Exactly. "Once you name something, you tend to stop looking at it." That line, on p. 181 (of Lulu Miller's "Why Fish Don't Exist"), stood out to me in this context, as did a couple pages later, p. 191, "The best way of ensuring that you don't miss them, these gifts, the trick that has helped me squint at the bleakness and see them more clearly, is to admit, with every breath, that you have no idea what you are looking at." Ditto!
I love your exploration, your curiosity, your ongoing learning (to educate means in its original form “to draw up from the dark unknown into the light of conscious knowing”). What an exciting lifelong process of gradual illumination growing from within, expanding out. I look forward to joining your online community.
I am reminded how naming the plants and animals is the first power granted to man in the Genesis story. This showed the control and power that man has over nature. What a comforting illusion, although one that can really, as you point out, can take the life out of the living entities that surround us.
I am also reminded that the in the beginning was the word. It is the greatest power of our world. Or...not? Is there something deeper? Is word just the greatest way to manipulate and attempt to control our world?
I really like the association to the story in Genesis. It seems to me to show that, besides its value as a account of or story about something that happen in history, way back when, it is also valuable simply as a symbol of the power of naming, a power we can exercise just as much today.
I like how you put that - "take the life out of the living entities that surround us."
That language gives us control of nature does seem to me to be partly an illusion, especially if we think that control is exclusive or if we become complacent in it, but it is also to an important degree a reality. Our power to manipulate reality (thanks to language) is impressive, right?
Of course several of the eastern philosophies also cultivate silence. A movie my sister recommended, called Into the Silence, had no dialog. It is a documentary of a Cistercian monastery in France where conversation is severely restricted.
Western philosophy, as I’m sure you’re aware, is a war of words, an attempt to define truth in some way through words, knowing all along how imprecise — yet forgiving — they can be. Only mathematics can prove decisively … but then there is chaos theory.
Like how fish really don't exist!
Exactly. "Once you name something, you tend to stop looking at it." That line, on p. 181 (of Lulu Miller's "Why Fish Don't Exist"), stood out to me in this context, as did a couple pages later, p. 191, "The best way of ensuring that you don't miss them, these gifts, the trick that has helped me squint at the bleakness and see them more clearly, is to admit, with every breath, that you have no idea what you are looking at." Ditto!
I love your exploration, your curiosity, your ongoing learning (to educate means in its original form “to draw up from the dark unknown into the light of conscious knowing”). What an exciting lifelong process of gradual illumination growing from within, expanding out. I look forward to joining your online community.
Three takeaways.
1) “How easy names make knowing! We seem to think.” Cuts deep.
2) “We learn the true names of things at the end”. This is hauntingly hopeful, if there is such a thing.
3) “...Being on the way to knowing it..” I love the idea of knowing as a pursuit and a journey.
You are right - there is no guarantee we learn the true names, ever. Even at the end. Thanks for your comments, Steve!
I am reminded how naming the plants and animals is the first power granted to man in the Genesis story. This showed the control and power that man has over nature. What a comforting illusion, although one that can really, as you point out, can take the life out of the living entities that surround us.
I am also reminded that the in the beginning was the word. It is the greatest power of our world. Or...not? Is there something deeper? Is word just the greatest way to manipulate and attempt to control our world?
I really like the association to the story in Genesis. It seems to me to show that, besides its value as a account of or story about something that happen in history, way back when, it is also valuable simply as a symbol of the power of naming, a power we can exercise just as much today.
I like how you put that - "take the life out of the living entities that surround us."
That language gives us control of nature does seem to me to be partly an illusion, especially if we think that control is exclusive or if we become complacent in it, but it is also to an important degree a reality. Our power to manipulate reality (thanks to language) is impressive, right?
Good questions. Thanks, Micah, for your thoughts.
Of course several of the eastern philosophies also cultivate silence. A movie my sister recommended, called Into the Silence, had no dialog. It is a documentary of a Cistercian monastery in France where conversation is severely restricted.
Western philosophy, as I’m sure you’re aware, is a war of words, an attempt to define truth in some way through words, knowing all along how imprecise — yet forgiving — they can be. Only mathematics can prove decisively … but then there is chaos theory.