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The Row Boat"Had we but world enough, and time..." *
If there is a problem of our time7/31/2006 10:39:28"Our time" is of course getting no where: we share one time, miraculously, but what that time is to us is so different. Every day there is more news of bombs and deaths and by circumstance I am - here, not there; comfortable, not dying - not in a position to do a whole lot about the situation (but some, more than I have thought of yet) - aware of it in words, pictures, film, and commentary - in such a socio-economic-political situation that my everyday way of life is partly responsible for what is occuring so far away. This is a familiar cluster of situations but I think one that has not yet been elevated to a situation, examined as such, lived as such. These are familiar but new, consequences of the peculiar kind of media-globaliz-world we are told we are living in. When I read the paper I realize my upbringing and society has suggested no answers and prompted little discussion about what it is to live in this situation, which as of now can be called "war at a distance." But as the past five years seem to be saying (and our leaders are quick to say "complacency") it is clear that this is meant not only to be a crisis situation but an ongoing constant fact of modern existence. Can we develop a philosophical-theological discussion that can make these spaces habitable? (I have some in mind. Drawing models of redemptive suffering from Holy Week, techniques for attention from the martyrs of El Salvador, and constructive praxis from others) But what are the implications of making such a horrible situation habitable? Can we afford to philosophize this into the status quo? Yet we ourselves, while doing all that we can do, must find a way to survive, not make more victims out of ourselves. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - |
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