, Alice, in the extraordinary letter he wrote her two days later, that he arose and walked out to the brook that drains the gorge. And then something happened to him.
“The moon rose and hung above the scene, leaving a few of the larger stars visible,” he wrote, “and I entered into a state of spiritual alertness of the most vital description. The influences of Nature, the wholesomeness of the people around me, especially the good Pauline, the thought of you and the children ... the problem of the Edinburgh lectures, all fermented within me till it became a regular Walpurgis nacht.” (Walpurgisnacht is the night before May Day, when spirits walked the earth, according to Germanic lore.)
However deep and meaningful the feeling, he couldn't really explain it — as he later showed others had been unable to explain their own similar experiences. “It seemed as if all the gods of the nature-mythologies were holding an indescribable meeting in my breast with the moral gods of the inner life,” he wrote to his wife. But it was a turning point in his intellectually peripatetic life. After that night at Panther Gorge, he understood spiritual reality not as a concept, or as something privileged, but as an unexceptional property of human consciousness and a fact of life..." --continues, The Geography of Religious Experience, NYTimes 9.9.07
==
James and Dewey both endorsed natural transcendence/mysticism:
#2 Have you had a mystical experience? Or do you, like WJ, have instead "the germ of mysticism"? (/113) If you have, presumably you cannot describe it (that's what a mystical experience is, after all--a meaningful experience you can't put into words); but can you say anything informative about it at all? Do you respect or sympathize with the experience of those who do say they've experienced something mystically significant? Are you skeptical but tolerant? Alternatively, if you've had mystical experiences, are you tolerant of those who haven't?
ReplyDeleteInitially, I jumped to say, "Yes!" But the more I sit here and read definitions of "mystic," "mystical," and "mysticism" the more I wonder if I'm wrong. I can indeed say I have had what I believed to be spiritual or religious, seemingly unexplainable, encounters with the Being I, at the time, called God. And two of those encounters changed my life, each time. I know the details and can explain the circumstances...I can, in fact, put my experiences into words. So maybe they weren't mystical as James would define the word. They were more than simple feelings or intuitions although I do experience intuitions about people and circumstances more often than I'd care to admit... weird things like waking from a dream or having a thought about someone I haven't seen or talked with in years...only to learn that that person is experiencing or just experienced a huge shift in their life.
In my younger years, I stayed away from mysticism and mystics due to a belief that those things were satanic/anti-Christian. I'm not as close-minded or fearful anymore. I think I might enjoy conversing with folks who've had mystical experiences.
I agree with categorizing intuitions as being a mystical experience. Those who spent their lives in the church tend to place it on one being, like you said in the post, but I don't believe they all fall under the same type of premonition. Sometimes, our intuition can act on our natural beings, much like an animal burrowing from storms or cold. Its human nature in a sense, and valuable. Having mystical experiences, or supposed experiences, can really enlighten a person to open their eyes to other other mystical happenings of the world.
DeleteFor me, I wasn't necessarily raised in the church, and my parents didn't impose a religious belief during my childhood very much. I have had multiple mystic realizations because I've kept myself open to other ways of the world working. I will never discredit anyone for their beliefs, because if more than one person believes in it, then I have no position to oppose what they believe the be true. Though, I do believe that the individuals who are strict when it comes to what, who, and how they believe, it creates a barrier for other wonders.
I for one am not skeptical, it does happen. You just have to be in a different mindset in order to see the world a different way.
This is a mature way to look at things. To respect others beliefs even if you believe differently is admirable. As I've gotten older and walked further from my upbringing I find myself being more open to other ideas and beliefs.
DeleteThe (perhaps) mystical experiences I've had were not typical and they did change me and teach me. I'll probably share more when we are all together on tuesday...if for no other reason than to help me define the experiences. Thanks for sharing your thoughts, Hailey.
"if more than one person believes in it, then I have no position to oppose what they believe the be true"--In fact, mystics don't generally worry about whether anyone else has had their same experience: a mystical experience is said to be singularly compelling, whether or not ANYONE else believes it to be reliable or provable. It is presumed in such cases that no sufficient public evidence is available to settle the case. So, it's an important point to note that when such evidence IS available, we should not be so tolerant of those who refuse to acknowledge it. If someone claims that an election was stolen because they just FEEL that it was, for instance, that does NOT count as a mystical experience we're all obliged to respect.
DeleteIn Varieties of Religious Experience WJ writes:
Delete"...although mysticism is entirely willing to corroborate religion, it is too private (and also too various) in its utterances to be able to claim a universal authority. But philosophy publishes results which claim to be universally valid if they are valid at all..."
But he is open to hearing of the experiences of those who do claim to have had inexpressibly revelatory mystical experiences, and recounts many such instances in Varieties.
"Lectures XVI And XVII. Mysticism...
DeleteThe words “mysticism” and “mystical” are often used as terms of mere reproach, to throw at any opinion which we regard as vague and vast and sentimental, and without [pg 380]a base in either facts or logic. For some writers a “mystic” is any person who believes in thought-transference, or spirit-return. Employed in this way the word has little value: there are too many less ambiguous synonyms. So, to keep it useful by restricting it, I will do what I did in the case of the word “religion,” and simply propose to you four marks which, when an experience has them, may justify us in calling it mystical for the purpose of the present lectures. In this way we shall save verbal disputation, and the recriminations that generally go therewith.
1. Ineffability.—The handiest of the marks by which I classify a state of mind as mystical is negative. The subject of it immediately says that it defies expression, that no adequate report of its contents can be given in words. It follows from this that its quality must be directly experienced; it cannot be imparted or transferred to others. In this peculiarity mystical states are more like states of feeling than like states of intellect. No one can make clear to another who has never had a certain feeling, in what the quality or worth of it consists. One must have musical ears to know the value of a symphony; one must have been in love one's self to understand a lover's state of mind. Lacking the heart or ear, we cannot interpret the musician or the lover justly, and are even likely to consider him weak-minded or absurd. The mystic finds that most of us accord to his experiences an equally incompetent treatment.
2. Noetic quality.—Although so similar to states of feeling, mystical states seem to those who experience them to be also states of knowledge. They are states of insight into depths of truth unplumbed by the discursive intellect. They are illuminations, revelations, full of significance and importance, all inarticulate though they [pg 381]remain; and as a rule they carry with them a curious sense of authority for after-time.
These two characters will entitle any state to be called mystical, in the sense in which I use the word. Two other qualities are less sharply marked, but are usually found. These are...
3. Transiency.—Mystical states cannot be sustained for long. Except in rare instances, half an hour, or at most an hour or two, seems to be the limit beyond which they fade into the light of common day. Often, when faded, their quality can but imperfectly be reproduced in memory; but when they recur it is recognized; and from one recurrence to another it is susceptible of continuous development in what is felt as inner richness and importance.
Delete4. Passivity.—Although the oncoming of mystical states may be facilitated by preliminary voluntary operations, as by fixing the attention, or going through certain bodily performances, or in other ways which manuals of mysticism prescribe; yet when the characteristic sort of consciousness once has set in, the mystic feels as if his own will were in abeyance, and indeed sometimes as if he were grasped and held by a superior power. This latter peculiarity connects mystical states with certain definite phenomena of secondary or alternative personality, such as prophetic speech, automatic writing, or the mediumistic trance. When these latter conditions are well pronounced, however, there may be no recollection whatever of the phenomenon, and it may have no significance for the subject's usual inner life, to which, as it were, it makes a mere interruption. Mystical states, strictly so called, are never merely interruptive. Some memory of their content always remains, and a profound sense of their importance. They modify the inner life [pg 382]of the subject between the times of their recurrence. Sharp divisions in this region are, however, difficult to make, and we find all sorts of gradations and mixtures.
These four characteristics are sufficient to mark out a group of states of consciousness peculiar enough to deserve a special name and to call for careful study. Let it then be called the mystical group..."
https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/621/pg621-images.html#Pg066
WJ's dfn of religion, in VRE:
Delete"Religion, therefore, as I now ask you arbitrarily to take it, shall mean for us the feelings, acts, and experiences of individual men in their solitude, so far as they apprehend themselves to stand in relation to whatever they may consider the divine."
https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/621/pg621-images.html#Pg066
In the film "Contact," Jodie Foster is a skeptically-oriented scientist who "had an experience" filled with "awe and humility and hope"... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8CiG9Wgvyj0
DeleteBeing raised in the SBC, mysticism (and anything else tossed under that umbrella) was highly discouraged. Even religious experiences that were normalized in other denominations were deeply frowned upon in the church I grew up in. I remember a visitor once raised their hands during an upbeat hymn and he was "giving a talking to" after the service. I experienced a major culture shock when I first went to the church my husband grew up, the local Four Square church with a *gasp* female pastor. Speaking in a "prayer language" and being "slain in the spirit" were common, and encouraged. My little introverted self did not know what to do during the first prayer service I attended, when everyone seemed to start talking in the same prayer language and I was approached afterwards with the promise that I hadn't really experienced the Holy Spirit until I had been given my own prayer language.
DeletePersonally, when it comes to mystical, religious, supernatural, etc experiences I stopped worrying if it was true or not a while ago. Now, I think that the important thing is what a person takes from the experience. Did it make a positive impact or a negative impact? Are you a better person for having had the experience? If you think it happened, that's enough for me. I don't have to believe it or disbelieve it, but I am going to measure your sincerity with your actions afterwards.
"the important thing is what a person takes from the experience. Did it make a positive impact or a negative impact? Are you a better person for having had the experience?"--Yes, these are precisely the questions WJ and the pragmatists emphasize as important. "By their fruits"...
DeleteI was also a Southern Baptist, until announcing to my family at about age 13 or so that their message didn't work for me. It's odd, isn't it, that with all their talk of establishing a personal relationship with Jesus (etc.) they don't think they're courting mysticism?
Question 1
ReplyDeleteThere are a few bands and singers that I listen to regularly that evoke the "wildness" aspect of music. One singer in particular goes by the name of Fish in a Birdcage (I implore you to check out his work, I always feel like I am walking through a forest or a past time.). A few other artists would be Cosmo Sheldrake and aeseaes (if you are curious about my personality since most people say I'm quiet, have fun listening to songs I listen to on an almost daily basis) There are also a lot of Irish songs that reflect this ideal.
As far as country music, old country music would fit the description, but newer country music I think is really far from the definition by Thoreau. The songs speaking about the simpler times of life or enjoying the forest, back roads, and listening to the crickets at night would fit this category. As far as living it up in Nashville, getting drunk in a cornfield, and making a truck bigger, I think those display the modern term for "wildness".
Public drunkenness in Nashville is too common and even conventional to be considered "wild" in the Thoreauvian/philosophical sense... But I agree, music that reinforces our intimate connection with the rest of nature does evoke that kind of wildness fraught with positive possibility.
DeleteThe music of my youth was often meant to be subversive of the culture and values of our elders, that's an important dimension of wildness. Thoreau certainly felt that, declaring:
"I have lived some thirty years on this planet, and I have yet to hear the first syllable of valuable or even earnest advice from my seniors. They have told me nothing, and probably cannot tell me any thing to the purpose. Here is life, an experiment to a great extent untried by me; but it does not avail me that they have tried it. If I have any experience which I think valuable, I am sure to reflect that this my Mentors said nothing about." https://www.gutenberg.org/files/205/205-h/205-h.htm
"Hope I die before I get old," sang The Who. They're still kicking. Same for the Stones and countless reconstituted bands of the era. So much for subversion, they're now "The Establishment" they once excoriated... for profit.
DeleteI will definitely have to check out your suggested music!
DeleteI don't listen to much country, but I did grow up listening to it and I have a deep appreciation for classic country, the outlaw country from Johnny Cash and of course our cultural queen Dolly.
I listen to heavier rock, bands like Beartooth, Imminence, A Day to Remember, and so many others. I decided to make 2024 the year of concerts and if a band I like comes to Nashville and the tickets are reasonable then I am going to do what I can to go to the show. The shows I have been to have been a study in that wildness that Anderson talks about, and I don't mean the mosh pits though those are certainly wild. There's a sense of freedom in the crowd, singing along to your favorite song at the top of your lungs and moving your body to the beat of the bass. The same sort of stress release that happens during a quiet hike can happen at these shows. There's a sense of camaraderie and community, folks look out for each other. I won't list all the ways that a good show can bring you back to yourself, but I do think that the argument can be made that the wildness we've discussed can be found in the punk and metal scenes. There's space there to be your authentic self, to toss off the weights of societal expectations, to let some of that inner wildness out.
Perhaps it is less the type of music and more the authenticity of the music that makes it wild. I'm sure a Swiftie would describe the concert experience in the same way I would describe the shows I've been to this year.
"toss off the weights of societal expectations, to let some of that inner wildness out"--Exactly.
DeleteI've never heard of any of your bands. So their wildness wouldn't signify for me. That just shows how personal our relation to the wild must be.
Question 5
ReplyDeleteI do think I have pleasantries in my life that pervade my sense of mysticism and transcendent experiences. From the other question I answered, music plays a huge role for my everyday life and reflect the time I am wanting to have- such as listening to instrumentals for quiet rest, or upbeat light hearted music that gets others in a happy mood, or while I am the gym I listen to fast paced "fighting music" to get my heart pumping. I am also a huge reader with a creative imagination. The books I read and the music I listen, I imagine myself being in the mc, main characters, shoes and depict the scenes in my head. They both just place me in an in-between, as if I'm here and not here all at the same time, and I think that that is a good similarity to the idea of a mystic experience. As if you were seeing yourself outside of your body and enjoying what you're seeing and feeling.
As far as engaging in conversation, I enjoy having a good chat about different topics because it opens my world just a little bit more than it was before. That is, if the other person is willing to have a conversation about sensitive topics such as religion, politics, laws, cultural beliefs, and others. Every piece of information is important in one way or another, and there is no reason that two individuals can have a civil conversation without it starting a fight.
That experience of stepping outside yourself, or feeling an essential unity with nature and with other people (which can be the result of a good heart-to-heart conversation), is potentially transcendent (depending on how we define that) but not mystical in the "ineffable" sense, insofar as a good conversation involves verbal exchange that seems meaningful and not entirely elusive. Most important, such an experience is NATURAL. Hence, available to all.
Delete#7 "We as human beings have no natural place." McD 134 Is that true? Why isn't every place our natural place, if in fact we are (as discussed last time) "citizens of the cosmos"? Or do some of us suffer Unheimlichkeit, "ultimate homelessness," when we "raise a wall" meant to define the borders of home? /135
ReplyDeleteHmm.
This is my second attempt to respond.
It's such a small quote yet it seems to require a well thought answer. Is it true that I have no natural place in our world? Everything within me wants to say no, of course that's not true. Because I have an innate desire to belong somewhere, to set roots, to engage with a community, to create a lasting place for my children and grandchildren to return to in the future. A place where I have left my mark and my memories. A good place. A beautiful place.
I used to believe that meant I had to own a home of my own. And that I've not been a good enough mom or a good enough adult or a good enough human being if I didn't have a literal place of 4 walls to leave for my children and grandchildren.
Our reality is that we have lived in several places over the years. Always rented. And after my youngest graduates and goes off to university, I want to buy a van to live in and travel America. I want all of America to become my home. If I visit my kids, then I'm home there. If I visit a national park then I'm home there. If I'm sleeping in my van or traveling the highways then I'm home there.
I want to create my own place.
I want to define my own place.
I want to honor myself and whatever place I find myself in.
But I think McD is correct. We have no permanent natural place in this world. And that feels sad to me.
I'm not sure I agree, or if that's quite what McD means. His view was that we have no OTHER place(s) than those we manage to carve out of our natural abode, and that there's nothing intrinsic to any particular place that makes it peculiarly ours. But just as he says of our relation to our "things," our "stuff" (as George Carlin has it), we CREATE significance and meaning in those relations by honoring and valuing them. Same would go for place: we MAKE a place our own, it wasn't already naturally ours but we can make it so.
DeleteIf we're true cosmopolitans, that's potentially do-able anywhere and everywhere. "My home, the universe," said George Santayana. The novelist James Michener, too: "my home the world"... That's how a naturalist/cosmopolitan thinks about it.
Sad? McD says (following the poet Rilke, at the end of ch 10) we should celebrate our finite impermanence:
Delete“...We should listen to the poet Rainer Maria Rilke, who praises our very ephemerality.
But because being here is much, and because all this
that's here, so fleeting, seems to require us and strangely
concerns us. Us the most fleeting of all. Just once,
everything, only for once. Once and no more. And we, too,
once. And never again. But this
having been once on earth - can it ever be cancelled?
Indeed, can it, can we, ever be cancelled? I think not. Celebrate!”
Did "the ancients ha[ve] it right, bury the things with the person"? /137 What things do you want to spend eternity with? And does McD's discussion of "things" remind you of George Carlin's "stuff"?*
ReplyDeleteOne of my favorite rabbit holes to fall into are the videos on social media from archaeologists and historians talking about an obscure fact from their niche studies. I love seeing the discoveries found at burial sites, to see what items were valuable enough to be left with the deceased. Its a great way to see what the ancients (and not so ancients at times) considered valuable. I don't know if they have it right, but so much about the past has been learned from the artifacts buried.
With that understanding, I think I would have to be very particular in what I wanted buried with me. I love to have a good laugh and cause a bit of chaos. So I would include some of the random things I've collected over the years. The "Flatwoods Monster" lantern would be a good choice, the alien shape would be immensely confusing for someone to find in hundreds of years. Definitely a book or two, but one of the ones that would make someone blush if they read it. It always seems like the most salacious manuscripts are the ones that are remembered through time and I think it would be hilarious to contribute to that form of literature.
All jokes aside, I don't really know how I feel about death and what comes after. Does it really matter what we are buried with? What about how we are buried? I want to say it doesn't, but I remember my cousin and I demanding a hot pink or orange nail polish for our grandmother at her funeral because the nail color they had given her was not something she would have worn. After a lifetime of being threatened of being haunted by her, we didn't want to risk her avenging the poor choice later. Funnily enough, any time my family has something supernatural happen we blame my grandmother, saying that she had to have her 2 cents put into the conversation. I also love telling everyone that comes over to our house that the 2 foot tall clown statue I inherited from that same grandmother is haunted. I know, its mean. But she would appreciate the joke and that's a kind of legacy on its own. I think if I have the choice between being surrounded by my personal treasures or being a ghost, I would have to pick annoying the ones I love for the rest of their days.
"any time my family has something supernatural happen"--You drop that in so casually! In my 67+ years I've NEVER had "something supernatural" happen. I must be missing out.
DeleteI love the idea of giving future archaeologists something to scratch their heads about, and to get a chuckle from in the meantime.
"Does it really matter what we are buried with? What about how we are buried?" No, unless we decide that it does. That's McD's point, I think, that we MAKE things and events (and "relations") matter.
I've told my daughter I want my ashes to see the world (as it were). I love "a dying Cubs fan's last request" to be buried at home plate, Wrigley Field. Same effect as your lantern and smut. Death is serious but death rituals are for the living.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7xBxZGQ1dJk&t=108s
#6
ReplyDeleteI like and agree with this short quote saying, “To me faith means not worrying”. I do have a connection to God and with religion, however not in the traditional sense. I am a bit more fluid and lenient with practicing my religion, than what I have seen in the south. Because of this, faith has two meanings in my eyes. The first is me having faith in God and what he has given me and will continue to do. I feel this type of faith contains hope and optimism. This comes with a bit of worry because I would use the term in a situation that I am not in control of, or a situation that I am wanting to take place. On the other hand, the second version of faith has no ties to religion. This one is a bit harder to explain because it is solely a feeling. This version relates completely to the quote, in the sense that there is no worry or anxiety attached to the situation. I feel that this type of faith takes place in the universe; meaning certain things are supposed to happen in a certain way. I believe naturalists and humanists would use the second version of faith, because of the disconnect from religion. I think I have some things to reflect on from this quote since I see faith in both ways. So, I could be religious and a bit of a naturalist. I will have to continue some reading and research to determine the truth.
Dewey's "common faith" was not really about god, though he did use the word... but he meant by it something non-supernatural. A mystical experience, in his terms, is just a profound form of insight and reassurance that can't be explained in conventional language. Dewey's god is an ongoing commitment to democracy, education, and amelioration. Most of us these days who share that commitment do find ourselves worrying about whether it can be sustained. But maybe we wouldn't worry so much if we'd had something like Dewey's experience in Oil City.
Delete"it might be better if I cannot remember the details"-- because you think your experience pointed to something spooky or scary? That's generally not the way pragmatists in the American tradition tend to think about things. And many of us do not claim to have had a mystical experience at all, though we do acknowledge that meaningful experiences do sometimes evade capture in words.
ReplyDelete"we should not put feelings to that"-- I think we're entitled to feel what we feel, but we shouldn't presume to know what others feel or have experienced in a subjective way.