Hey Moe, I think. . .
abe: Hey Moe, I think I saw a ghost.
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moe: Are you sure? The moon is full and visions come so much easier with the tug and pull of the lunar tide. We are after all 97% water.
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abe: Yes, of course I'm sure. It was a ghost. Don't you believe me?
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moe: Well, if I said I believe in God are you going to believe It exists? Does my belief in what you say validate the existance of the ghost? Or does my pedantic line of questioning motivate you to visualize me as a ghost as you stand there wringing your hands? Wait, don't answer that! I just felt a pang of self preservation.
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Of course I believe you Abe. Did it have any feet?
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abe: How else would I believe in God? Do you think I'm smart enough to come up with something like God on my own? Thanks for the vote of confidence, but it makes me lose a little confidence in your intelligence.
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How do we know anything exists other than through belief? I look at my hand and believe my eyes. I hear this voice in my head and I believe I think. These beliefs get repeated enough and I trust enough to think I know.
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I don't know if the ghost had any feet because it was invisible.
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moe: Well your lessening confidence in my intelligence increases mine in yours. And if you repeat that enough times you'll become the intellectual giant I believe you to be.
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Now back to this invisible ghost that you claim you saw. I find that hard to believe. If it is invisible, how could you see it? Or perhaps a question more germane to your life: how much of that fermented goat's milk did you drink before you saw the ghost?
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abe: Hey, don't knock the goat's milk, Chimpy. That's one of the few means I have anymore of still seeing what everybody else says they see. Getting blind drunk is the only way I can see what the blind are going on about. But, nope, I wasn't on no special sauce when I saw the ghost, except that this blood of mine seems to increase in proof as time goes on.
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Naw, I was just mindin' my business and the ghost appeared. I could see it as plain as day, but of course it was invisible. It didn't speak, but then I can't say I trust my ears after all those years in those bands in the desert. I still can only hear stuff that makes sound. The eyes though, they've been able to see beyond the light spectrum since that day witn the knife and little Isaac.
posted by Santari Santari @ 3:19 PM
7 comments
7 Comments:
Abraham: I was going to say something, but I forget what it was.
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Isn't that one of the coolest things about getting old, that you just forget? One moment you know something, and the next it's gone. But, you remember that you knew it, eventhough you don't know what it is anymore. There's some lingering aspect. Where does the memory go? Some of it comes back, like I remember what I was going to say. But, with other stuff, I don't remember I ever knew it. It's gone completely, without a trace unless someone tells me I used to know it. Then, I have to ask myself if I can believe them.
Moses: I believe that we never really forget. What we "forget" merely becomes disoriented bits of data-thought that have become unstuck from our consciousness and float around attaching and detaching with other thought bits. This can be seen when we dream, creating what you refer to as a "lingering aspect". Forgetting is what gives each person their unique persona so that we often hear comments like: Yeah, that sounds like something he would say. Imagine if Bush started speaking like Kerry, everyone would be suddenly more confused than they already are.
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This reminds me of something else about forgetting. If we never forgot, originality would disappear. With the loss of unique persona conversations would sound more like jingoism: full of quotes, references and trademarks. Imagine a father having to pay a royalty to Nike® Corp. for saying to his kid, "Just Do It!"© Or political discourse being reduced to trite sound bites referencing prepackaged ideological positions.
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So yeah I have to agree that the forgetfulness that accompanies aging is a cool thing indeed. Whenever anyone reminds me of what I once knew I just smile and say, "Yeah, but that was yesterday."
Abraham: Yeah, yesterday. I sometimes wonder, if I was on a dark train passing through a very long dark tunnel and I sat down next to the person I was on Oct. 17th of last year and we started talking, would I recognize him as me? I think I probably would because I think I pretty much just think the same things over and over. I wonder if we would be interested in talking with each other.
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Or, if I told him, "I'm what you'll be next year," would he believe me? Would I be able to say anything to make him believe it? I doubt it, actually. I would have to show him some kind of proof, such as knowing some secret he carries around. Even then, I wonder if he would believe me. And, I wonder if the stuff he'd talk about would be boring to me. I wonder if I would take the opposite position to everything he talked about, pointing out subtle details that would undermine the sureness of his way of looking at the world on that day. I wonder if we would settle into an uncomfortable silence, hesitant to say anything that might cause offense.
Moses: Excuse me while I smile a wry smile thinking about you meeting you.
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I can imagine two very distinct things happening; either you both will immediately engage in the uniqueness of the experience and go for some chai to discuss it, or you'll both have a rousing face off wanting to stand up to the indignity of being confronted by a facsimile. Of course you could be shy and say nothing as if you were standing in front of the bathroom mirror. But I think the moment would be too delicious for you to be so passive as to worry about giving/taking offense.
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In any event, in this scenario of yesterday meeting today (or for that matter today meeting tomorrow) would you know which one of "you" is you in such a meeting? Wouldn't there be a conflict of authenticity and a desire to assert authority over the "facsimile"? This isn't as esoteric as it seems since we often confront ourselves over past deeds or are driven to avoid and forget a past deemed unworthy of remembering. Just listen to the men who want to control the New Jerusalem to see that in all its mud stained glory.
Abraham: Good question about the conflict of authenticity. I'm sure we would both--he and me--think we were the right one and, while respectfully listening to the other, try to integrate the other's ideas into our own opinion of the whole. This is actually a fascinating fact of reality, that it is so absolutely open that it can be reoriented into anybody's/everybody's desired shape and come out "making sense." Reality is like water, always ready to settle in cupped hands--but also slipperier than slippery.
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Like Mr. Heisenberg found, our looking at reality makes it pose.
Moses: Very interesting. Is this metaphysics finds its shape?
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This whole discussion about forgetting, authenticity and reality is beginning to warp my head. I am being to doubt the efficacy of reason. If using reason to divine what is real can't really do the job because reality becomes distorted by merely looking at it, then why not use the proverbial tea leaves? If society accepts the reading of tea leaves the highest form of discourse, would the resulting culture be all that materially different? As I look around today reason is mostly used as a tool to satisfy the desire for power, except that that desire is never sated. To "make sense" one must trust in a faulty intellect using an imperfect schema to interpret a reality that by nature misrepresents itself. Stating it this way helps me to understand why clever people can do horrendous things like spend a billion dollars to divide a nation and billions more to destroy another while claiming divine providence: guilt free.
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Kind of encourages me to want to forget this "reality" and conjure up another more pleasant. But I can't. Even though what I think is real is unreliable, I am compelled to bare witness to the fragments which remain real despite the distortions.
Abraham: Why do you think King George II just trusts his gut? Reason is an endless dissolve of mirrors, if you think about it too much. Some just act and let others make sense of it. At the extreme, this becomes inhuman--literally and metaphorically.
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Before God died a couple centuries ago, such folks claimed to act in His name. But, He got tired of being the donkey every tail got pinned on. So, He staged His own funeral. I went. It was a great party, with this one guy drinking way beyond anybody's limit. Only God could slam like that, so I knew what was up. But, the press releases went out, the photos of the empty throne were snapped and "God is Dead" became reality.
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The funny thing about how He staged his death is that He left the door to his workshop locked open. But that workshop never had a door before. He made that door in order to leave it open. And, and locked open, never to be closed again.
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He left us access to his tools; our inheritence. To conjure things ourselves but without Him to use as a scapegoat. And, with this chance, to not conjure to some degree is to waste your life, to deny His gift. We wanted freedom, and so He gave it to us--with all the lonliness that goes along with it.
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What religion, philosophy, culture or TV ad isn't an organized and authorized conjuring of reality? Each encouraging you to swallow their pill of pleasantries, pain and sense. Each selling you their knock-off renditions of t-shirts they found while rummaging through God's workshop.
I make my own God-shirts by just painting a little "yes" somewhere hidden. You want to buy some?
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