Theology, philosophy, and psychology are hobbies of mine. I do not shy away from opinions on religion, gods, or neighbors. People who know me, testify to this. They will add that I am not a trained professional.
However, after recent, multiple, and devastating natural disasters in the world, it is just plain human nature to apply any or all of the above amateur pursuits to the question: What in the hell is going on? Answers, of course, are just wishful thinking, and never guaranteed useful or accurate even if you can find some. Answers are false comfort, and could be avoided entirely if humans were constructed to not think about stuff.
But when faced with persistent Old Testament-quality wrath (think "Job"), we do think about it. And it’s easy to empathize with ancient cultures (sans telephone, newspapers, internet, et al) who meditated, read fresh entrails, and studied the skies for answers. Some (I’m thinking Carl Sagan here, whom I mightily admire) might call these methods “looking for explanations in arcane vistas, where there are none to be read.” Equally true, some might call this “looking for explanations where maybe they exist, but where most of us can't see them.” Yet for all I know—or any of us—the entrails of a goat, when thoughtfully studied, reflect the macrocosm. Actually that is a comforting thought; sort of like Dorothy having the means to “go home” with her all the time, yet clueless about the importance of her shoes.
My friends would say, right about now, as they traded brief resigned looks with you: yeah, she really talks like that. Good friends stick with you, no matter what. I am grateful.
A Japanese friend, once upon a time, inadvertently explained Japan to me in a phrase: “Many small things.” The words applied literally to many small bells, hanging from tall posts on a boulevard by the ocean near Kobe. But ever since I heard the bells and the words, they have applied to many small things which compose Japanese culture: many individuals who function together for the advancement of the Whole, many small dishes of food, many small areas of detail and action and belief. This phrase is like goat entrails, when I think of Japan: a sign to unlock my mind, to see something that is so unlike what my conscious mind seeks that it triggers deeply embedded subconscious answers. (Yep, everybody does that. Don't you?)
Pursuing my hobbies of Finding Answers to the Universe and the Wrath of Jehovah, the phrase Many Small Things thus popped into my head, where things often pop in and out. The phrase was called to mind specifically by the Internet Entrails / pictures of the horrific tsunami in Japan, and the tornadic activity throughout the American South. Pictures of pieces of things; pictures of things sharded and shredded; pictures of small homeless items which are utterly worthless, utterly valuable. Pictures of what looked like mounds of toothpicks being picked over by incongruously human humans, moving over the remains of their identities. What civilization do we belong to when our personal, microcosmic civilizations are pulverized? How do we find our Selves in the rubble of our life?
Well, in the pursuit of said hobbies, I have formulated some rules. One BIG rule is: there is always Another Side to every viewpoint (if not a bunch more sides). There is always a New Beginning to every story that ends. There is, certainly, always an Ending to all stories. And there are other rules I make up in my spare time. But today I am fleshing out the newly verbalized rule about The Yin Yang of Many Small Things: Where there is Positive, there must be Negative. That is, “Many Small Things are beautiful, and Many Small Things are a mess.” Maybe the defining difference between Beauty and Horror is the order we impose on our personal chaos of small worldly Things.
So I look for interpretation in my Internet Entrails: pictures which reveal a de-construction of the human order which was fleetingly imposed on a culture, or a town, a street, a house. In the pictures, many small things were scattered, beyond any possibility of re-uniting into their former state of being. Hearths, altars, herds of personally-contrived realities: all were Poofed. A surviving person, or maybe several surviving persons over the extent of many tragedies, addressed this issue within the hearing of journalists. He, She, or They was/were quoted in a (surely) universal expression among the survivors of uncontrolled Yahweh Old Testament Devastation: You can replace Things; you can’t replace People.
As part of my philosopher/ theologist/ psychologist (and, OK, sociologist/ anthropologist) hobbies, I live a lifestyle which some of my acquaintances refer to as Spartan. If you are fond of Ancient Greek history and/or the movie The 300, or if you were forced to read Walden in your public school tenure, you got the picture. I have two skillets, one pot, one television in the basement which is not hooked up to outside sources, minimalist living space, and the goal to live Waste-Free before I die. In harmony with my perverted and conflicted dedication to Less is More, I reflect on My Goal of leaving this world with nothing left lying in dusty closets or forgotten boxes for my kids to divvy up between charity and the town dump. When my tenure on this mortal coil is fulfilled, I plan on shuffling off via cremation instead of burial. Cast to the wind instead of adding to landfill. Living Without Things is contradictory to everything that is currently American, but it is totally historically American, as reflected by Thoreau and pioneers.
This logical if convoluted personal philosophy applies to my subject: the Negative Aspect of Many Small Things.
Whether or not Yahweh /Jehovah and Shinto spirits and Gaea and Buddha and Muslim prophets and Vishnu and all other Recourses to the Inexplicable are constructs of humans who seek order in entrails or in houses filled with many small things—I will pose an interpretation here, based on my hobbies of considering constructs of order.
Reading fresh Internet Entrails: Many Small Things fill our lives with pleasure and order and a feeling (however temporary) of Control and Belonging. However, people who recently suffered the physical wrath of all-of-the-above deities would say: it’s all Just Stuff. The collections of Disney characters, crystal figurines, power saws, antique cars, photographs, books, furniture, clothes we all horde--they are nice illusions, used to obscure the harsh insights of goat entrails, and support order in chaos. The Stuff we collect works very nicely to do that, too. I love my books and my clothes, and even the extra dishes I don’t need for survival but like to put out just to look at. They organize my chaos into a personal code, and are a positive side of my life.
But according to my new Rule, these little postivies demand equal negatives, for balance. For all the possessions I/we acquire, there is a subsequent letting-go of same. I do not have a theory on “for all letting-go’s, there is a subsequent acquisition.” But I think it must work both ways. I have time to pursue my hobbies further.
So, the fresh Internet Entrails/ pictures I study call up meaning in the chaos's Search for Answers, which may or may not comfort and inform: The Flip Side of Many Small Things is Don’t Hang Onto Them.
However, after recent, multiple, and devastating natural disasters in the world, it is just plain human nature to apply any or all of the above amateur pursuits to the question: What in the hell is going on? Answers, of course, are just wishful thinking, and never guaranteed useful or accurate even if you can find some. Answers are false comfort, and could be avoided entirely if humans were constructed to not think about stuff.
But when faced with persistent Old Testament-quality wrath (think "Job"), we do think about it. And it’s easy to empathize with ancient cultures (sans telephone, newspapers, internet, et al) who meditated, read fresh entrails, and studied the skies for answers. Some (I’m thinking Carl Sagan here, whom I mightily admire) might call these methods “looking for explanations in arcane vistas, where there are none to be read.” Equally true, some might call this “looking for explanations where maybe they exist, but where most of us can't see them.” Yet for all I know—or any of us—the entrails of a goat, when thoughtfully studied, reflect the macrocosm. Actually that is a comforting thought; sort of like Dorothy having the means to “go home” with her all the time, yet clueless about the importance of her shoes.
My friends would say, right about now, as they traded brief resigned looks with you: yeah, she really talks like that. Good friends stick with you, no matter what. I am grateful.
A Japanese friend, once upon a time, inadvertently explained Japan to me in a phrase: “Many small things.” The words applied literally to many small bells, hanging from tall posts on a boulevard by the ocean near Kobe. But ever since I heard the bells and the words, they have applied to many small things which compose Japanese culture: many individuals who function together for the advancement of the Whole, many small dishes of food, many small areas of detail and action and belief. This phrase is like goat entrails, when I think of Japan: a sign to unlock my mind, to see something that is so unlike what my conscious mind seeks that it triggers deeply embedded subconscious answers. (Yep, everybody does that. Don't you?)
Pursuing my hobbies of Finding Answers to the Universe and the Wrath of Jehovah, the phrase Many Small Things thus popped into my head, where things often pop in and out. The phrase was called to mind specifically by the Internet Entrails / pictures of the horrific tsunami in Japan, and the tornadic activity throughout the American South. Pictures of pieces of things; pictures of things sharded and shredded; pictures of small homeless items which are utterly worthless, utterly valuable. Pictures of what looked like mounds of toothpicks being picked over by incongruously human humans, moving over the remains of their identities. What civilization do we belong to when our personal, microcosmic civilizations are pulverized? How do we find our Selves in the rubble of our life?
Well, in the pursuit of said hobbies, I have formulated some rules. One BIG rule is: there is always Another Side to every viewpoint (if not a bunch more sides). There is always a New Beginning to every story that ends. There is, certainly, always an Ending to all stories. And there are other rules I make up in my spare time. But today I am fleshing out the newly verbalized rule about The Yin Yang of Many Small Things: Where there is Positive, there must be Negative. That is, “Many Small Things are beautiful, and Many Small Things are a mess.” Maybe the defining difference between Beauty and Horror is the order we impose on our personal chaos of small worldly Things.
So I look for interpretation in my Internet Entrails: pictures which reveal a de-construction of the human order which was fleetingly imposed on a culture, or a town, a street, a house. In the pictures, many small things were scattered, beyond any possibility of re-uniting into their former state of being. Hearths, altars, herds of personally-contrived realities: all were Poofed. A surviving person, or maybe several surviving persons over the extent of many tragedies, addressed this issue within the hearing of journalists. He, She, or They was/were quoted in a (surely) universal expression among the survivors of uncontrolled Yahweh Old Testament Devastation: You can replace Things; you can’t replace People.
As part of my philosopher/ theologist/ psychologist (and, OK, sociologist/ anthropologist) hobbies, I live a lifestyle which some of my acquaintances refer to as Spartan. If you are fond of Ancient Greek history and/or the movie The 300, or if you were forced to read Walden in your public school tenure, you got the picture. I have two skillets, one pot, one television in the basement which is not hooked up to outside sources, minimalist living space, and the goal to live Waste-Free before I die. In harmony with my perverted and conflicted dedication to Less is More, I reflect on My Goal of leaving this world with nothing left lying in dusty closets or forgotten boxes for my kids to divvy up between charity and the town dump. When my tenure on this mortal coil is fulfilled, I plan on shuffling off via cremation instead of burial. Cast to the wind instead of adding to landfill. Living Without Things is contradictory to everything that is currently American, but it is totally historically American, as reflected by Thoreau and pioneers.
This logical if convoluted personal philosophy applies to my subject: the Negative Aspect of Many Small Things.
Whether or not Yahweh /Jehovah and Shinto spirits and Gaea and Buddha and Muslim prophets and Vishnu and all other Recourses to the Inexplicable are constructs of humans who seek order in entrails or in houses filled with many small things—I will pose an interpretation here, based on my hobbies of considering constructs of order.
Reading fresh Internet Entrails: Many Small Things fill our lives with pleasure and order and a feeling (however temporary) of Control and Belonging. However, people who recently suffered the physical wrath of all-of-the-above deities would say: it’s all Just Stuff. The collections of Disney characters, crystal figurines, power saws, antique cars, photographs, books, furniture, clothes we all horde--they are nice illusions, used to obscure the harsh insights of goat entrails, and support order in chaos. The Stuff we collect works very nicely to do that, too. I love my books and my clothes, and even the extra dishes I don’t need for survival but like to put out just to look at. They organize my chaos into a personal code, and are a positive side of my life.
But according to my new Rule, these little postivies demand equal negatives, for balance. For all the possessions I/we acquire, there is a subsequent letting-go of same. I do not have a theory on “for all letting-go’s, there is a subsequent acquisition.” But I think it must work both ways. I have time to pursue my hobbies further.
So, the fresh Internet Entrails/ pictures I study call up meaning in the chaos's Search for Answers, which may or may not comfort and inform: The Flip Side of Many Small Things is Don’t Hang Onto Them.
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