Plant-fiber Paper made from Milkweed Pods
A world of law, a morality based on laws and commandments, reminds me of an needlework embroidery mesh which provides the regular framework upon which we may create great beauty. Our actions are the yarn and knots that tie our lives to the semi-rigid structure of the screen of the mesh.
The regularity of the mesh reminds me of the logic and the dogmatic structures we create to try and give form to our understanding of the universe. And embroideries are things of great beauty of the textile arts.
However, I think that reality is more like watercolor paper: a pulp of chewed up wood and cellulose that is somewhat stringy and fibrous, dried and pressed to create a sheet of paper. There is no regularity in the paper: it is amorphous with fibers and cellulose; if you pick at it, there is no telling where one ends and another begins. When paint is applied, it may suffuse through the fibers, spreading from one area to another.
Yet even upon this amorphous and chaos of fibers, we can create things of the greatest beauty, where our actions are the paint applied to the surface - not a rigidly defined focus of application, like one knot stretched between two openings of the mesh, but a watery spreading of color.
I think reality - and in particular, my view of Mankind's Agency in the World - is like the paper: you cannot tell where one part of the paper universe ends and another begins; all the fibers interweave and overlay, and, as things are done, the pigments and colors spread and interpenetrate everything.
In the Paper Universe, you cannot pick things apart; you cannot tell where God ends and man begins. In the Embroidery Universe, everything has its own place; they may be close to each other, but they are separate.
This does not imply anything like "God is in me, and we are all in God". I do not really see that as a logical conclusion. But I do see a conclusion in "We cannot tell where one thing ends and another begins... our understanding cannot break apart the layers and twists of fibers intermixed."
By this preparatory metaphor, I hope to understand the role of Virtue - which is more like Paper - and the present day predominant idea of morality - which is more like the rigid mesh.
Needlework Mesh
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5 comments:
But if we do not know where one thing begins and ends, then what is God? Furthermore, is God both Good and Evil if God is spread throughout the universe?
If God is truly tied into the world without beginnings and endings and we are all tied together, then in basic terms, God is both good and evil, as well as being neither. Most people would like a God to lean on...a kindly and supportive figure.
In the Paper world, Good and evil are linked, and I'm not sure if that is a good thing. Surely the Virtues cannot be linked to evil, lest they become their corrupt counterparts.
Great essay, Montag! Very thought provoking. :)
Ben
Good. I spent my entire night wondering whether I had been way too brief, but obviously I did convey my thought.
Thanks.
And your questions are indeed the questions I needed someone to ask me.
This way of looking at it (and I do not know why... I watched paper being made once 20 years ago at a pavilion near the north end of Central Park in NYC and I did not make all that big a deal of it!)
popped up the morning of May 17 2001.........
and this genesis is a very good reason for writing every day,because I start writing with something usually mundane, like a memory of a dream or some little point I wish to clarify, and before you know it, something like Paper Universe comes barging in the door!
Anyway, remember I am 24 hours into this metaphor, so I will not have some sort of well-defined dogma ready to thrust in front of people.
To answer the question, in the Paper Universe, words and concepts themselves would not exist as clearly and distinctly as they do in your question.
In the question, there is the distinct word "good".
In the Paper world, the word could not be so easily separated out of the cellulose matrix.
The concept of "link" and what you mean by it would not exist in such a clear and logical form.
I do not feel they exist in clear and logical form at all, but we make up the screenplay of the rigid structure of a Mesh and embroider it...
We create the logical structures; they work well for most Science...
Consider Science, then. Newtonian Physics and its Universal Laws and sort of a well-defined and rigid universe view.
Then General Relativity...
Then Quantum Theory...
And now where is cosmology? Many possible Universes?
I think the point may be that we must be virtuous, even though we may have absolutely no exterior justification for being so... like the generations before Abraham.
We cannot point to something and say "there is God, over there", and then point somewhere else and say "There are God's commandments on yonder slabs of stone".
We are to be virtuous without any reason to do so, other than we may be virtuous. That it all there is to it. Notice how terribly unclear that is, since we are used to rigid laws and structures being handed to us to understand WHY we do what we do, or WHAT to expect from what we do.
And it is important that we be virtuous without any exterior reason to be so... BECAUSE we have a good history of millions of people who have followed various religions and have had many exterior reasons to be virtuous...BUT they have often found the exterior reasons and commandments insufficient for them to be viruous, and they have committed atrocious acts.
Therefore, exterior commandments are insufficient.
I agree with you from an objective point of view, and further I would contribute that the melding of good and evil is actually in an objective sense, more harmonious than the embroidered mesh, where each has its distinctive place and nothing can change – even if good and evil are separate. And I agree with you about the virtues. However, from a subjective point of view, it’s hard to take onboard the Paper view, simply because it’s hard to associate with evil. Further, because we reside in the material world, it’s hard to accept the dissolution of concepts and so forth, especially as most of those concepts are reflections of the reality we have built around ourselves. In my opinion, your Paper framework is based upon the foundation of compassion where good and evil lose all meaning and those who are evil are evil no longer in the gaze of the compassionate, but treated with sympathy. Similarly all the various circumstances that people can find themselves in day by day may require the virtues in order to deal with amicably. So for me and from a subjective viewpoint, your Paper Universe is based on the virtues and compassion. Without those transforming factors, the disharmony of duality imposes and there is an affinity to return to the embroidered mesh. We may have the dissolution involved in the quantum world, but because that is not OUR reality, such a concept seems distant and objective, as opposed to the closer and subjective.
And yes, it’s amazing what the subconscious dredges up when you’re writing. Stephen King refers to it as the “Boys in the Basement” working tirelessly on problems and ideas to suddenly precipitate during the flow of words.
Keep up these great essays! I like them a lot. I've gleaned new perspective on things too. :)
Ben
I have to think about this for a while.
Am going to Canada right now, go train station, get beautiful sister in law, eat chinese food...
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