Love has become so fickle these days that it feels like little more than a gesture of conditional acceptance into a cult: you get "love" so long as you think, say, and do as we do. Decades-long friendships and family bonds were severed on those terms on a mass scale during the covid scam.
Wonderful essay, by the way. It's got me wondering how we might figure out how to love again in a society that hates itself and wants to die.
Morbid Monday... I'm thinking we steer our dialogues toward archetypes and mythoi like Psyche or like Herodotus's tale about Thales & Who is the happy man? We have to move away from a society that has pat, conversation-stopping answers to one with many stories, many perspectives and many ways to consider our world and our place in it. We need to work at restoring a sense of taste and quality over and above quantised data. We need to move away from monologic to dialogic thinking. I believe we need to intervene when folks make absurd data statements or evolutionary observations and ask what the point is. Like when I had a kidney stone and folks around me were saying that it effects 1 in 6 men. Okay great! What am I supposed to do with that factum? Are we saying I won or lost at a poker table with 5 other dudes? Or when someone goes off on a tangent about how men are unemotional because of tens of millions of years of evolution... like literally made-up Darwinist claptrap... we ought to intervene and ask the purpose and productiveness of such framing. In other words, instead of allowing sciency speak to deaden conversation; we can use the opportunity to open a dialogue and present alternatives that have the potential to awaken the sleeping psyches in our midst. I believe that by opening hearts in this manner, Love will find its way.
Love will find its way eventually, yes, and it's obviously worth it to struggle on its behalf, even (and perhaps especially!) if that means being rejected and ridiculed or ignored as you "cry in the wilderness" so to speak. Or worse. Whatever happens, love is a hill worth dying on. Meantime, it would be nice too if we could help restore the idea that educating oneself means acquiring wisdom instead of climbing a social ladder.
I bought a ribeye for dinner, but I can set it aside because this mega-essay is more than sufficiently juicy and nutritious. Tons to say here, but to be super brief:
If you want to lay barebear what statistics did to actual causality and connection with Reality, enjoy the first several chapters of ‘The Book of Why’ by Judea Pearl —absolutely gold.
Final observation: I think we should all start referring to him as the “Reverend Dr. Tyson” from here on out. Savage :-)
Love has become so fickle these days that it feels like little more than a gesture of conditional acceptance into a cult: you get "love" so long as you think, say, and do as we do. Decades-long friendships and family bonds were severed on those terms on a mass scale during the covid scam.
Wonderful essay, by the way. It's got me wondering how we might figure out how to love again in a society that hates itself and wants to die.
Morbid Monday... I'm thinking we steer our dialogues toward archetypes and mythoi like Psyche or like Herodotus's tale about Thales & Who is the happy man? We have to move away from a society that has pat, conversation-stopping answers to one with many stories, many perspectives and many ways to consider our world and our place in it. We need to work at restoring a sense of taste and quality over and above quantised data. We need to move away from monologic to dialogic thinking. I believe we need to intervene when folks make absurd data statements or evolutionary observations and ask what the point is. Like when I had a kidney stone and folks around me were saying that it effects 1 in 6 men. Okay great! What am I supposed to do with that factum? Are we saying I won or lost at a poker table with 5 other dudes? Or when someone goes off on a tangent about how men are unemotional because of tens of millions of years of evolution... like literally made-up Darwinist claptrap... we ought to intervene and ask the purpose and productiveness of such framing. In other words, instead of allowing sciency speak to deaden conversation; we can use the opportunity to open a dialogue and present alternatives that have the potential to awaken the sleeping psyches in our midst. I believe that by opening hearts in this manner, Love will find its way.
Love will find its way eventually, yes, and it's obviously worth it to struggle on its behalf, even (and perhaps especially!) if that means being rejected and ridiculed or ignored as you "cry in the wilderness" so to speak. Or worse. Whatever happens, love is a hill worth dying on. Meantime, it would be nice too if we could help restore the idea that educating oneself means acquiring wisdom instead of climbing a social ladder.
Wowzers.
I bought a ribeye for dinner, but I can set it aside because this mega-essay is more than sufficiently juicy and nutritious. Tons to say here, but to be super brief:
If you want to lay barebear what statistics did to actual causality and connection with Reality, enjoy the first several chapters of ‘The Book of Why’ by Judea Pearl —absolutely gold.
Final observation: I think we should all start referring to him as the “Reverend Dr. Tyson” from here on out. Savage :-)
Thanks RDM. I've noted down the book. By coincidence, I too have a ribeye ready for the grill.