REACHING
FOR REALITY
Humans
tend to take too literally
any assemblage of words regarded as instructive. (The notorious example
is belief in a book as "gospel.") Ideally, words inform and organize
one's common sense to always think anew about rising situations. The
common temptation though is to deduce dispositive instructions
from books, rules or policies previously formulated. Informative
suggestions imparted uniquely by new situations are thereby eclipsed.
In this way writings from the most inductive thinkers--like
Adam Smith--can become "dogmatic." Academicians thereupon tend to
substitute deductions therefrom for on-the-spot rationality required to
constantly re-evaluate changing reality. Again, "gospel" tends to
replace realistic thinking; whether among theologians or, for example,
American neo-"conservatives."
Human education is slowly advancing--from centuries of slavish aherence
to ideology--toward
a flowering of American Pragmatism. Pre-conceived belief systems
typically anticipate actual applications. They thus are like the
(abstract) "hypotheticals" about which students brainstorm in law
school. All such advance verbalizations ideally prepare one mainly for
holistic thinking--pragmatically--within the context of rising
(concrete) situations.
People have previously tended to think verbally (too much) out
of context; often incoherently. John Dewey observed this glitch of
human thought in his monumental RECONSTRUCTION IN PHILOSOPHY (1948).
This whole website has demonstrated accordingly that words of power and
distinction--like good and evil--carry at best only potential
meaning until they are applied in immediately "problematic" situations.
Alexis de Tocqueville observed the same basic glitch in chapter one of
DEMOCRACY IN AMERICA (1830's): frontier white folks were more burdened
than Indians by "incoherent notions of right and wrong" (brought from
the Old World). We are still burdened (ironically more than Europe).
Americans are struggling nonetheless, like all humanity, to graduate
from "elementary" school. We have been busy diagramming sentences,
meticulously, learning how to write. And speak. To expound mainly upon
the marvelous heritage of human mythology; unburdened by need to
believe every word (as though it were "factual" history).
Pope John Paul II displayed, for example, the transcendent glory of
Catholic imagery. Santayana did too, in REASON IN RELIGION (about a
century ago); but he additionally recognized the pragmatic potential of
aesthetic more than dogmatic applications toward human
betterment-- to reach the "Immediate."
Now, in any event, it is time to use nature's tricky gift of language
more efficaciously; with reverence and restraint.
In
actual context . . .
