They thought they knew what they were doing.
I was brought up with my curds thoroughly saturated in
the great Chain of Being, then flung neck-deep to a
relative humanism jail, and it's taken all this time
and fiery trials to see the soundness of calling a spade
a spade. I'm beyond sick to death of the kinds of
earthquakes that repeatedly pursued and jolted that
bloody Venetian fool, Candide. I'm beyond sick to death
of seeing justice bomb in the name of roughshod small
town hall law. So how could I, an Occam stoic, wear
so long the medieval rags of counterfeit morality's
scala naturae? All I can say is, that's America, and yes,
they still do it that way here, if you get born into
such and such a family.
We had the Enlightenment, but in some quarters the
incandescent bulbs flared once and the filaments popped;
anyway, there are only certain levels of logic and reason
that any given human mind can take before being
compelled to reject the beliefs of a lifetime, or of
generations, and that's a hard thing to do, Jim, when you're
living out on a farm chewing wheat for your gum and trying
to read unprinted, oracular skies for rain clouds. And even
should you stumble among the shelter of fresher minds,
habits and never-confronted premises aren't so quick
to let you go.
They thought they knew what they were doing, pouring
those lessons in the ear, pouring slurries of exemplars
that had served five hundred generations so well; they
thought they knew what they were doing, but they
skirmished with logic, with reason; they clashed in bloody
civil war, they roared, clashing rocks, smashing unfortified
egos; they thought they knew what they were doing; still
they think they know what they're doing; but they didn't
know what they were doing, and they don't know now.
They clutch at soggy, dissociating straws in a disintegrating
raft, and they'll push you down beneath the waves so they
can continue, for a little while, to gasp for air.
All you well-intentioned Panglosses out there: hasten
to your graves! Your august compositions are spent and this
world's wanting no more snout-rooting slaves!
Interesting merging of philosophies and concept into a sort of abstract, poetic structure. Occam, Voltaire, the Chain of Beings- the piece is saturated with philosophical schools and theories. I think I would die if I had been raised in the 'great Chain of Being'. The social picture you paint is quite disturbing and yet, true. America is a free country and, alas, freedom comes with its dark side- blood-curdling religions, brain-washing liberalism and liberal idiocy. Me- I think one has to take everything with a bucketful of salt and never ever evaluate a religion or philosophy subjectively, from within as it were, not judging it but rather desperately struggling to justify the line of thought you've grown familiar with. Hence Pascal's Wager and other such fallacies.
ReplyDeletewell, as usual, you seem to have penetrated this deeper than i'd have thought could be done; didn't think i'd given that many clues. at first i was going to write something about rabid religious dogma, such as i haven't before, but i'm not up to it yet. the i realized how it connects with candide and intellectual dishonesty. i decided that although 'panglossing'is itself a half-baked failure, it may be important for me to get this thing out there as an icebreaker so i can more properly explore these themes later.
ReplyDelete"The great chain of being." Holy cow! The scala naturae! E.B., do you have an iconic memory, or is your IQ simply off-the-charts? You know everything about everything, my friend.
ReplyDelete"There are only certain levels of logic and reason..." You address the ideologies of the Enlightenment pefectly here.
The 'Pangloss' part is an allusion to Voltaire's 'Candide,' yes?
Pardon my nit-picking, but I think 'Occam' should be 'Ockham.'
of course if you catch all my allusions, which you always do, that makes you equally n3rdy, too. yes, dr pangloss was candide's 'intellectual maestro.' i've seen occ/ock spelled either way.
ReplyDelete