The organizing power of words
I write here to express my thoughts and it’s difficult because they branch out in all directions, and I struggle to find an organizing principle. My thought is a response to the interaction of myself with the rest of the world. It’s constantly dynamic, like the global weather system. . . .
First published on July 17th 2015 and reissued to complement Natalie d’Arbeloff’s letter
If I manage to write anything worth publishing it is not as directed by will but the “dictates of the Muse”, when I can tune to them. They seem to mutate like clouds in the sky. It takes a title sometimes to help marshal those thoughts into order and give them a focus. But then, and here’s the snag, the title cannot arise from conscious will either. I don’t speak of general rules here, as in “how to be a writer” or even “how to be a thinker”, but as it strikes me personally.
“A Wayfarer’s Notes” has served well as a title, but has little organizing power over what I have to say. But now I’ve arrived at a phrase which really does help. Many times on this blog I’ve recorded phrases that just came, like “whispers from an angel”: phrases so pithy and suggestive that I’ve had to unravel their meaning by wandering along highways and byways without conscious intent, till more words came, and gave visible form to the inchoate vapour.
In this instance, a phrase has gradually evolved, inspired by more books—I hope to mention them in due course—and more direct interactions, including comments on my last. I’ll pick out two in particular, first this from Ellie:
We ARE blessed and grateful.
Then this from Natalie (excerpt):
Your posts are always thought-provoking, Vincent, and sometimes, in my argumentative mind, argument-provoking…in a good way! In this case because I disagree with “Fingers Pointing Towards the Moon” but the reasons I disagree are too long to put in a comment box so I’ll be emailing you.
She has sent an email, a clarification more than an argument, a view from a different angle. It reads like an artist’s manifesto and a spiritual credo, rolled into one. Again, an excerpt:
The difficult task of being human, re-creating ourselves, is like alchemy: to transmute those emotions which drag us down into emotions which lift us up, give us metaphorical wings, thereby being able to love. Love being the element which both transforms and forms the Self (the gold, the “philosopher’s stone”). This takes hard work, and involvement in the realities that life presents us with. I see the Self as tool, a transformative tool. Like a brush in a painter’s hand, or a hammer in a carpenter’s hand: it has to work on something and it transforms the material it works on.
These two responses, from Ellie & Natalie, have inspired a phrase which has such an organizing power that it deserves airing as the title of something as yet unwritten, or even a science as yet unborn:
Blessings are constantly on my mind. K & I, neither of us following any system of belief, use the word constantly during the day: “Bless, bless!” often out of the blue. She got into saying “Bless the Lord!”, which didn’t sound right to me. “How can we bless the Lord? You must have it wrong. Surely it’s ‘Praise the Lord, O my soul’”. She yielded in the meek assumption that I knew better, and then relapsed into her old ways, as I pointed out. Quick on the draw, she whipped out her trusty smartphone, weapon of choice these days for settling arguments, leastways round here. There it was, Psalm 103:
Bless the Lord, O my soul: and all that is within me, bless his holy name.
Anyhow, we’re agreed. We ARE blessed and grateful. Blessings fall like rain upon us. But then, “he sendeth rain on the just and the unjust”; which raises a question about the mechanism for distribution of blessings. If there is a science of meteorology, which explains how and when it rains, can there not also be a science of blessings?
This brings us to The Invention of Clouds. For centuries philosophers from Aristotle onwards had speculated what clouds are made of, how they get into the sky, what shapes them. In this blog, I’ve made a fetish object of clouds, along with blackbirds and slugs. “Fetish: something irrationally reverenced”, says the dictionary. In his book, Hamblyn recounts the life and times of Luke Howard, “the father of meteorology”, whose most notable contribution to science was to name the clouds in 1802. Cirrus, Stratus, Cumulus and Nimbus, singly and in combination, have been used the world over, ever since. Goethe, scientist as well as writer, never ceased to sing his praises; and wrote a poem in his honour.
It is possible to doubt the existence of God, but not blessings, if you have been on the receiving end. A phenomenon is experienced, whether pleasure or pain. It has a recognized name. There’s nothing to doubt. It’s meaningless to dismiss a felt blessing as imaginary. And what is science, if not discovery of that which was unknown? It’s the process of uncovering facts, naming them, finding out what makes them happen, till we gain predictive power. Meteorology has matured as a science when it accurately predicts rain. Can there not, in the same fashion, be a science of blessings?
There’s a widely recognized difference between arts and sciences. I quoted Natalie above, herself an artist, speaking on this occasion about “the difficult task of being human”. This is what I mean by the art of living—an art I’m apprenticed to, taught by trial and error as much as others’ example. Reading her email, I tried to understand the nature of the disagreement she had with Fingers Pointing to the Moon. Perhaps there are differences in belief, but these we do not argue about, not in England, where you can believe what you like. No, I think her serious point is that the book is anti-life. It says all this (that we call real) is illusion. But she says, No! this is what we’ve been given to work with. This is the clay, these are the pigments, the Self is the artist, and we, singly or as humanity, transform ourselves into a work of art.
Her argument is compelling. I put forward nothing to oppose its simple clarity. I don’t speak on behalf of the author of Fingers Pointing, except to say that his book is actually not about the art of living, in Natalie’s terms. It might seem so, especially as he calls it “reflections of a pilgrim on the way”, implying a process of transformation. I think it fits better in my new classification, as an essay in the newborn “science of blessings”.
There is a great deal more to say, but for the present it’s my reader’s turn.
17 thoughts on “The organizing power of words”
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Wow. What happened here? I removed my own comment because I decided that I didn't really believe a word of what I said. I don't know about the rest of you.Like
BMW, I'm glad you said that. I was about to write admitting that it seemed strange, and assure the world that there hasn't been any negativity about anything.
My own comment was to point out that if you put “the science of blessings” into Google, complete with quotes, you get 3 hits, one of which I suggested was worth reading, and I quoted a section from that site. Later I had second thoughts—that it might deter other comments or show an unintended bias – something like that.
So I returned to delete it, but by this time WBM had appended her comment, and it made reference to mine, so I couldn't delete it.
Then she emailed to apologize for her “dumb” comment (which it certainly wasn't) so I feared that she might delete it and went to check, only to discover that both WBM and BMW had removed their comments. What a pity!
Though you've now decided that what you wrote doesn't apply to you, Bryan, it made total sense to me. I believe all of what you said as it has often applied to me. Not only that but you harmoniously linked various threads of of the post, as when you said:
” I've heard some writers say that they actually do MORE work when their life is busier and there's more distractions. Maybe that says something about inertia, or this transmutation. You have to take all the raw energy generated from all this mess and try to spin gold.”
And on the “science of blessings” idea, WBM mentioned an observation from real life:
“It has always amazed me when I see someone walking along the highway, how they seem to know the exact moment I am saying a silent blessing for them and they instantly look much lighter and a bit surprised like some new revelation has just hit them.”
I'm sorry, Cindy, I had to rescue that bit, forgive me for undeleting it. Actually when I had this notion of the science of blessings, I didn't even think of this invisible action one can do, of sending blessings to others. I've done it myself, but not stayed around to observe the result. I was more thinking of the sense of being on the receiving end of blessings—regardless of their source. Are they like letters that you can address to someone? Or are they like electromagnetic waves that permeate the universe, that you can tune into and receive?
A big subject.
My first impulse on reading your last post was to quote Tolstoy's “To love life is to love God.” But then I came across some biographical material on Tolstoy which indicated that his life contradicted the beautiful philosophy which he conveyed in his words. It is disconcerting to see how far our outer lives are from our inner lives. It is easy for me to talk about breaking free of the bonds of conventionality while conforming to the expectations of the group.
It is as if the inner workings of the psyche (the content) are attempting to find a form which will express them, and failing. Our thoughts can no more be accurately expressed in words than in our lives. We struggle to reveal while at the same time, the need to conceal may be even stronger. The 'good and evil angels are struggling for possession of the child.' But much of what Blake teaches is that the angels are not good or evil, only bright and dark which combine to produce an image which we can nourish and love.
http://rhetoric.byu.edu/encompassing%20terms/Content%20and%20Form.htm
“Thus, rhetoricians divided form and content not to place content above form, but to highlight the interdependence of language and meaning, argument and ornament, thought and its expression. It means that linguistic forms are not merely instrumental, but fundamental—not only to persuasion, but to thought itself.”
Perhaps the most we can hope for is that our inner expressions (if they are reflecting the integrated Self) may be 'downloaded' from our unclouded perception to the 'program' that is operating in our daily lives.
Vincent:
“It is too big, and we can only dip in, we know it is full of
treasures, what can we do but let ourselves be guided to them? For
reason can hardly navigate such immensity.”
Not recognizing your quote, I convinced myself that it was from my namesake in a letter to Theo; but tracked it down, and discovered that, in context, “it” was the World-Wide Web. I guess though that the context doesn't matter. “It” could be life itself, of which the Web is a strange distorting mirror.
The earlier paragraphs of your comment present dualities in dynamic conflict, one pair per paragraph, neatly summarized. Thanks for this, it serves to highlight my new-found vision of non-duality (for which thanks to Fingers Pointing Towards the Moon.
I ponder the idea that my inner expression may be downloaded from my unclouded perception to the program that operates in my daily life. Dualistically it makes sense. But I need to test the idea against experience, as directed by the scientific approach.
Yet again, you have encouraged the theme of a new post. It's time for another exercise in memoir, to investigate how I have become the person I am today—Nature or Nurture, for example—and how much of my Nature is in harmony with “unclouded perception”, or modelled from the program operating in my daily life.
My intuition at this stage is that I'm shaped wholly by this Earth—just as a cabbage is; my molecules drawn through roots from the soil, vivified by water and sunlight, with DNA as an organizing principle. The Divine is immanent, the one in the many. Beyond the illusion of separate existence, I obtain glimpses of this One across its multiplicity.
Thinking further about this, and especially the different views held by, say, Ellie, Natalie & BMW (back in the days when we clashed on many things) it seems to me that I need to try and thrash out a “theory of belief”. It would of course be shaped to some degree by my own beliefs, which I cannot get rid of, being human, despite constant vigilance.
Theory of belief sounds like a dry subject, but I would propose to illustrate it entirely from my own experience, & thus present it in memoir form, or in insights arising from the present moment.
At a time when a kind of insane violence is attacking certain parts of the world, based on some system of belief, or clash of same (not for the first time of course), I think it's timely to step back from the contents of belief, which are various and irrational, to the human necessity to have a working framework of beliefs to help us get through each day and so on till the end of our lifespan—whether they stay rigidly held or changeably like a weather-vane.
A theory of belief sounds like a worthwhile endeavor.For me, I'd say that people believe things because they're convinced (by evidence or emotion or personal persuasion) to supercede all possible doubts in order to make a leap of faith and assume that something is true — even if they're not quite in a position to say they know it for a fact.But I have no doubt that you have in mind something more than that, and it's precisely to those who don't feel that a question like this has such a pat and easy answer that further investigation should rightly fall.
In fact, one tantalizing thing jumps out at me already: the interdependence of belief and doubt. Animals (as far as we know and, at any rate, for the sake of argument, let's assume such a creature exists) take what's given. They have neither doubts or beliefs. They don't speculate beyond their horizons.
Yes! This is a very important observation. Most human beings most of the time are uncomfortable with doubt. We crave certainty, but there isn't enough available. When we are able to believe (synonymous with have faith) we satisfy ourselves with a manufactured certainty. The essence of belief is to hide from ourselves (or deny) the shaky foundations of this pseudo-certainty.
Certainty is a marketable commodity. In a sense it is the only commodity, other than real estate.
All of a sudden I remember the Field Days we used to have at school, as part of our semi-compulsory membership of the Combined Cadet Force – playing at soldiers. Our army lorry would dump us in some lonely spot and out we'd jump with our WW1 Lee Enfield rifles, under the command of a platoon leader, who was just a fellow-pupil with stripes on his arm. Sometimes it was simply map-reading, sometimes a mock battle, whose main purpose to deploy under cover of hedges etc and not be shot at with blanks by the “enemy”, & perhaps capture a flag.
The platoon leader had to believe he knew what he was doing when he said “Follow me” & gave other orders. We his troops had to believe that he knew what he was doing. Thus “believability”, in the form of style, charisma and self-confidence, counted for more than actual skill or simulated survival—versus the presumption of being killed by gunshot.
In this respect it was a fine preparation for adult life and its bewildering uncertainties—reduced by applying bogus criteria to the recognition of trustworthy leaders. Or if you aspired to leadership yourself, it showed you how to do it: be tall and handsome and free from doubt.
I guess you could learn the same lessons from Western films, but for some reason I never liked them.
Your tale about the exercise in military style activities is instructive in how young people form their self images. The image we create is sometimes labeled the persona, that mask which we will permit others to see. The kids in your account were learning how to see themselves as leaders or followers (or perhaps as outsiders.) It is so much better to help kids to maintain contact with the essential humanity with which they are born instead of creating a mask to hide behind.
Isn't it strange what paths we are set upon to learn lessons suited to our condition. We watched a video this week called The Internet's Own Boy. This account is so mythopoeic that it is hard to believe that it is describing events which took place in the last few years. This is a story of an unlikely hero who makes innovative discoveries, provides them freely to the world, and encounters a dragon (the US justice system) which destroys him.
https://archive.org/details/TheInternetsOwnBoyTheStoryOfAaronSwartz
Perhaps we could restate the serenity prayer –
Grant me:
the wisdom to see both the strengths and weaknesses within myself,
the serenity to accept the contradictions,
and the courage to continue in the direction I am led.
The writing has a lovely flow. Philosophically speaking,Vincent, I have not really connected with most of these thought processes. It is my own thought processes that intervene and not yours. I will have to think about it and may come to a conclusion as to why, or why not. Nevertheless, it was a pleasurable read.
As to “hero”, I can’t agree, dear Ellie. He dies in a foolhardy prank that goes wrong, like a teenager who ignores warning signs at the zoo. That the dragon is fierce is well-known. To compare him to St George rescuing a maiden implies that his hacking was useful or necessary.
One might say more justly that his suicide was the act of a coward. And even if you see him as a martyr, it’s perverse to blame his death on anyone but himself.
Thank you, ZACL. I haven’t yet been able to present the thought processes in a way that makes connection to them easy. But it’s your own thought processes that matter, and there'll be more to provoke them in my next.
If I didn't think that unfettered access to information was important and threatened, I wouldn't think that Arron Swartz was a hero.
OK, understood.