Thursday, November 01, 2007
trying to figure this stuff out...
In class, prof explained that "the uncanny rises from the excess of the real." in very simplified terms, i think this it goes like this...
the totalization of our worldview - letting it encompass and govern how we decide what is real and true - is necessary for being people to be able to relax and feel like there is some logical sense to the world they live in. If we didn't feel we could predict how things would roll along then we couldn't live our lives. We'd always need some kind of contingency plan, just in case the sun failed to rise that day. So while construction of reality is incomplete, it's based on a kind of general consensus affirmed by culture and soceity, and it gets us by 99% of the time. however, in an age of global communication we can't help but see that our worldview doesnt' cover everthing. particularly in anthro class, we appreciate the diversity of worldviews more and more, as well as the limitations of our own. as we all learned in ANT 100, there are societies that operate without words for time, or eight different words for snow, so clearly our way is no the only way; we might just be missing something. but this is the world we were born into and it works for us so why sweat it?
because we know that the rules for "reality" don't really explain everything, then we can harbour belief in things that we dont understand, that lie beyone the realm of our explanation- Coincidences and lucky breaks might be part of some greater natural order. rather than explaining it all, we can shrug it off or rely on faith to close the gap.
this concept made me think of obsessive compulsive disorder. From Wikipedia: Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is a psychiatric anxiety disorder most commonly characterized by a subject's obsessive, distressing, intrusive thoughts and related compulsions (tasks or "rituals") which attempt to neutralize the obsessions.
So for example - a woman taps the park bench 30 times on the way her way to work every day to make sure she doesn't get fired. And because the two are unrealted, she just happens to be a good worker and keep her job, she starts to feel she has to do this every day, just incase. So are OCD sufferers be defined as extremely sensitive to the Answer of the Real? Their obsure ideas about reality are getting confirmed by chance, simply because they are so illogical?
I've found this whole thing pretty confusing, and would love to get other people's thoughts, corrections, suggestions...
the totalization of our worldview - letting it encompass and govern how we decide what is real and true - is necessary for being people to be able to relax and feel like there is some logical sense to the world they live in. If we didn't feel we could predict how things would roll along then we couldn't live our lives. We'd always need some kind of contingency plan, just in case the sun failed to rise that day. So while construction of reality is incomplete, it's based on a kind of general consensus affirmed by culture and soceity, and it gets us by 99% of the time. however, in an age of global communication we can't help but see that our worldview doesnt' cover everthing. particularly in anthro class, we appreciate the diversity of worldviews more and more, as well as the limitations of our own. as we all learned in ANT 100, there are societies that operate without words for time, or eight different words for snow, so clearly our way is no the only way; we might just be missing something. but this is the world we were born into and it works for us so why sweat it?
because we know that the rules for "reality" don't really explain everything, then we can harbour belief in things that we dont understand, that lie beyone the realm of our explanation- Coincidences and lucky breaks might be part of some greater natural order. rather than explaining it all, we can shrug it off or rely on faith to close the gap.
this concept made me think of obsessive compulsive disorder. From Wikipedia: Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is a psychiatric anxiety disorder most commonly characterized by a subject's obsessive, distressing, intrusive thoughts and related compulsions (tasks or "rituals") which attempt to neutralize the obsessions.
So for example - a woman taps the park bench 30 times on the way her way to work every day to make sure she doesn't get fired. And because the two are unrealted, she just happens to be a good worker and keep her job, she starts to feel she has to do this every day, just incase. So are OCD sufferers be defined as extremely sensitive to the Answer of the Real? Their obsure ideas about reality are getting confirmed by chance, simply because they are so illogical?
I've found this whole thing pretty confusing, and would love to get other people's thoughts, corrections, suggestions...
# posted by sam.butler @ 10:49 AM 
