- "But the thing a man does practically believe (and this is often without asserting it even to himself, much less others); the thing a man does practically lay to heart, and know for certain, concerning his vital relations to this mysterious Universe, and his duty and destiny there, that is in all cases the primary thing for him, and creatively determines all the rest." ---Thomas Carlyle
It is an odd thing: my 'opposition' to many of the stances taken by the forum and its founders (though true that one cannot generalize too much: there are many different people here and many levels of opinion) has induced me to attempt to discover the causes of these strange and skewed positions and also forced me to come up with alternatives. As when you come into contact with a disease and become motivated to find a cure. In the so-called 'shamanic' traditions, someone once told me and I verified it by reading a good deal of that ethnographic literature, the nature of shamanic healing is to take on the sickness of the afflicted person and to use one's own resources (inner and spiritual usually) to overcome the sickness, if one can. Taking the position I have has tended to land me in hot water. And the reason is, if I understand correctly, that the Founders and many of those who follow them, see themselves as holding and distributing a 'cure' for man's madness, his irrational destructiveness---his perdition in that sense. Since they hold an Absolute Truth, how could anyone---or any random madman!---take issue with it? Logically impossible.
One recent area of interest which has opened up as a result of 'reaction' to much that is formulated and expressed on these pages has been to begin a thorough study of Elizabethan concepts of the construction of the world and the Cosmos. One idea I expressed here, which was inspired by Waldo Frank in his book 'The Rediscovery of America' (filled with a great deal of quite acid critique of American culture, BTW), is the notion that we all live in the outcome of a long and pained process of dissolution of the unitary understanding of 'reality' that was held and expressed by the Middle Ages. There was a time when we *understood*, but likely in the sense expressed by Carlyle 'often without asserting it even to himself', which is to say that we 'metaphysically inhabited' that understanding, that the world was indeed constructed on, if you will, logical principals. That order existed and that such order was unitary, correspondent, in all aspects of creation. To outline the fundamentals of the Elizabethan worldview is actually a very useful exercise to be able to see our own views in a clearer light, since in one way or another all and any view we hold will indeed be a derivative. The reason I mention this, of course, is because I began to discover in QRS formulations a form of reiteration of a Mediaeval view of reality. Or in any case a desire to discover again and to live within a cosmological Order that one could depend on, that made sense, that had its rules and its designs. I especially note this tendency or perhaps 'tactic' in David's views, but it seems to especially come through his personality as a wandering monk of Absolute Truth. It is harder to come up with an exact label for Solway and anyway his approach, or lack of approach since he is not *approaching* but fading away (from presence in this space), is quite distinct from that of David who seems to have taken things in his own unique direction. What can one actually say about Rowden except perhaps 'Your guess is as good as mine', or to ask the question: What beer goes best with full Enlightenment? ;-)
So, as I have been looking into Shakespeare and to the metaphysical understanding that underpinned his views, I have also been drawn off into other directions, but I wanted to mention a few titles since this thread, if it manages to get up and running, will be based on some of this material.
- Shakespeare and the Nature of Man by Theodore Spencer
- The Elizabethan World Picture by E. M. W. Tillyard
- Elizabethan Psychology and Shakespeare's Plays by Ruth Leila Anderson
- The Great Chain of Being by Arthur Lovejoy
- Ideas Have Consequences by Richard M. Weaver
I decided to start this thread with the quote from Carlyle because the idea fascinates me: each one of us holds and lives in accord with a 'metaphysical dream', our imagined world, our imagined understanding of the world, the Cosmos---Being. There are some humans who may never question themselves or to whom the question never takes on any force. But for others of us, for different reasons, it takes on a great deal of relevance, indeed it impels us along. I would assert that we have no choice but to define a 'metaphysical dream', and to live in accord with it. So much might be talked about in relation to this fact: What happens when your metaphysical dream no longer coincides with that of your group or tribe? What happens when a grand and noble metaphysical dream is attacked by social forces, or mercantile forces, or factions within philosophy---academia---with other and opposing levels of vested interest, other 'intentionality'?
I have asserted at times that my view of this neo-Buddhistic or pseudo-Zen worldview (that for weird reasons always attempts to referent itself within Western philosophical traditions, or to refer to them, something I have never been able to understand) 'functions like an acid' on Western achievements, that is to say on the 'product' of the West: the individual and the personality. I have said that in certain ways it appears to me as 'dstructive' and not 'creative'---not 'wholesome' if you wish. But I am very aware that it derives from a worldview and the expression of a worldview: a metaphysical dream. The notion of 'direct view' of 'reality' with no modifiers within imagination seems flatly false and also *impossible*. And so a particular Imagined View is defined, protected, expressed, and explained.
Just as it was---say in the Elizabethan era---and will be now and in the future, it was also in every period of time and in every culture (Chinese, Hindu, etc.). I think the purpose of this thread is to discuss that. The fact of that, the meaning of that. But also, and maybe 'just for the fun of it', to talk about aspects of Shakespearean worldview and certainly psychology, oh and literature and poetry too.
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The Soothsayer in Antony & Cleopatra: "In nature's infinite book of secrecy a little I can read".