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Monday, September 22, 2008

millenial epistemology: life during wartime is same as it ever was

I just noticed this is my 1000th post; amazing.

What have I learned in 1000 posts?

Despite the still-tempting modernity motto-mantra:

"The leader must know,
must know that he knows,
and must be able to make it abundantly clear to those about him
that he knows."
-Clarence B. Randall, quoted (approvingly!) by John Maxwell, "The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership" (if ever a quote and book title captured the era, it was that one...it flirts with fundyfoundationalism; and even falls prey to "must"-erbation), p. 80


My answer must clearly be..
and I "must be able to make it abundantly clear to those about me":

I don't know.

And I know that I don't know.

How do I know that I don't know?

And how do i know what I know about epistemology?....(:

Actually everything I need to know I learned from the profs and culture of Fresno Pacific U:

"The more you know, the more you know you don't know."


But what I was prepping to post, before I realized this was the millenial edition,
and felt a split second of pressure to turn this post into a Grand Unification Theory or "best of"..

were two "random" phrases from the Talking Heads, which somehow were so connected in my weird brain (see Sts Sudzi and Tim: Pushing Toward The Unobvious) that they feel as if they are from the same song.

1)Of course, no one who has seen this early music vid, an MTV staple (when MTV actually played M) of "Once in a Lifetime" can forget David Byrne's quirky/quixotic motions/emotions, and the delightful/frightful "same as it ever was":





Or if you prefer your Heads live:







2)The song "Life During Wartime,".....actually the title alone, always reminds me of C.S. Lewis's sermon after WWII broke out: "The war creates absolutely no new situation..."

In other words, "same as it ever was".....but different.



"The more things change, the more they say the same"; Neal Peart once wrote/borrowed

Summary: In this current Great Emergence shift; just like any:"once in a lifetime" shift (Reformation, 9/11 etc)...things may be radically dismantled and de/reconstructed...

but on another (?) level, it's mostly "same as it ever was":



The war creates no absolutely new situation: it simply aggravates the permanent human situation so that we can no longer ignore it. Human life has always been lived on the edge of a precipice. Human culture has always had to exist under the shadow of something infinitely more important than itself. If men had postponed the search for knowledge and beauty until they were secure, the search would have never begun. We are mistaken when we compare war to "normal life." Life has never been normal. Even those periods we think most tranquil, like the nineteenth century, turn out on closer inspection, to be full of crises, alarms, difficulties, emergencies. Plausible reasons have never been lacking for putting off all merely cultural activities until some imminent danger has been averted or some crying injustice put right. But humanity long ago chose to neglect those plausible reasons.… They propound theorems in beleagured cities, conduct metaphysical arguments in condemned cells, make jokes on scaffolds, discuss poetry while advancing on the walls of Quebec, and comb their hair at Thermopylae. This is not panache; it is our nature (Weight 44-45).link







Or, to switch bands/pro-phets (doesn't everyone place Neil "I'm a Believer" in that class?)
"Don't let it bring you down; it's only castles burning."

That's all I know.
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1 comment:

  1. Ryan Townsend10:00 PM, September 24, 2008

    wow...1000th post...nice. i hope to get to 100 or maybe i already have, I don't know.

    it takes a bigger man than Maxwell to admit that you don't know everything! also, have you heard blenderhead cover the talking heads? it's a once in a lifetime experience.

    ReplyDelete

Hey, thanks for engaging the conversation!