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The thought manifests as the word; The word manifests as the deed; The deed develops into habit; And habit hardens into character; So watch the thought and its ways with care, And let it spring from love Born out of concern for all beings.... As the shadow follows the body, as we think so we become.(from the sayings of the Buddha)
Thus far, I have scrupulously avoided the three dire topics of sex, politics and religion. But, as with any theory worth its pragmatic salt, the time must come.
I take as my text: "Great minds discuss ideas, mediocre minds discuss events, small minds discuss people," and apply to it a (recently arrived-at) touchstone: "religion" is the name a culture applies to its One-and-Only.
By this, I mean that while there may be any number of alternative modes of other things -- making a living, style of writing, means of address and respect, observance of social and political scruple, etc. -- no 'culture' identifies more than one 'religion.' Of course, there are multi-cultural structures, typically on an economic basis -- but, like primitive tribes whose word for their tribe is "Real People," the word any self-organized, cross-generational ideational group has for its central tenet, its raison-d'être, is "True Religion."
Thus my paradigm emerges: small minds have all sorts of things to say about all sorts of people -- but the sticking point is, Are They Religious? All the foofaraw about marriage and divorce and sharp deals and my son, the doctor, serves only one purpose: to reinforce what is right and proper if the subject is Dutifully Religious, and to scandalize her name if she is not. Gossip is The People's way of sustaining themselves as a group, even if they don't have a clear understanding of what they're doing, and thus never give it its own clear name.
Now I proceed to the other extremum, to test whether the converse also applies: do great minds, in their speculations, address 'all sorts of ideas,' or is there, for them, only one idea, really? And do they 'personify' it, for instance in order to tell it from the discursive panoply of topics (to likewise label the 'mundane' ideas) which derive from the idea that there is only one Idea? Or perhaps they give it no name at all -- they have no need, because what is there to say, and to whom?
And then, among the mediocrity: in entertaining 'events,' is there more success in bringing them together in a 'General Unified Eventuality' than in recognizing each and every one as singularly unique? Wouldnt a statistical survey have to conclude that the slop and slosh of 'news' goes equally far in one direction as in the other?
Thus, I suggest, that in talking about how people get together and the consequences thereto, we are really embodying a principle of singularity. In our profound meditations, we manifest a singularity of principle, and in creating and recreating (to expose a semiotician's pun; but call it recalling, if you prefer to cast the world in terms of Who talks to Whom) our one-sided records of historicity, we find both sighs and signs. In short, there is no single simple rule by which to divvy up existence -- and if that says something to you, then
So be it.
Not, you will note, the free markets, plural. There is just one; all else are distorted, unfree, corrupt, and or managed 'economies.' If I were a popular person -- a voice of the people -- I might dare suggest that, pragmatically speaking, we have achieved a one-and-only state religion. Since I speak only for myself, of course, I have no need to tell you that.
But the thought suggests itself (doesnt it?) that the 'separation of church and state' the American Founding Fathers thought so highly of was not so much a matter of discrete institutions as of a clear distinction between frames of reference -- logical levels -- and the purpose was to prevent just the sort of collapse into single-valuedness that our present complacent leaders palm off as diplomacy, by which 'democracy' is advanced by trade embargoes and 'treaties' are designed by the private parties who benefit the most. von Clausewitz may have said that war was diplomacy conducted by other means; in this freest of all possible worlds all means available -- war, diplomacy, starvation, genetically manipulated shit-smears across the face of the globe -- are nothing but 'purchasing power,' in whichever disguise works at the moment.
So in addition to the first idea -- that religion is a word for One-Idea Jack -- I think I see a place to winkle in another: that oneness is inevitable in human affairs. The question is not Does She or doesnt She (exist), but How (i.e., Where) shall we keep Her?
In my mechanical tinkering, I have long recognized that no matter what raw materials, found objects, recycled parts one has available to use, in order to apply them to a new purpose, at least one component must be custom-made -- but also that this component can be put anywhere I like in the total project, concept or tools and jigs or a bolt that is metric threaded on one end and USF on the other or how (e.g. long or nearly) the purpose is met and sometimes even who I am to be doing it. To make something new, something else, some part, must be newly made -- this is Miller's Principle of Essential Inconsistency.
Clearly the idea of oneness can likewise go anyplace: in the law ("All men are created equal"), in the economy ("The customer is always right"), in the church ("Thou hast created all things"); and all have been tried. Equally clearly, each trial has its failure: some 'men' are more equal than others, the customer's wants are supplied (that is, defined) before she knows them herself; the church itself lives by systematic sacrifice of one creature's habitat after another -- because in the world, oneness is too easily confused with multiplicity. No, if you want it done right, you have to do it yourself. The one best place for oneness is clear away from all such manipulation and adulteration and chicanery: put it in conceptual form, and leave it there. To 'render unto Caesar' means the real world is infinitely better off in disintegration. Leave its multiple spins, partisans, bolts, sectors, fragments, biases, tranches, brackets, planks and piles, and (altogether now!) let us contemplate the ineffable One.
| Clever men screw things together, mediocre people screw themselves up, plain folks just screw. |