December 16, 2008
- Tuning Parts into Wholes -
Post-modernism’s relative plurality of viewpoint and value is really just the destruction of our previous mythic/cultural identities. It’s the societal equivalent of a slow nervous breakdown carried out over about 50-100 years. Think of the tower card, both a deconstruction and a falling away:
However, many people are begining to realize that this dissolution and deconstruction just end up making us feel depressed, or at least lost. If every thing is of the same value, then progress is a lie and an impossibility. We’re wandering along over a endless, featureless plain, or stuck in the doldrums as the sea washes around us.
At this point, I think we understand that a collapse is not the answer. We built that tower for a reason, dammit, and it was a nice enough tower, for a while…
But the tower no longer serves it’s purpose, having become too rigid and unflexible.
The answer, then, seems to be the suspension of these falling stone pieces within our empty, energetic awareness, and to take this chance to readjust, realign, and reconnect them. A slow, controlled dissolve, where we turn them back into the liquid information they were when we first absorbed them, no longer grasping onto the frozen “‘microstructure’ of exquisite complexity” that we just couldn’t let go of. (thanks for the phrasing, Speedbird)
And as we adjust these pieces, and break them down back into more basic flows of information, we are reminded why we held them in the first place, and we can again use them toward their true purpose: to tune into that radio station known as the good, the true, and the beautiful; sign posts pointing toward the direction that is God. A liquid information flow that moves according to the whims of the great magnet…
Because all conditioned things will pass away; do not build your house upon them.
Postmodernism, tarot and solid-state physics? Wow. Actually I don’t have a lot of time for postmodernism (and in a postmodern world, I’m entitled to that view ;-D )
I’m gonna riff on that ‘microstructure’ analogy, if I may. The unsupportable tower collapses… the cooling liquid freezes, but that’s never a collapse, just a re-ordering into something more interesting. The uniformity and symmetry of the hot liquid fails, and beautiful snowflakes fall. I actually think ‘exquisite complexity’ is the future. We haven’t yet seen the product of the ‘white heat of this revolution’. There’s an obvious Babel reference here: their languages were confounded, right? I’m guessing that was actually a good thing. Rediscovery of the hidden Words in the lower courses of the tower. [Time to get a dollar bill and a Latin grammar together again, methinks. :-)]
I wikipedia’d ‘microstructure’ and found a very naff post. So I editied it (obviously with no tarot cards, that would be silly, for Wikipedia, anyway ;-D). Within 3 hours the previous naff author had pressed the ‘undo’ button. I guess that was a learning experience.
Comment by speedbird — December 18, 2008 @ 5:54 am
I don’t think much of the old Postmodernism as a way of life either, but as a snapshot of a certain stage of cultural development, it does have some useful metaphors to play with.
As for “the cooling liquid freezes, but that’s never a collapse, just a re-ordering into something more interesting”, I completely agree. It’s funny that you mention snowflakes and Tim goes and posts this:
http://www.timboucher.com/journal/2008/12/17/melt-your-troubles-away/
which pretty much completes the point. Exquisite complexity forms, we appreciate it, then let it melt a bit and reform, melt a bit and reform, on and on forever and ever amen.
‘Cause that’s what it’s going to do anyway, we just have to start playing along.
Comment by Ian — December 18, 2008 @ 9:59 am
And… look what I just found:
http://www.physorg.com/news148740939.html
“For the first time, a detailed description on the making of Sanders’ animation—Solid State Quantum Computer in Silicon—was published this month in the New Journal of Physics.”
Might be useful. I should go find that movie…
http://www.iop.org/EJ/mmedia/1367-2630/10/12/125005/
(maybe? will check later…)
Or I’ll ask this guy:
http://www.iqis.org/people/home/bsanders/
Comment by Ian — December 18, 2008 @ 10:08 am