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The Row Boat"Had we but world enough, and time..." *
Is Reconcilliation Real?8/10/2006 16:16:38I'm posting here an excerpt from a conversation with a friend of mine on the subject of some recent writing of mine, including my college thesis and a draft essay on Anselm's proof for the existence of God. Many thanks to him for bringing it to mind, for what it is worth: ... My intention, both with the performance stuff and this is to reconfigure the conversation, probably in subtle ways. I have no idea what these ways might be, which is why I offer them to people. My conviction and suspicion is that the things people fight about - from philosophers to soldiers - are a waste of resources and life. We are after all in the same boat. Both of these projects, perhaps, attempt to find ways at separating a useless conflict from a useful one. But of course, as one discovers, both in exploring dialectics of belief and contours of performance, is that we have nothing left to us except the belief and except the performance. So, you're right, what good does it do to undermine this? Perhaps these conflicts cannot be stopped since they are in our deepest nature. There was one night I remember at Brown walking down Thayer Street with an Orthodox Jewish friend of mine. She kept trying to get me to explain how I could believe a religion yet not need to say that mine was better than any other. Yet I kept trying to say that I could, even while remaining true to my own religion. Eventually we got to Waterman Street and she went home and I went home wondering if the sensation I felt was actually utterly unexplainable (and for good reason), and had been in the hearts of the human race forever. The only thing that can actually be said and stood by is the language of our disagreements, our performances, our dialectics. I can do nothing but join the rest of the human race in this nonsense, keeping the sensation that I know - that there need be actually nothing but peace between us - silently inside me. Nothing can express that fact, and any attempt to will be its opposite: will be performance, dialectic, strife. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
re: Is Reconcilliation Real? - 8/11/2006 13:49:30
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